Sites that rely on SEO to operate are said to be among the hardest hit, while news sites with good user experiences and fewer ads are being favored by Google.
Google has made a number of new updates to its search algorithm and news recommendations in recent months. Photo: GI
Google said it was not specifically targeting any news publishers, but that its aim was to “show useful and trustworthy results.”
Core update has 'profound impact'
Since September 2023, updates rolled out by Google have included a “helpful content update” that is considered “more impactful” than the December 2022 updates. They have also rolled out core updates in October 2023 and another in November 2023. “Core” updates are major, significant changes to Google’s search algorithms and systems that tend to happen several times a year.
The two November updates have yet to be fully rolled out at this time, while a bug was discovered in the October rollout that significantly impacted traffic to Google Discover , Google's personalized news feed for users.
“Google’s updates from September to November 2023 had a profound impact on news sites and news agencies, resulting in significant changes in their traffic and visibility. This was particularly evident in traffic and visibility in Google Discover, Top Stories, and Google News, which led to significant revenue drops for some news sites,” said SEO expert Lily Ray.
“Every time a Google algorithm update is announced, many news organizations wait anxiously to see what the impact will be,” said Barry Adams, founder of Polemic Digital, an SEO consultant to news organizations. “Some updates pass by without any impact, but others have a profound impact on their site’s Google traffic and, by extension, their revenue.”
“Both the October and November core updates appear to have had a ‘big impact,’ with hundreds of sites seeing big changes in traffic – some positive, some negative,” Adams added.
One news site told Ray that they “simply disappeared from Google Discover and Google News after the November core update. We felt the impact in October, but now in November, the business has completely collapsed. Six years of hard work and now it’s all gone to dust.”
Traffic dropped dramatically
Ray created a questionnaire for news publishers to fill out about how the updates affected their sites and received results from over 150 news organizations around the world that saw drops.
In fact, 72% said they no longer see their articles appear in Google's Top Stories widget or featured in Google News unless they are sorted by most recent article.
A similar proportion (73%) said they had seen their traffic on Google Discover drop to almost zero in the three months prior to the survey, significantly reducing their ad revenue. Many “expressed frustration” that they did not see a big increase after the glitch was fixed.
“Some sites are now seeing Discover traffic recover, but others are not seeing any signs of Discover returning to previous levels, leading to speculation that the bug may only be partially fixed or that there may be another bug,” Adams said.
Overall, Ray said many people have reported “dramatic drops in page views and traffic, with numbers dropping from several million to significantly lower numbers like 1-2 million or even less.” This is believed to be often caused by a combination of Google updates, rather than just one update.
Pages with lots of ads are greatly affected.
“I also see user experience factors playing a larger role: One common thread among many sites that lose traffic is that they feature ads that get in the way of the reader’s engagement with the content, such as ads that take up part or all of the screen and auto-playing video ads that take up a large portion of the mobile screen,” Adams added.
Google News' article recommendations are said to prioritize quality content. Photo: Google screenshot
A head of SEO at a multi-brand UK publisher said they believe the results of the latest updates show Google appears to be moving away from ad-driven sites that are largely focused on clickbait, rather than improving the quality of their content.
In addition, with Google increasing its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to always provide search results in the results table, thereby making users not need to click on links as before, it also causes news sites to lose traffic.
What is Google's explanation?
“We are constantly improving our systems with updates to ensure we continue to deliver on our mission of showing useful and trustworthy results. None of our recent updates targeted specific websites, including news organizations,” a Google spokesperson said.
“Search and content can move in cycles,” Google expert Danny Sullivan said on X. “You can see a rise in useless content and search evolves to address that. We’re in one of those cycles.”
Regarding the Discover glitch, a Google spokesperson said: “We recently encountered a bug in Discover that may have caused traffic to drop for some publications for a short period of time. As soon as it was discovered, we fixed the bug and notified the ecosystem.”
Google prioritizes quality content
SEO expert Adams also warns against having too much third-party commercial content like betting odds and e-commerce, as there are signs that “these Google updates are targeting those activities. To prevent future losses, it may be prudent for those sites to reduce the amount of commercial content and focus more on relevant news content.”
Cameron Nichols, head of SEO at US customer experience company Merkle, also noted on Linkedin that third-party content has been a factor in recent rollouts, such as the helpful content update in September.
Also note that Google says its goal is to promote reviews that “share in-depth research, rather than superficial content that simply summarizes a range of products, services, or other things.”
SEO expert Luke Budka, AI strategist at Definition, says he anticipates this could impact news publishers' rankings and traffic, and recommends they analyze specific sections of their site in their Google Search Console account to see which parts are affected.
“That could mean a lot of publishers need to re-evaluate their practices,” Budka said. “Google is no longer going to rank content… just because it’s on a highly authoritative news site.”
Hoang Hai (according to Google, Press Gazette)
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