TGIF. This is the Niche Nugget. A monthly roundup where we bring you SEO and creator news and insights from across the industry. What happened? What's it all mean? We've got you covered.

Here’s the crispy nuggets we've cooked up you this month 👨‍🍳:

• Google's Endless Updates
• Display Ad Networks to the Rescue?
• Reddit's IPO

Google's Armageddon

Lowdown

Back in February, Google's new AI platform Gemini started offering image generation. There was just one problem - the AI had an extremely difficult time acknowledging the existence of white people.

Google has since paused Gemini’s image generation and apologized for the error.

Surely March has been more lowkey, right? Not so fast.

• March 2024 Core Update: This update has been different than those in the past in that Google's made changes to multiple core systems all at once with a stated goal to "reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%". They intended for it to be a doozy...and while it's still rolling out, so far it has been.
• March 2024 Spam Update: At the same time as the core update, Google also announced a new spam update targeting scaled content abuse (including AI generated), site reputation abuse (including parasite SEO) and expired domain abuse. This rollout was complete as of March 20th.
• Manual Action and Site Deindexation: Separately, but in conjunction with these updates, Google started issuing "pure spam" manual actions against sites resulting in a complete deindexing (i.e. completely removed it from its search results). Originality.ai published an interesting analysis suggesting that of the 79,000 sites they reviewed, ~2% had this manual action applied. They also found that most of these targeted sites had AI generated content, aggressive ads and/or were 'content only' sites.

Takeaway

It's a bloodbath out there.

As is the case with every update, bad sites got wiped up but plenty of good sites got completely destroyed too.

In my view the bottom line is this - now more than ever, it feels like there is no consistent playbook a site owner can follow to meaningfully increase their odds of survival.

That's a real problem.

Google continues to say do X, while their algorithm continues to reward Y.

Trust is lost.

And while I think most of us truly believe Danny Sullivan (@searchliaison) is well intentioned, we're tired of hearing "our ranking systems aren't perfect".

In the meantime site owners are looking to socials and other search engines to try and make up the lost traffic.

From a big picture perspective, for the first time in over two decades, there are new long-term contenders fighting for the future of search in the form of AI and LLMs.

All the while, for the everyday user, Google search results have not noticeably improved in years. In many cases they've gotten worse.

Game on.

SPONSOR ​ The most affordable keyword research tool that just works. ​ Keysearch is for bloggers, by bloggers. Join 10,000+ bloggers and online entrepreneurs. Just $17 a month. Oh, and it just got a brand new look! ​ ​LEARN MORE​

Big News for Small Creators

Lowdown

It's not all bad news out there though. As many site owners continue to face declining traffic metrics, some of the most respected display ad services in the game are stepping up.

• Raptive Rise: Raptive (previously AdThrive) is testing a pilot program called "Raptive Rise". Normally a site would need 100,000 pageviews to get accepted to Raptive, but this program reduces that requirement to 50,000 pageviews (so long as 50% of traffic comes from the US and your site contains long-form, 100% original content).​
• Journey by Mediavine: Unlike Mediavine's existing service, which requires sites to have at least 50,000 monthly sessions, Journey will accept sites with as few as 10,000 monthly sessions.

Takeaway

Given the current state of search, in the short-term it's hard to view this as anything but a win for site owners everywhere.

Raptive and Mediavine are known for offering industry leading, white-glove customer service for their creators.

They are able to offer this level of support in large part because of their historically high traffic requirements (i.e. fewer sites qualify).

What I'm keeping an eye on long-term, is as they lower their thresholds and widen their doors, can they maintain the standards they've become known for?

Ezoic hasn't exactly set a high bar - it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Reddit's IPO

Lowdown

On the heels of a $60 million deal with Google to use its content for training AI models, Reddit officially went public on March 21st (the first social media company to do so in quite a while):

• Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman got a ton of sh*t due to people thinking his 2023 comp was $193 million. His actual comp will be $193 million...vested over a 10 year period. Let's not sweat small details though right?
• The company is sitting on over $1.2 billion in cash.
• Their daily uniques (DAUq) shows consistent +20% YOY growth.
• Reddit gave its most active users the chance to purchase shares which is unusual for a company of this size and a step in the right direction for rewarding creators and moderators on the platform.

Takeaway

All of these stats sounds amazing right?

Here's what's insane - in nearly 20 years, Reddit has still never turned a profit.

Growth at all cost is nothing new in the tech world and certainly not in the social media world.

But I still find it fascinating that an unprofitable company can exist this long AND have a successful IPO.

Maybe advertising was never going to be the key to their success and instead part of the answer lies in long-term data licensing deals.

Time will tell.

For now all we can do is sit back and watch Google pump Reddit to the moon in the SERPs.

Memes of the Month 🤣

-Keith