OMG Morgan thanks!! I also didn't realize I had SearchGPT already🤦‍♀ Just tested it a bit, and there's 2 of me now. As a user, I absolutely love the experience, much better than googling! But as a creator, I hate it so much, feels like the end of an era.

Google is late to organize this.

What a dumbass person, her website is awful even today.

While I really empathize with them, the ad density on charlestoncrafted is very high.

Thanks Morgan for sharing your story!

Incredible interview! Thank you for your honesty, Morgan! Can't help but notice the disfunction of Google as an enterprise -teams not speaking to one another or sharing news/updates -Google Search & Google Analytics totally different teams that don't speak to one another or want to even pass on feedback -Google search & Creator teams - never talk to one another with no insight into each other’s work - Google Search understanding up and down the chain (from engineer to head) TOTALLY different and contradictory. Just standard enterprise stuff, sadly. It's insane but not at all surprising that people are dishearten. The over-reliance on ML will lead to even worse for Google's search systems in the future, in my opinion.

Has anyone considered that relying solely on keyword-centric content generation is no longer a business model that works? This is not the first time something like this happened, and it won't be the last. If Google can take away your traffic overnight, your success is built on borrowed authority. People weren’t actively seeking these sites. Instead, they used SEO tactics to place their content in front of keyword searches, with Google as the sole gatekeeper granting them visibility. Real authority comes from building a recognizable brand that users trust and seek out directly. If that’s missing, were they ever truly in control of their business?

I like the idea of pivoting to video first content with a couple lines of blog post content with some screenshots. 👍

You guys were impacted like many of us and brought to their headquarters so Google could work their PR. They don’t really care about anyone (not even their users) or to make search better. How can search be better when keywords were taken away from niche blogs in and given to brands that don’t represent that niche? Forbes is not known for DIY yet certain important DIY keywords were given to Forbes. I don’t know anyone who would go to Forbes because they need to do a DIY project. Quora has outranked Healthline and certain medical websites several times, and Reddit has outranked food websites including mine. I am a Le Cordon Bleu trained chef with 2 decades of experience but Google has given some of my keywords to Reddit that is a forum with people who have no proven expertise in anything. I am also a published cookbook author and have contributed to Food Network and TOH. Google itself gave me a knowledge panel. Google has given Brazilian cuisine keywords to All Recipes that don’t know a blip about the cuisine and culture of my home country and has very few Brazilian recipes. So heck no! Google is not making search better. I have good content, followed SEO guidelines, shared my own personal experience in all my recipes and posts, have long/medium/short keywords within my authority and expertise as a professional Chef, AHREFS says my blog has a 99% health score, my site passed INP and core vitals on both mobile and desktop, my traffic is diverse, it is written 100% by me, with most images being my own. In addition, at the times my site was hit my ad density was low. Yet my site was hit several times. Nothing of those prevented my site to be hit and unfairly lose most of its traffic. It was a thriving site before the HCUs. I am not a spammer and have never been rated by G as a spammer. So why is it my site was hit? There is no fair reason at all. The interesting thing is after I increased my ad density to high, my traffic from G stabilized. There is one or more components in those algorithms that G is not sharing with anyone. I find very shady how they take away people’s livelihood without saying on GSC what the issue is with your site and how to fix it. I don’t need to produce more good content because my site already has good content. What G wants is keeping us producing more content to train AI even more and then replace us. Google has also been showing full recipes which is a copyright violation. I am The solely owner of my content and have not authorized Google to show my recipes on searches completely. It doesn’t matter if it gives me credit. No one will have a reason to click on the link when the full recipe is shown on G searches. So heck no! I stopped working on my site and started doing something else because I need to pay my bills. Any modification I make is catered solely to my subscribers and social media followers. I don’t search for anything anymore and don’t care what G guidelines are. G has lost all its trustworthiness as a search engine in my opinion. As an user I have to say their search is a mess. The first 4 to 5 results are for ads (right on top) or for AI stupid answers. When I search for a recipe, I expect to see links for recipes, not a stupid debate about a recipe on Reddit. So DuckDuck won my trust. I hope karma reaches Google. I have earned this year less than half what I used to and my daughter’s medical bills are accumulating. I have heard heartbreaking stories of single mothers who lost their rented house and are on food stamps in the blogging community. May Google be served in courts for its greed. May those in charge of this mess answer to the Almighty for their uncaring, dismissive attitude.

OMG your words about the mental toll this has taken on you completely resonates with me. This has crushed my self esteem and confidence in my ability to be an expert in my niche. And eff the SEO bros telling us it’s our content 😵‍💫 Every time I read those comments I wanted to throw my phone out a window. Thank you for being so candid.

OMG Morgan, I used to work in health care & know Epic (though never been there). I live near Google & they do have some cool buildings. They clearly put you in an odd building that was plain & cold. Though it is very empty with many working at home in Silicon Valley. The campus is large and many blocks in multiple directions. Thank you for the insight though frustrating.

My story is the same as yours. Lost all my traffic on a 10 year old site. Sorry this happened to you but also glad I’m not alone is the Google killed my business boat.

These Google updates and the AI overviewa have led to loss of so many jobs. Even freelance writers have been affected. At least as Google continues to mess itself up, more people, including myself, are moving to other search engines. My blog's Bing, Yahoo and Duck Duck Go traffic has been increasing.

I found the cow.

Surely the fact that so many of us have stopped using Chrome since March must be telling them that users are not happy. Or the fact that so many of us are scrolling past the garbage at the top of the page. They must see that. That used to be part of Google's feedback loop. Google is a buffoon. On a better note - my traffic is improving the last few days. If I can ever get back to where I was (10K PV per day) Ill be very happy indeed. This week - 300 ish per day.

I think it’s time to start a new search engine.

so its either Googles mistake or deliberate penalty to get reddit or some other special interest sites up

I'm wondering if Google’s algorithm (machine learning) now prioritizes engagement over quality? With low literacy rates and pushback against what is seen as ‘elitism’ in our politics, sites hit by the Helpful Content Update may actually have high-quality content-but that may not be what people want anymore. Audiences might prefer simpler, ELI5-style content with visuals, even if it’s less substantive. Maybe we’re projecting our idea of “great content” (as Google suggests), but ‘great’ is subjective. While we aim to be like PBS or the Wall Street Journal (more trusted news sources), people might be gravitating more toward Fox News-style content.

I think SEO and Ad layout are likely two BIG issues here. Having the name "Charleston" in the URL is unfortunate (and potentially confusing to algorithm) if this isn't a local resource (maybe it could be?)...also the video ads negatively impact visitor experience and make the site seem spammy. I need to remove them from mine too 🙃

This is why everyone is using Wordmetrics or Surfer to do machine learning on search results. That's the only way back. It's all about contextual overhauls.

Sounds like you met a bunch of interns.

I went from 2,300 visitors per day which was $50 average, to 80 visitors per day and I now average $1. I hate Google.

Another great peice of insight into the Creator Summit. Thank you Morgan, I wish we got more time to chat at the event! And thanks Jared and the Niche Persuit team for putting this together.

Something is really wrong with Google search my website was going 100K per month now it's 10 per day if the website is so bad why was doing 100k

More power to Reddit, that's Google slogan. Period

I'd really like to follow her. Do you have links to her social media?

interesting....making website that people miss... and refresh everyday... i think Search engine journal is one of my favorite website that i can open everyday to see what's new in the industry....not everyday though, but often...sometimes

Given that Helpful Content Update is not helpful to bloggers, and users? Why the name? Could be that the content helps Google make money, not the users and not the bloggers? Names should be given with care but sometimes (more frequently than you realize) they betray themselves. The increasing volume of ads, poor search results, the ending of being able to modify search terms with modifiers, the mixing of specific and non-specific terms in my results, the need to add 'reddit' to search terms, I'm now diversifying my searches through other engines and beginning to use chatgpt to search.

fake news. if google ever saw a positive result they would instantly kibosh it.

I feel for everyone hit. These are real peoples lives and businesses unlike companies like forbes where it's just 'fun' money

What I understood from both videos is actually quite scary. What if AI and LLMs have taken over Google search and that's why the human engineers can't fix the algorithm. That's why durring the tour the offices were empty. Nayak knows this and that's why he denies the existence of the problem. And yes, the end of the session with him was also the final end for the websites of these 20 participating bloggers, as well as for thousands if not millions more across the globe.

The problem now is that you’re seeing a huge change in search intent for many of the keywords these types of sites used to rank for. So many different keyword results are now dominated by shopping ads.

It’s starting to seem like Google let its fledgling AI (machine learning) write the HCU and now they have no idea what changes were actually made or how to fix them. They thought they had a handle on it, knew what was going to happen, and then…..bam, they realized they’d set a goblin loose. And, unfortunately, they have no incentive to “fix” the issue(s) because: 1. They’re still making money hand over fist. 2. They’re huge and basically own the search space still. I doubt we’ll ever see a “fix.” Only lip service and panels/trips to Google to quiet the (very justified) discontent. And those will end soon enough. Morgan was great. High EQ and honest answers.

It’s starting to seem like Google let its fledgling AI (machine learning) write the HCU and now they have no idea what changes were actually made or how to fix them. They thought they had a handle on it, knew what was going to happen, and then…..bam, they realized they’d set a goblin loose. And, unfortunately, they have no incentive to “fix” the issue(s) because: 1. They’re still making money hand over fist. 2. They’re huge and basically own the search space still. I doubt we’ll ever see a “fix.” Only lip service and panels/trips to Google to quiet the (very justified) discontent. And those will end soon enough. Morgan was great. High EQ and honest answers.

It tooke me about 18 seconds on the website to see what the problem is: the UX is horrendous. The amount of ads is out of control and makes for a frustrating experience. Sorry, you are perfectly entitled to monetize your blog, but with some control.

SEO is digital voodoo, always has been....

man its insane, i think its more ABOUT LUCK THAN ANYTHING NOWADAYS

Thank you for sharing your experience

Anybody who depends on someone else's platform for a living or a good portion of it, is running a fool's errand. Make no mistake, Google Search is someone else's platform... I think nobody at Google has control over their algorithm nor understands it. It's like they created a Frankenstein that's out of control. They've made so many changes to it that they can't unwind it....

Can't stand google, they make me sick. I don't believe anything they say, their full of sh!+.

Finally someone who is honest about how Google has crushed the sites of quality bloggers. My site was also featured on the Google for Creators site and then lost almost all traffic starting in March 2024. It’s only gotten worse from there and my site is almost at zero. Fifteen years of quality content down the drain. I have a master’s degree in public health and my scientifically-backed quality content is being outranked by unreferenced articles that don’t even cite who the author is. It is beyond frustrating!!!!! Thank you Morgan for being so honest, you aren’t alone. Thanks Jared for another great interview.

The Morgan-verse grows stronger! I do wonder if this initiative to invite impacted publishers is from Danny's team or higher, that would show an intent to actually fix it vs just words. I was a software developer in corporate for a long time for important federal government projects, I totally understand hearing from a developer that everything is fine and it very much is not. They are offloading a large portion of their human capital to ML and a new search algorithm and either they can't figure out how to recognize small publisher content, it's too expensive, or some other much darker reason. I suspect it is more of a lack of ability than a darker reason. I like the term "small publisher overfitting hallucination" which is a subset of AI hallucinations. Also, the sitewide classifier nonsense seems more of a legal protection for them rather than an admission of the issue. Great Interview! All the best to you Morgan.

Google has still placed site-wide classifiers on my site. Page views have dropped from 5 million per month to zero, with current visibility at 0%. Google is lying by claiming there are no more site-wide classifiers. Shame on you for lying about this.

Google denies a site-wide classifier, but what about all of the sites that received manual penalties?

Give it a couple more years when search only consists of respun AI generated content because bloggers have stopped making new content. Then, see how Google's attitude to content creators does a 180 flip. They will only make changes to the algorithms when they see a downturn in their profits.

Just so you know, there is no site wide update, try updating your articles.

Great interview. It reflects exactly how I feel: Google is broken and they don't know how to fix it. Hopefully the current core update fixes some of the obvious errors, but I don't count on it. As a user I've already left Google, but I'd love to come back because they used to be the best.

Google is pure trash. Their "engineers", "CEOs", "CTOs" are a waste of money for the investors. Every update they are doing is terrible. No matter it is search or analytics. Anything they touch turns to BS.

I mean her site is spammy though? I'm sorry but it is. How can anyone read that poorly formatted content with just ads upon giant pictures upon giant font size? And this is after the HCU, when she probably fixed 90% of the UX so it looks great in order to recover. It's not weird to be honest, she just doesn't really know SEO or digital stuff and that's fine. But Google doesn't owe you anything, it's not like they ruined your business because they hate you personally, it's just to better satisfy their users (actually in this case)

For Google to say there is not a site wide penalty is a slap in the face. I went from 250,000 monthly sessions to around 1,000 monthly sessions. If I Google the name of my business and an exact phrase of a blog post I have written, I don’t even show up (even with my own business name included in the search). Shame on Google for flat out lying about this.