I like to study websites (like the one below) that gain traffic during Google updates. You should study them too.

These sites are doing something right. If you can figure out what they’re doing right, you’ll learn a lot about what Google rewards these days.

The more you study, the better. Don’t just study a few winning sites. Study as many as you can. You’ll start to see a pattern.

But this begs the question…

How do you find winning sites to study?

I’m glad you asked. 😄 

I’ve become somewhat obsessed with this question lately, and I finally built the PERFECT solution - something you can’t find anywhere else.

Let me introduce you to the new and improved Site Stats Database.

Site Stats Database is a database of over 300,000 websites, along with useful metrics like traffic, domain authority, age, monetization, niche, and more.

But the most exciting feature (to me) is post-Helpful Content Update traffic change data:

That’s right, you can sort the entire database by traffic change to see the biggest winners (or the biggest losers) after Google’s September HCU.

This is the only tool on the planet with this data in bulk and so easily available.

With Site Stats Database (I’ll refer to it as “SSDB” from now on), you’ll never run out of winning sites to study. In fact, there are 177,000+ sites in the database with at least 1% growth after the HCU. So yeah, you’ll never run out. 😎 

One of the many awesome features is filtering. Want to see only “recipe” niche sites? Filter by the recipe niche.

You can do the same for monetization method. Wanna see the top AdSense sites in terms of traffic change? Set the monetization filter to AdSense and sort by traffic change.

You can even filter it to only show Ecommerce sites if ecom is your thing. It’s not limited to informational “niche” sites! Here are all the monetization methods you can filter by:

I’ve still only barely touched on what’s possible with SSDB.

I’ll stop listing all the cool things you can do. Go check it out and watch the video to see it in action.

SSDB is an incredibly powerful tool and will continue getting better and better over time. In case you’re wondering, yes, I update it regularly, adding thousands of new sites every month or so. Most recently, I added 23,076 new sites at the start of April.

To celebrate the launch of the new traffic change feature, the lifetime plan for SSDB is currently discounted by 33%. The discounted price won’t last long.

Anway…

I was looking through the list of sites with the highest % traffic change yesterday, and found a bunch of interesting sites to share.

In case you’re wondering, no, that is not an official Secretary of State’s office website. It’s a privately owned affiliate website likely making absolute BANK.

Here’s their insane traffic jump post-HCU:

I used to have a website in the LLC niche, and while mine never really took off, I can tell you the earning potential is insane. Affiliate RPMs were close to $1,000. That’s nearly $1,000 for every 1,000 visitors. And you thought a $50 ad RPM was good! 😆 (ok ok it is, don’t get me wrong - but LLC affiliate RPMs are in a completely different league).

I could be wrong, but the above site probably doesn’t have close to $1,000 RPMs, because their top keywords are things like “new york business entity search”. People are wanting to know how to search business names in New York which is more of a MOFU (Middle of Funnel) keyword than a higher value BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) keyword like “how to form an LLC”. BOFU keywords are where the serious RPMs are at, though MOFU RPMs are likely quite good (and probably much better than the ad RPMs you’re used to seeing).

If I had to spitball a guess based on their estimated traffic numbers, I’d say they’re making $10K-$20K/mo.

As far as why this site is doing so well, my guess is the killer domain from 1998 is the main factor. So yeah, it appears GOATed* domains still work SEO wonders. In case anyone thought otherwise.

*For the uninformed… GOAT stands for “Greatest of All Time” and the term "goated" means outstanding or excellent. You’re welcome.

If you have a recipe blog or plan to start one, study this site. And not just the site. Study CJ’s entire brand and marketing strategy.

CJ is doing incredibly well on Google right now…

…and he’ll never have to worry about algorithm updates.

Why?

Because he’s extremely well diversified. He’s got a brand. People seek him out specifically.

His website is a business, not a low effort side hustle. And that is, without a doubt, why it’s doing so incredibly well.

Ignoring his social following and just looking at the site, he’s doing everything right:

This was a very interesting find.

Strong Animals is an ecommerce brand, that happens to also publish regular blog posts.

Which has paid off quite nicely:

At first glance, the blog posts look as if someone actually writes them because they WANT to, kinda like what blogs were originally meant to be way before “money making blogs” were a thing.

Although, once you start reading them, it’s pretty obvious they pad out some sections with AI content. I checked this article in Originality.ai and it came back as likely 91% AI generated.

Despite the use of AI, I’d guess most signals Google looks for to identify “niche sites” don’t appear on this site.

So, there you have it. Study the above sites. Study other winning sites you find. See what they’re doing that losing sites aren’t. This is how you stay on top of what’s working on Google right now.

Don’t forget to check out Site Stats Database. It’s currently discounted by 33%, but that won’t last long.

Out of curiosity, I checked how many sites on SSDB had a 1,000%+ traffic increase pre to post-HCU. There are 3,221!

Site Stats Database is an absolute goldmine. Go start digging and see what you find!

Ian

P.S.

Just so you know, the traffic numbers on SSDB are from a couple months ago, so they won’t reflect changes from the March Core update. I will update them as soon as my data provider has the new data.

And going a bit deeper, the pre-HCU traffic column shows traffic from shortly BEFORE the HCU. The post-HCU traffic column shows traffic from several months after the HCU concluded. In the vast majority of cases, the data accurately reflects HCU impact (keep in mind traffic is estimated, as is the case for any SEO tool).

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