Google destroyed my business

They changed the rules and made decisions on behalf of users that we were no longer what they were looking for, wrote Luke Jordan.

Let’s get the conspiracy stuff out of the way: Google has released several “Helpful Content Updates” over the past couple of years, aimed at prioritizing content based on first-hand expertise and research.

The real-world effect has obliterated small, independent publishers from the web, while just 16 large media companies now dominate Google results – even though their articles often lack expertise.

Coincidentally, Google is paying these publishers to help train their AI.

Reddit has benefited more than any other site, and Google is paying them $60m per year for AI training data.

Coincidence that this deal was announced 4 weeks before Reddit’s $6.4bn IPO?

Nah, none of this is relevant.

So, back to August 2022 and the first Helpful Content Update (HCU): that month wasn’t too bad for us – over 850k users and 1.2m pageviews.

21.1% were returning visitors, not bad for a small, couple-year-old site publishing gaming tutorials based on first-hand expertise – exactly what Google claimed to want.

Despite performing well initially, the December 2022 HCU started our rapid descent.

Traffic dropped 38% week-over-week.

Little did I know, those were still the good times.

By September 2023, we were down to around 16k daily clicks from over 50k.

The business was no longer viable, so we had to quit.

Thank god we did – after March 2024’s updates, we were down to less than 1.5k daily clicks.

Why did we fail?

A few common responses:

1. “Build an audience you own!” – But our model was helping people stuck in games who searched for solutions. Almost no one wants to join a community in that situation.
2. “Your content was covered in ads!” – We tested turning off ads with barely any change in user metrics. Plus, big players do the same.
3. “Your content wasn’t helpful!” – At least 80% of our 3k+ posts were extremely helpful guides from first-hand experience that big sites repeatedly stole.
4. “You should have pivoted” – No exciting or viable option for our type of content.
5. “You should have sold” – We weren’t profitable enough to sell well.

The internet still needs good content.

You’ve just gotta figure out the next play and a more secure way of building without overreliance on Google.

Ilias Ism wrote:

1. Luke outsourced all the content
2. Focused on keyword-only SEO spam content
3. Let anyone publish anything like a content mill
4. ???
5. No backlink building
6. Algo changes, gets rekt, complains about Google

RIP Niche Sites 2022-2023