Another topic that’s been brought up post HCU is the idea that publishers shouldn’t create content “for Google,” says Chrisy.
That we should not be trying to “speak to Google.”
That we should “ignore Google.”
I want to forget about Google.
Except, I can’t.
I wanted to run my business as a faceless brand, prioritizing the message of “Homemade Hooplah” being the go-to place for fun party foods over building a Martha Stewart-type personal brand.
Except, I can’t, because Google has made up a metric that says unless I plaster my face and real name all over my site and make extensive use of “I” and “my” then my site is clearly not trustworthy.
(Quick side note – it’s pretty wild that in 2024 I have to pick between my online privacy and my site’s success.)
I wanted my content catalogue to cover unique items as well as staples people already know.
I wanted my site to be browsable for hours, letting users discover new ideas along with tried-and-true favorites.
Except, I can’t, because Google no longer wants to rank me for common recipes (or they’ll just generate the whole ingredients+instructions with SGE), and having an abundance of low-ranking content can hurt my site overall.
Which is really unfortunate, because no one is searching for my unique content – because, you know, it’s unique, most readers haven’t heard of it yet – and I needed to get people in the door with more commonly known content to have any hope of them seeing the unique stuff.
I wanted my unique content to have a better chance of being found in search, so I tried to optimize it for more obscure (but still totally relevant) terms or ideas that people might actually be looking for.
Except, I can’t, because optimizing for keywords and user intent in any way is just plain bad now, I guess?
I wanted to keep my good (yet common) content online so that maybe other search engines will show it to their users.
I also wanted to share this content with my 3+ million social media followers who have grown to trust me over the past 10 years.
Except, I can’t, because I’m now supposed to deindex or even DELETE content that Google has deemed unworthy to rank or risk my whole site being dragged down.
So now, if someone lost my post on social and tried to search for it by the name or image, it can no longer be found.
This list could go on and on and on.
Online publishers WANT to forget about Google.
But it’s hard to do that when a company has reached gatekeeper status and can negatively impact the livelihoods of millions of people based on decisions they made between games of Foosball.
I’m unable to forget about Google until they stop overcomplicating the means in which I keep the lights on in my house.