{"id":233448,"date":"2024-07-05T13:08:30","date_gmt":"2024-07-05T13:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/?p=233448"},"modified":"2024-07-05T13:08:33","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T13:08:33","slug":"how-googles-new-algorithm-brings-down-websites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/articles\/how-googles-new-algorithm-brings-down-websites\/","title":{"rendered":"Comment le nouvel algorithme de Google fait chuter les sites web"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google<\/a> made major changes to its search algorithm and spam filters earlier this year to get rid of low-quality content — but the effects have proved devastating to some smaller websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Online businesses have been left considering layoffs and even site closures after Google’s massive upgrade in March and April caused catastrophic drops in traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gisele Navarro is one of the unlucky ones whose website got caught up in Google’s dragnet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 37-year-old Argentine runs the HouseFresh website with her husband, and they have been building a healthy niche in product reviews for air purifiers since 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were no ads, no product placements and no soft-pedalling — if a product was bad, the site’s reviewers would say so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They earned commissions from clickthroughs to Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Google’s update changed all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We found that we went from ranking number one — because we were one of the only people who had actually done a review — to not even showing up,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HouseFresh used to get around 4,000 referrals from Google searches a day, but this has since collapsed to around 200.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dropoff in entreprise<\/a> has been so bad that Navarro said she had been advised to shutter the site and start over with a new domain name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underpinning the frustration for Navarro and many other sites is the lack of clarity over how Google ranks results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. firm is notoriously secretive about its algorithms — so much so that an entire industry known as “search engine optimization” has grown up trying to game the algorithm to get more clicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest update sent R\u00c9F\u00c9RENCEMENT<\/a> experts into a tailspin, desperately trying to unpack why some sites were boosted and others were downranked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google told AFP in an email that its update was designed specifically to give users “fewer results that feel made for search engines”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The only changes we launch are ones that our experiments have shown will meaningfully improve results for people. And we do believe that these updates have been helpful,” Google said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Navarro showed in a widely shared blog<\/a> post in May that people searching for product reviews were increasingly being fed ads and content that appeared to be AI<\/a>-generated or SEO-maximised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other material boosted by Google’s update included user-generated content from websites like Reddit and Quora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google defended this approach saying “People often want to learn from others’ experiences”, adding: “We conduct rigorous testing to ensure results are helpful and high quality.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But staff at one European news website said their articles were now being routinely outranked by largely irrelevant content from Reddit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The site \u00e9diteur<\/a>, who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said referrals from Google had plummeted by between 20 to 30 per cent since the update — and cutbacks would be inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In an already tough market this is a serious problem for independent publishers like us,” they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the businesses AFP talked to said they were now urgently seeking ways to avoid relying on Google search — whether by writing newsletters, making podcasts or finding other ways to attract audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boss of a fintech news outlet, who spoke to AFP anonymously fearing adverse effects on their business, said their competitors all employed SEO firms “to buy traffic”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We don’t do that but it’s getting harder to hold that position as those sites didn’t fall anywhere near as much as ours after this Google update,” they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navarro, who has had to reduce her staff drastically, has pivoted to video reviews and newsletters to try to reconnect with her audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And despite her experience with Google, she remains an optimist about the web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She has been heartened by the many messages of support, and an uptick in referrals from alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The entire knowledge of humankind is on the web — and that’s worth something,” she said. “I don’t want to give up on it just because Google is broken.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google made major changes to its search algorithm and spam filters earlier this year to get rid of low-quality content — but the effects have proved devastating to some smaller websites. Online businesses have been left considering layoffs and even…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[555,543],"class_list":["post-233448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo","tag-google","tag-seo"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":563,"label":"SEO"}],"post_tag":[{"value":555,"label":"Google"},{"value":543,"label":"SEO"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/How-Googles-new-algorithm-bings-down-websites.webp",1000,562,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Dennis Gyamfi","author_link":"#"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":563,"name":"SEO","slug":"seo","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":385,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Read SEO tips and guides written with your business in mind. EnspireFX is the leading Web Design Company in Ghana, we are experts in Website Design, Web Development, E-Commerce, and SEO. Work with us: +233 55 091 9202.<\/a>","parent":0,"count":21,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":563,"category_count":21,"category_description":"Read SEO tips and guides written with your business in mind. EnspireFX is the leading Web Design Company in Ghana, we are experts in Website Design, Web Development, E-Commerce, and SEO. Work with us: +233 55 091 9202.<\/a>","cat_name":"SEO","category_nicename":"seo","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":555,"name":"Google","slug":"google","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":377,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":11,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":543,"name":"SEO","slug":"seo","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":365,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":19,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enspirefx.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}