It’s true. Google has changed. It’s no longer the same old Google that gave you all the attention you wanted just because it loved you. Now, Google is in a situationship with websites: It likes you but won’t commit to you for a long-term relationship.
So, what do we do in that scenario? What to do when you are extremely unsure about how Google will behave with your website in the next update? Should you just give up? Or should you adapt?
I say-‘we adapt!’
We go eye-to-eye with Google and tell it that ‘We are here to stay…for long term…with Google, or without Google!’
But preferably with Google…right?
For that reason, I decided to give it a go and chose to understand what has changed in Google’s way of thinking.
But before we talk about what we are doing wrong as content creators, I want you to ask the same thing from Google. Are publishers actually the sole reason for the vast destruction Google updates cause, or…
Is there something wrong with Google Search too?
And the answer is: Probably Yes!
First, Google Search is worse than ever, and I must clarify this. Spam is on the rise, even though millions of spammy websites were taken down in the last ‘helpful content’ update. What went wrong was that many good websites also disappeared suddenly, and Google had no idea how to fix that.
Jared Bauman wrote an article on Medium about this in which he narrated his experience at Google HQ during a summit. He wrote how most people at Google had no idea how Google’s algorithm worked and why good websites were taken down. He said that bloggers were shocked at how little knowledge tech guys at Google had about the Google search and that they had even to help the engineers who were supposed to guide them – coz they had no idea about how Google search actually worked!
Jared went on to write this:
Pandu Nayak, VP of Search at Google, offered the least bit of knowledge of all. Jake mentioned that it didn’t seem like he had gotten the memo on who he was walking into to speak to.
I insist that you read that article to understand that just because Google took your website down and crushed its rankings doesn’t mean that you have a crappy website or you don’t matter!
You do matter!
Now that we have clarified the fact that your rank on Google doesn’t actually decide your content’s quality, we will now focus on the primary reason we are discussing this today- To understand what Google loves now and what it rejects.
And for that…
I decided to check the top-ranking websites and found this
I went on to export a list of top-ranking websites on major SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, and then I manually checked what was working for top websites six months after the drastic Google update.
And I found these points I think you should also think about.
Google now doesn’t consider your website as a website
I know this is probably something that might be contradicted by many and ridiculed by others. But I can firmly say that those people are delusional and aren’t doing the actual work – manual analysis.
I studied the big list of 30000 top websites and can confidently tell you that Google treats websites differently now. Content is no more the king, the Content Creator is.
And don’t mistake this for the rise of ‘domain authority‘ in Google search… No sir, No mam!
When I say that ‘Content Creator’ is the new king, I mean the “Who” factor.
Who is creating that content? Who wrote that? Who said that?
I observed a very common factor among top-ranking websites-
Their authority as a metric didn’t matter as much, but their authority as a ‘creator’ surely did.
Google values non-google presence more than ever.
Not backlinks, SEO, DA, or DR- But your presence where your audience is.
Google now treats websites as businesses, creators, and experts.
If you aren’t one of these, you are going to fail.
I will explain this in detail since this might be a new concept for many of you. Even though this isn’t a new concept, the way this is being perceived is totally new, and you need to understand this seriously now.
Yes, everyone knows about the E-E-A-T thing… but I am going to talk in a much simpler language, so we are going to ignore E-E-A-T terms here.
And in simple language, this is what I concluded from my study of top websites:
Google is targeting creators now, not their content
I have been providing SEO consultancy to various websites, and one of the websites that has stood as a winner throughout all the major Google Updates in the last three years is the website of an accounting firm.
It didn’t lose a single keyword and a single position in all these updates, and the last time I did any SEO update on that website was one and a half years back.
Reason? I know that now.
It’s an authentic business. The business owner is a certified public accountant, and he never focuses on posting anything online at all – no social media! Sounds contrary to my ‘presence outside Google’ theory?
But it isn’t.
You see, what he does best is focus on his business, and his Google ranking is indirectly impacted by that. His SEO includes:
- Always answering the call when someone reaches out on the number listed on his website.
- Providing the services he claims to provide on his website.
- Telling his clients that they can recommend him to their friends, too, and asking them to contact him via the website.
Do you get what I am saying? He is minding his business, but while he does that, Google notices that people stop looking for something when they visit his website.
Google sees that his website is solving problems. If someone wants to talk to a certified public accountant, they visit his website and call him – Then, they don’t search for a CPA again!
This is my theory. I may be wrong, but there is a high chance that I am right.
Google is making it clear:
Stop creating content for Google!
If your website is about a business that you own, Google cares about your business and not your website.
If you are a creator or an artist, Google cares about your art and your content, not your website.
Your website should not be your sole content if your actual identity is something else.
Google wants you to focus more on your business and less on your website.
If you don’t provide a service, your content doesn’t matter
Now, not everyone has an offline business.
News channels, podcasts, review websites, digital content platforms- There are various online ventures that don’t actually have anything else to sell but the content itself.
What about them? Do they not matter at all?
The answer is – quite the opposite! They matter more than ever! But not in the way they did in 2018.
While I was studying these websites, I came across a website called Peas and the Crayons.
The website was one of the top 30000 websites that I was studying, and I was curious as the name suggested something genuinely creative.
I visited the website to find that it’s a recipe website- And it didn’t take me much time to understand that it’s a personal brand.
The website’s Instagram handle is actually by the name of the creator herself – Jenn Laughlin!
Jenn Laughlin is the “Peas and the Crayons” herself! She is the brand.

She has more than 108K followers on Instagram alone and she gets regular engagement on her videos.
Is her website SEO optimized? Damn yeah! Probably one of the most optimized websites on the Internet. But is that why she is still one of the top websites on Google? No!
She ranks high because she is a genuine content creator. She has 100k people who want to watch her content on the most popular social media platform today!
If she got rid of her website, she would still remain a content-creator, a food blogger, a very good chef!
You get what I am saying?
Her website isn’t her identity, even though she is providing no other service but her content. Her identity is that she is a chef who also shares her courses on a website that she owns.
Google cares about that now.
Now, compare this with a website that has a huge database of recipes written in text, a much bigger database than Jenn’s, but the website is all there is. Google has no idea who wrote those recipes, who the chef is, or what the identity of that business is other than the website itself!
Who do you think wins-The bigger website or the skilled Chef named Jenn with much fewer recipes?
This is definitely a good part of the changes that I noticed in Google, especially after the 2024 updates.
But did that punish the spammers more than good content creators?
Not at all!
Spams are on the rise. And these spams are much worse than the keyword-stuffed over-optimized content. These are total scams. Phishing websites, wrongfully redirected domains, websites that were previously owned by a reputed brand but are now being used to promote betting and gambling- Google Search is still giving them shelter.
As Google punished and removed more than 45% of the content from its database, it created a vacancy that is being filled not only by good content creators but also by spammers.
Many content creators are tired now, they feel that it’s too big a risk to create content assuming that it will get them revenue through organic search traffic.
So, they have stopped or changed their methods. They are either shifting totally to social media or quitting the blogging sphere altogether.
And their position is being filled by spammers who have always found a way to beat Google’s cleaning attempts. Spammers make a lot of money, have big teams, and can afford to take bigger risks than small-time genuine publishers.
So, even though these updates tried killing ‘unhelpful content’; they created a bigger hole in the market, with much fewer content creators ready to fill that now.
Google has trimmed the number of websites visible in the first fold of its search results. That means Google doesn’t care much about the vacancy, either. But spammers always find a way to sneak in.
And it hurts to see them hanging there while small publishers got their whole business shut down because of update attacks on their websites.
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