A couple of weeks ago, I reported about that Google Groups was seeing a very big ranking and visibility boost. Well, it seems to have caught Google's attention, the rankings of Google Groups seems to be declining and their visibility in Google Search has dropped. Google Groups still has a lot of visibility in the Google Search results but it had a huge drop in visibility.
Glenn Gabe posted an update on X saying, "Quick update on Google Groups. Yep, it's dropping heavily."
He shared some charts from Semrush showing the drop in visibility of Google Groups within Google Search:
Glenn added, "As reported last week, Google Groups surged like crazy right around the hidden gems addition, but super-dangerous content was ranking for sensitive queries. Seems Google addressed some of that already. I'm seeing big drops there and when checking the queries, that dropped, there are many that were leading to that dangerous content. I'm sure Google isn't done yet, but that's a good start. You can see both standard rankings and PAA dropping heavily."
Lily Ray spotted the drop as well:
It's hard to see, but https://t.co/UMja2KLZ8z is seeing a big visibility drop starting around Dec 7, when many are claiming to see big ranking/traffic changes. pic.twitter.com/h5bVoGnej8
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) December 11, 2023
Brian Freiesleben first posted about the Google Groups ranking boost back on December 1st, he said, "Google Groups conversations are indexed and can rank well. Maybe this is related to Google's recent preference for UGC in SERPs...you can see a huge jump in rank starting this October."
I guess Google caught wind of this and decided to take action on this issue because many of those results were incredibly low quality, in fact, many results were dangerous.
Here is more from Glenn on what happens when one goes up and the other goes down:
Very good point, and maybe why I've seen Quora drop in Nov, and now surge back, with this latest volatility. Both UGC, both impacted by "hidden gems". The plot thickens. :) pic.twitter.com/fNGBhocr7f
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 13, 2023
More about the Google Groups drop. Checking some of the queries that dropped, and the content that was ranking, I'm seeing many messages deleted and some of those urls deindexed. So maybe a mix of tweaking the "hidden gems" algo + changes on the site itself. Very interesting. pic.twitter.com/lXeb671Fwv
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 13, 2023
Update:
Just when it seems like the Google Groups subdomain spam problem is maybe being addressed... now we have... Google Translate spam.
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) December 14, 2023
Below is the growth of pages in that subdomain.
And some examples. These links take you to porn/spam pages.
h/t @Matic_Broz
FYI @searchliaison pic.twitter.com/CuhIz4Fp5D
Forum discussion at X.
