I analyzed hundreds of websites in Ahrefs, looking for the few that benefited from Google’s recent Helpful Content Update.

It seemed that 99% suffered significant traffic drops.

This is one of the most painful examples I saw:

People have been sharing many examples of sites that got hit.

You probably have an example yourself.

But what about sites that did well, besides Reddit and Quora?

What about pure “niche sites”?

Those could offer clues as to what Google rewards these days.

After looking through hundreds of niche sites, I found a few that benefited.

The design looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2009.

The domain contains 3 hyphens.

But it’s obvious the author is knowledgeable and passionate about the niche.

Everything about it screams trustworthy. It’s what niche sites should be.

Looks like Google agrees:

Guess what this site doesn’t do.

Okay, I’ll tell ya.

It doesn’t target long-tail “People Also Ask”-style informational queries.

Its top pages are breed profiles and what we would call “pillar topics”, ranking for keywords like:

Guess what else makes this site seem super legit:

It’s an actual blog! As in, there doesn’t appear to be ANY attempt to target specific keywords and “write for search engines”.

I mean, you’ve gotta love this.

All the latest posts (most are newsletter issues) are titled:

“Meezer Musings: [Month] [Year]
[Topic]”

Yup, there’s a line break in the H1. You won’t see that on any other niche sites. And you certainly won’t see non-keyword-centric titles on any niche sites built for search engine traffic.

And that’s not all.

Check out the section called “Your Space”.

Users can submit their own siamese cat stories and memorials. These are then published on the site for all to see:

This site clearly has a community around it. It gives people a reason to return. That’s one thing Google wants to see, and yet is so difficult for most of us to implement.

It’s crystal clear that the owner of this site (Caroline) genuinely loves siamese cats and is not in it for the money. She created a resource for other siamese cat lovers and publishes content her readers want to read.

Google definitely got it right in this case, and I think we can all learn something by looking through the site a bit.

This site is 9 months old. NINE MONTHS OLD.

It has 5 pages. But that’s all it needs.

Topic coverage is perfect. Not lacking, and not overboard.

Google clearly loves it:

I don’t know why this site is doing so well.

One guess is that it only contains pages that make sense for someone wanting to learn more about Edgar haircuts.

It doesn’t have hundreds of pages targeting longtail “edgar haircut”-related keywords. If it did, would that hurt it? I don’t know.

Another thing to note is the exact-match domain. Opinions vary on whether EMDs help or hurt. I’m not sure it’s impossible to know if it’s helping the site.

I’m not sure there’s as much to learn from this site as the previous one I shared, but one takeaway I get is that “micro” niche sites aren’t dead, and can compete alongside the LA Times and NBC News (search “edgar haircut” and you’ll see).

This site is definitely your typical niche site that Google hates (but not in this case I guess?).

Nothing special as far as I can tell.

And yet, it gained traffic since the Helpful Content Update:

(The big drop happened at the same time Ahrefs updated their keyword data, so the site likely didn’t lose traffic in reality).

The reviews aren’t written from personal experience.

None of the articles are, as far as I could tell.

The user experience is bad. See if you can spot the main content amidst all the ads:

So what does this site have going for it?

I honestly don’t know.

It’s one of the top sites in the aquarium niche, so perhaps Google decided it was an authority and deserves to rank.

But I’ve seen large authority sites get hit hard, so I’m not sure that’s the reason. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment and let me know!

What about Programmatic SEO sites?

Niche sites weren’t the only ones to get hammered.

pSEO sites suffered some major losses as well.

Or, most of them did.

Except for these:

I’m afriad this is another case of “I have no idea why this site was rewarded”.

It’s got 5-6 ads above the fold, constantly reloading and slowing the site WAY down.

The content is nothing special compared to the hundreds of other calculator sites.

But Google clearly thinks it’s helpful:

Looking at the site in the Wayback Machine, nothing appears to have been changed over the last couple years.

Perhaps it’s backlinks. Perhaps the competitors are even worse. I don’t know. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

‘Tis another site plastered with Ezoic ads. If you think ad density is the reason so many sites were hit, this is now the third out of five sites I’ve shown where the ad density dial was evidently turned all the way up.

Google ADORES this site now.

That initial hit was the October 2022 Spam Update.

Guess the site is no longer spammy! 🙃 

Actually, looking in the Wayback Machine once again, I see that before it was hit by the spam update, the only pages in the menu were “Home” and “Blog”.

But right after the site was hit by the spam update, the menu was expanded to include category pages, an about page, a contact page, and a privacy page.

Other than that, I see no noticeable difference.

Hard to say if adding those pages are what caused the rebound (which took Google an ENTIRE YEAR) or not. Just an interesting observation.

Other interesting sites…

In my research, I found a couple more sites worth talking about.

The first one is a serious head scratcher.

It was unharmed by the HCU, which is weird because the site has:

The last point is the most interesting to me.

I read some of the articles about celebrities I know about, and every single fact it mentioned was incorrect.

How the site survives any Google update is a mystery to me.

Here’s the traffic graph so you can see for yourself:

Remember how I said the site has bad grammar? Allow me to present to you some truly helpful™ content:

This got me thinking…

Is that why it ranks so well?

Many Reddit and Quora threads have awfully-written content too, and they were boosted.

Is error-ridden content a sign to Google that a real human wrote it?

AI doesn’t write that poorly.

It’s a silly theory. I don’t actually think it holds any water.

Google has specifically stated that any content can rank as long as its helpful, whether human-written or AI-written.

But considering how spammy the site is, the fact that the articles appear to be human written makes me wonder.

By the way, I ran the content through Originality, and it actually came back as 95% likely to be AI.

So, maybe it’s an old AI model. Or maybe the owner of this site has a galaxy brain and asked ChatGPT to write as poorly as possible, so it wouldn’t look like AI to Google. 🤣 

…new experiment to run?? Lolol

This isn’t a niche site. It’s a simple tool, with a singular function: to download videos from Twitter. The site has 18 pages, mostly just targeting different languages.

What caught my eye was the rapid growth of this site.

It’s been completely unaffected by algorithm updates.

I think the reason for that is because:

By the way, this is the site I mentioned in this tweet/post:

I know this isn’t a niche site or a pSEO site, but I wanted to share an example of the types of sites Google didn’t hit as often.

Tool sites like Twittervid fared very well through the HCU, from what I can see.

Tool sites are becoming more and more attractive to me.

The barrier to entry is that you need to have some knowledge of code (or no-code platforms like Bubble) to build them. Although, ChatGPT is quickly turning non-developers like myself into slightly more capable non-developers. 😆 

The trouble with tool sites is marketing. But hey, we’re all internet marketers, right? It’s not THAT difficult. Product Hunt, TikTok, and building in public seem to work well for those who try.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. But we’re approaching the end of the email, so who cares. 😄 

Hope you enjoyed reading this. More than that, I hope you got some value and new insight as you try to understand what Google looks for in a website these days.

By the way, I recently started a premium community for website owners like you and I.

So far, it’s got 34 members. We discuss a variety of topics related to growing websites, like SEO strategies and using AI.

There are some big-hitters in the community already, who have mentioned that they’re happy to help if anyone has questions.

I also provide all members with free access to my course on finding and validating niche ideas, Niche Discovery Formula.

Members also get 50% off my spreadsheet of hand-picked niche ideas, Curated Niches.

AND they get free access to this spreadsheet I made of all websites monetized by major ad networks (Ezoic, Mediavine, Raptive, etc.) INCLUDING traffic data.

If you’d like to become a member of the community, you can join Website Growth Mastermind here.

The cost is $15/month or $150/year.

I’d love to see you in there! 😁 

Alright, time to sign off. This is probably the longest email I’ve sent yet and it took a few hours longer to write than I was expecting.

So with that, I appreciate you making it this far! As always, thanks for reading.

Ian

By the way… this newsletter just surpassed 4,500 subscribers. If you’re curious about sponsoring it, you can check out the updated details here. Per subscriber, this is the least expensive niche site newsletter to sponsor that I know of. Just $250. :)

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