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Google's John Mueller said on Twitter, "You don't need to have a niche site in order to rank in Google; in fact, sometimes that's a good way not to rank." He explained that "A page doesn't have to be on a site that's "related to the niche" in order to be useful & helpful."
Here are those tweets:
A page doesn't have to be on a site that's "related to the niche" in order to be useful & helpful. You don't need to have a niche site in order to rank in Google; in fact, sometimes that's a good way not to rank.
— John Mueller (official) · Not #30D (@JohnMu) August 5, 2023
Here is the second part, if you want to see it:
I mean, if you prefer to make low-quality niche sites, that's up to you. It doesn't feel like it has a long-term positive outcome, but hey, I play Ingress, and that's a lot of clicking on buttons with no outcome at all other than occasional dopamine hits.
— John Mueller (official) · Not #30D (@JohnMu) August 6, 2023
Some of that is expected. If you put in decades of work to create something of overall high value, occasional low-effort output goes under in the noise. As with life, it's not enough to do the "right thing at the right time," it really helps to be in the right place too.
— John Mueller (official) · Not #30D (@JohnMu) August 6, 2023
The funny thing is, in December, Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison said the same thing. He said your content does not need to be on one topic, one niche topic, for it to rank well. So you might ask, what about topic authority?
This was added after I wrote this:
If the primary focus is "I have a site I created primary to rank well in Search for a particular topic," that's not really people-first rather than "I have a site that I created because I expect people to come to it in a variety of ways because of my self-evident expertise or…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 8, 2023
Those aren't guidelines specific to a particular ranking system. They relate to success with Google Search overall, including the helpful content system. Following them remains our best guidance for long-term success. Our systems will keep evolving & catching content that's not…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 8, 2023
The word "niche" was not used in the reply. Again, if the primary reason a site was created is "to rank well in Search for a particular topic," then that might not align with being people-first. If it's "I expect people to come to it in a variety of ways because of my…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 8, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
