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Let’s take a step back from our analysis of Google’s leaked ranking factors and AI overview and return to the question: “Do larger sites have an unfair advantage in Google Search?”
In part 1 of “David vs. Goliath,” we saw that larger sites do indeed grow faster than smaller sites, but that's more likely because they've found avenues of growth that are viable over the long term, not because they're bigger.
- Analysis of 1,000 winning and 1,000 losing sites shows that while the community has disproportionately increased its SEO visibility over the past 12 months, e-commerce retailers and publishers have suffered the biggest losses.
- Over the past 12 months, the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking system appears to have decreased, but high-performing sites still have stronger backlink profiles than lower-performing sites.
- But newer sites, and not in established verticals, still have good opportunities to grow.
The correlation between SEO visibility and number of linking domains is strong, but higher in May 2023 (.81) than in May 2024 (0.62). The correlation is lower for sites that lost organic traffic (0.39 in May 2023 and 0.41 in May 2024). Sites that gain organic visibility get more backlinks, but the signal seems to have dropped significantly over the past 12 months.
In part 2, I’ll share more insights from the data about how and when a site’s SEO traffic increases or decreases. My goal is to color-code modern, effective approaches to SEO and contrast them with older, fading approaches.
insight:
- Most sites lose during core algorithm updates, but win at other times.
- Most sites grow linearly, not “exponentially”.
- Tools + programmatic SEO works well.
- It's ineffective due to the heavy ad load and confusing design.
Hard (core) algorithm update
Nearly halfway through the year, we can expect at least one Google update to be rolled out.
According to the official “Incident” rankings page, Google updates occurred an average of 170 days between 2021 and 2023.
Rollout days: Official Updates and a new era of updates roll outDanny Sullivan said the impact of the updated ranking system could be seen long after its implementation, after new data is pumped into the system.
In other words, while some people may say that the updates are never finished or that the updates aren't finished yet, search is constantly updating.
As I wrote in “Hard (Core) Algorithm Updates,” algorithm updates are becoming a growing challenge for Google as a user acquisition channel.
No other platform has so many changing requirements. In the last three years, Google has released eight cores, 19 major updates, and 75-150 minor updates. The company works on thousands of improvements every year.
All platforms improve their algorithms, but not as frequently as Google. Instagram has made six major algorithm changes in the past three years, while Linkedin has made four.
The top 1,000 domains with the highest traffic loss reflect the risk. If a domain is losing organic traffic, it’s likely due to a Google core algorithm update.Some examples:
- In the SaaS space, applicant tracking software company Betterteam has been placed on the list for the September 2023 Helpful Content and October 2023 Core Updates, likely due to an excess of “low quality” programmatic content.
- Hints from Google’s ranking factors leak suggest that there is a connection between branded search, backlinks, and content: It remains to be seen if that’s true and if we can influence it, but in Betterteam’s case, branded search has stagnated since March 2022, while page counts have increased.
- In e-commerce, major U.S. retailers across all verticals (fashion, home, big box retailers) have been in decline since the August 2023 Core Update, which we'll discuss in more detail below.
- In the publishing industry, sites such as Moviebeb also start to decline starting from August 2023. In this case, it is interesting to see Screenrant gain market share but then see its share drop during the March 2024 core update.
Overlapping algorithm updates make it nearly impossible to understand what happened. It's both a reverse engineering problem for SEO pros and a guidelines problem for anyone responsible for organic traffic. You need to be able to understand what happened to understand what guidelines were violated.
S-curves are rare
Domains rarely grow exponentially (
A great example of a modern approach to SEO in SaaS is the AI tool Quillbot. Designed simply yet effectively, it makes it easy for users to solve their problems without having to read how to solve them.
Owner Learneo, which also owns Course Hero, has seen steady growth outside of Google algorithm updates. Like German startup DeepL, Quillbot has program pages for translation queries like “Translate Arabic to Hindi” and “Translate German to English.” The combination of program SEO and tools works beautifully.
Public relations management tool Muck Rack has programmatic pages for every client (50,000+) in the /media-outlet/ folder, like this: muckrack.com/media-outlet/fintechzoom. Each page is ranked by the client name and has fresh content like a description, some details about the company, the latest press releases, etc. Despite not being a tool, the programmatic play is working and Google sees value in it.
In e-commerce, brands saw the strongest growth.
Some examples:
- K Jewelry (outlet).
- Lenovo.
- Steve Madden.
- Sigma (pictured).
- Billabong.
- Coleman.
- Haynes.
- etc.
Of course, there are exceptions on both fronts: brands that lost organic traffic, and retailers that gained organic traffic. While we need more data, it appears that Google will prioritize brands over retailers in search results starting in August 2023.
In the publishing industry, garagegymreviews.com is one of the few fast-growing affiliate sites. It is important to point out that the main channel for this business is YouTube.
Another example is fodors.com, a travel site that has grown mainly thanks to its community.
Algorithm Thrashing
We want a better Google, and it seems Google has realized that. The answer is a powerful algorithm that can knock sites into oblivion. The biggest risks to SEO.
At the same time, it seems that not many sites have seen growth as a result of the algorithm update, meaning any positive effects are indirect and competitors may be losing traffic.
Finally, the big question is:How to mitigate the risks of algorithm updatesWhile there are no absolute guarantees, sites that are not affected by the update have in common the following:
- It helps Google index only high-quality pages.
- We invest in the quality of our content by using expert writers and putting in a lot of effort (research, design).
- It provides great design that makes your content easy to read and helps people find answers quickly.
- Reduce advertising as much as possible.
Google Search Status Dashboard