The November Core Update has been pretty quiet so far.

However, a few people are seeing sizeable traffic increases.

Some sites even appear to have fully recovered from the September 2023 Helpful Content Update. Most of these recoveries started during the August Core Update.

Here’s one:

And another, from X user @nomadandinlove:

And another, from Lily Ray:

And one more, from a member of Jacky Chou’s community:

The interesting thing is… some of these sites did nothing to recover, and some took a “scorched earth” approach.

(if you want a thorough list of ways to clean up your site, I recommend reading up on the Kitchen Sink method).

Maybe the sites that did nothing were already high quality and objectively didn’t deserve to get hit. None of the site owners have said, as far as I know.

Speaking of recoveries….

$50K to recover a site, anyone?

A few site owners have offered $50,000 to anyone who can fully recover their site. Check this post and the referenced conversation:

Several people have claimed to recover HCU-hit sites, but none have publicly shared the URL of the “recovered site”.

When someone shows off a recovery with a traffic graph, it’s likely not a “true” recovery, where the old keywords regained their positions. Oftentimes the site started targeting much easier keywords. The traffic may be at previous highs, but the rankings they lost haven’t actually returned.

Beware of scams

Elmo from Birdzilla (the site I featured in this newsletter issue) reached out last month to share details about a website audit scam, where people charge thousands of dollars for a website audit, even when their own sites have tanked.

If you want to fork over thousands for a website audit, fine.

But don’t do it with the expectation that it’ll help your site recover. And, don’t buy audits from someone who doesn’t have successful/recovered sites of their own.

Site audits are a huge money grab right now, and auditors prey on the desperation of HCU-affected site owners.

Lots of positive movement

As I mentioned in my last email, I’m tracking 50,000+ sites during this November Core update.

I’m seeing lots of positive movement. It’s not very drastic (less than 10% on average so far), but at least it’s positive!

A few sites ARE seeing drastic improvements though, such as the entertainment/celebrity gossip site monstersandcritics .com:

And this tech/gaming site:

I plan to share some theories on why these recoveries are happening once I have theories to share! 😄 

Thanks for reading,

Ian

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