By changing its search algorithm and spam filter earlier this year, Google tried to get rid of poor quality content, but small websites are accusing the American giant of making them invisible.
Several site owners have sounded the alarm on social media, worrying about a massive and unprecedented drop in the number of visits since the update was completed in late April, which could lead to layoffs or even closures.
Among the unlucky ones is Gisele Navarro, a 37-year-old Argentinian who, with her husband, runs HouseFresh, an air purifier comparison site launched in 2020.
On their site, there is no advertising or product placement. If a test is not conclusive, the evaluators clearly indicate this to visitors. They are paid when users buy a product after being redirected to Amazon.
But Google’s update changed everything.
“We realized that we had gone from being in first place – because we are among the only ones who actually test the products – to not appearing at all,” Navarro told AFP.
According to her, HouseFresh has gone from 4,000 visits per day from Google search to around 200.
The decline is such that Gisele Navarro assures that she was advised to close her site and start all over again with a new domain name.
“Useful” results
Like her, many sites are frustrated by Google’s lack of clarity about how it ranks results.
The internet giant is particularly secretive about its algorithms, so much so that an industry known as “search engine optimization” has grown up to try to dissect the algorithm in order to get more clicks.
The latest update has caused confusion among SEO experts, who are trying to understand why some sites have been boosted while others were demoted.
In an email to AFP, Google said the change was designed to provide users with “fewer results that feel like they were designed for search engines.”
“The only changes we’ve implemented are those that we believe significantly improve results for users. And we believe those updates have been helpful,” the American company said.
Yet in a widely shared blog post in May, Navarro noted that people searching for product reviews were increasingly being served ads and content that appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence or optimized for SEO.
Another thing that’s been more apparent since the update is content from users of community sites like Reddit and Quora.
The company defended this approach, saying that “people often want to learn from the experiences of others.”
“We do rigorous testing to make sure the results are useful and of good quality,” she adds.
Difficult market
But staff at one European news site say their articles are now regularly being downgraded in favor of often irrelevant content from Reddit.
The site’s boss, who wished to remain anonymous, said that referrals from Google had dropped by 20 to 30 percent since the update and that budget cuts would be inevitable.
“In an already difficult market, this is a serious problem for independent publishers like us,” he warned.
Newsletters, podcasts… All the companies interviewed by AFP indicated that they were urgently looking for other ways to attract the public so as to no longer depend on Google search.
Gisele Navarro, who had to significantly reduce her team, turned to video formats and newsletters.
Despite the experience, she remains optimistic about the future of the web — encouraged by the many messages of support and the increase in referrals from alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo.
“All of humanity’s knowledge is on the Internet and that’s not nothing,” she says philosophically. “I don’t want to give it up just because Google is broken.”