Gaslit By Google? My Thoughts On The 2024 Web Creator Conversation

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“#This is a story all about how my life got flip turned upside down and I’d like to take a minute just sit right there and I’ll tell you about…how Google destroyed my traffic in a year#”. I have to laugh about it, otherwise I’ll cry. Honestly, I accepted it all a while ago.

Disclosure: I was invited to Google HQ, but opinions are completely my own. My flight, 2 nights in a hotel, and food and drink on the day of the event were paid for. I had to cover any additional costs.

So buckle up, I’ll be sharing the full story. If you’re not interested in all the beginning stuff, I’ll include jump links below, that way you can just skip to the part when I visit Google Headquarters in California USA for the 2024 Web Creator Conversation.

Google Updates September 2023 – Onwards

For those that don’t know, for the past year, Google has been making some pretty big algorithm changes to the way that search results are displayed.

Updates aren’t new, I’ve been through many many updates through the years I’ve been blogging, but this past year has been pretty rough and ultimately has destroyed a lot of bloggers and small publishers. 

Yet none of us really know what we’ve done wrong.

Blogs have mostly been replaced by AI and forums.

I avoided the September 2023 ‘Helpful Content Update’ (HCU), but I was first hit by the March 2024 update (while I was in Vietnam, so that was fun). 

After this update, the search team released a feedback form…and I filled it in…multiple times (they received a total of 13,000). I did a form for each of the high-traffic posts I ‘lost’ and stated what was now replacing it in search and how it wasn’t helpful.

I filled them in thinking ‘pfft, they’ll probably never read it but at least having a rant makes me feel a bit better.’

August then rolls around. I was hit by ANOTHER update that literally wiped out what last little bit of traffic I was getting. 9 years of work, and my income, are essentially down the drain.

Invite To Google HQ

Then, in September I received an email, inviting me to Google Headquarters in California USA. At first, I thought it was just a scam. However it referenced the feedback forms that I filled out back in March and that they were holding an event to discuss what was found. Thousands of creators had been hit, potentially ‘wrongly’.

Any other month I would have already opened up my online teaching hours for that month. But because of the daylight savings time change, I had been holding off. Completely by chance, it meant that I was free that week, so what did I have to lose (…well apart from a week of teaching income).

Google said they’d cover my flight cost from the UK, pay for 2 nights accommodation in California, and provide meals on the day of the event.

Leading up to the event, we were told that 20 of us would be going, and if we wanted to, we would be allowed 3 minutes each to stand up in front of the group and share about ourselves and our views on what has been happening. A bit like an intro, with further opportunities during the day to share thoughts and have breakout sessions by niche.

Here’s my 3-minute intro (I also sent a more detailed version to them with pictures of stats and screenshots):

“Hi, I’m Kylie

I’ve been a travel content creator at Between England and Everywhere for 9 years with 1.7m lifetime views.

I studied travel & tourism at college, have travelled to 49 countries and lived in both the UK & the USA.

I always write in first person, based on my own experiences, no AI, no stock images and photos are all mine. People that know me say that when they read my content they can hear my voice saying it, I write like I’m speaking to a friend. 

I create guides I wish existed, answering all the questions I had before my own travels.

How Recent Updates Have Affected Me

My site went from over 25k monthly Google clicks to just 750.

For example, the search term, Things to do in Dubuque Iowa. I’ve been ranking around 6th position for years, and it was one of my highest traffic posts.

I lived there for 4yrs, everyone knew me as the English girl in Dubuque and I personally went to every place I mention. People that have lived in Dubuque their whole life said I knew about places they didn’t even know existed. 

Lonely Planet travel guides also asked me to cover it in one of their books that was published this year.

The post is currently ranking 73rd for the key search term. On page 1 and 2 of the Google results are the same 2 businesses multiple times. Plus Trip advisor, Yelp, Reddit and Quora. 

As a traveller and user myself, these aren’t helpful. The forums are often ‘closed topics’ from years ago that aren’t kept updated like my guides. And the sites that are more like business listings offer no human perspective such as opinions, tips or advice.

Several of the ‘blog’ type sites in the results are content mills, where if you read the article there is no expertise or experience, and it’s obvious that the author has never been there, it’s just information that has been pulled from the internet.

And the drop I have experienced is not seasonal, I’ve been doing it long enough to be able to track the seasonal traffic trends on my site.

What Google Needs To Do

If there has been a type of site wide punishment, there needs to be a metric available in search console of actions we can actually take, or a flag as to why we might have been affected. Those that have been hit by updates have seen little to no recovery.

I’ve lost my income. And despite continuing to create helpful content for the past 7 months since the March update, my stats just keep dropping no matter what I do. 

If there is no way for a site to recover, what’s the point in continuing?

The so called ‘advice & guidelines’ are just pointless, because what is currently ranking is the complete opposite and is not helpful as both a user or a creator.

At this point it just feels like I’m feeding AI, even though Google’s AI doesn’t know the difference between London Bridge and Tower Bridge in London. 

And I’m not alone in these feelings, within my network many other small creators have been hit too, or are at least questioning the future of search and written content. Especially when information in the search results isn’t always accurate. 

It needs to get better at understanding search terms and displaying results that are actually helpful to the user. Because it’s getting harder for people to find the answers they are looking for.”

My Thoughts On The Google Web Creator Conversation Event

So a few things first.

1. As mentioned at the top of the post. Google paid for my flights, 2 nights in a hotel, and food and drink on the day of the event. ALL other costs I had to cover myself. Such as travel to and from airports and food and drink on the other days. I was not ‘paid’ to attend and nor did I ‘pay’ to be included.
2. I was told that the reason I was invited was because of my input on the feedback forms. I gave examples of several posts I ‘lost’, why my post was ‘good’, and why the current results were not helpful in comparison. They noticed my feedback was thoughtful and legit.
3. It was made VERY clear that BEING AT THE EVENT GAVE US NO ‘LEG UP’. They wouldn’t give us specific advice for our individual sites and nor would any tech or ranking be ‘fixed’. The only thing they did was look at the sites before the event to see if we were making real human-generated content.
4. It was NOT a PR stunt. We were never asked to write anything, but if we did we could share our thoughts, good or bad. We didn’t sign any NDA etc.
5. I was very realistic about what might come from it. (For example, nothing)

Something that did come up on Twitter a few times is that it ‘wasn’t fair’, they should have let many more creators be involved and to this I say a big NO. You wasn’t there, the event would have been completely different.

The aim was to be a CONVERSATION. Being limited to 20 people it felt like we ALL had the chance to be heard. There was plenty of time for all of us to have our say and jump in on what was being said.

If there was a room full of people, even if it was doubled, there wouldn’t have been a conversation. Voices would have been lost and believe me, none of us held back, we tried our best to be a spokesperson for our niches.

There were 6 of us from the travel niche and often, what each other said, we completely agreed with and felt the same. If there were any more, I think we would have just been repeating each other.

Along with the 20 small independent creators, there were a bunch of Googlers that work in various aspects of search. Even in our breaks, we were able to have a chat with them. They asked us questions and we told them our pain points.

The event was organised by Danny Sullivan and honestly, he’s a good guy. He seems genuinely concerned that our sites shouldn’t have been hit as bad as they were. But it was made obvious that search is a bit of a chain. An idea starts at level 1 and then it gradually goes through multiple people, testing, the lot, before it goes ‘live’. 

The conversation from this event was literally the VERY bottom of that chain. The feedback could be put forward, but ultimately there are people at the top who may or may not decide to run with it.

It shocked them that with the September and March updates the amount of people that came forward thinking they had been wrongly hit, losing traffic overnight. Most other updates have knocked out people that were really trying to cheat the system and therefore in the past, have kept quiet. They knew something had potentially gone very wrong this time.

A new core update is due to start rolling out very soon. Again it was made clear that what comes from this event is TOO LATE to have any impact on the upcoming update. It may take another update or two just to be at the point where the feedback could be considered.

Niche Breakouts

After we all got our 3 minutes of intro time, we then broke out into four groups: travel, entertainment, reviews, and general. 

Obviously, I was in travel and during this time we got to chat more with a few of the Googlers in the ‘travel’ team, and have a conversation. They asked us questions and we could give our feedback.

I will go into this more in my takeaways but we mainly used our time to share what we thought about what currently ranks for many search terms in the travel sector. What I outlined in my 3 minutes, was pretty much what we had all experienced.

We even typed in a random ‘things to do in X’ search term, showed the Googler there and then what was being displayed and how as a user it was all essentially absolute trash. And they did seem genuinely surprised by how awful it actually was. There was literally NO human content anywhere in sight.

My Takeaways

I have 3.

I felt like there are 2 main areas that Google need to fix. Unless BOTH change, the other is pretty pointless.

Rankings Are Awful

First, there needs to be some sort of address as to what is currently ranking. The algorithm is horrendous and AI dominates. Despite them wanting more human-led content, it just seems to be lost. But on the other hand, ‘AI is the future’, almost like the higher-ups aren’t really too concerned as long as the precious AI is king (despite it pulling wrong answers a lot of the time).

Danny had mentioned that it’s very unlikely we will ever see pre-September 2023 recovery, just because of how search has changed. If things are altered down the line, it’s unlikely it’ll ever be ‘rolled back’ to the way it was before. But he is trying to push forward the need for human content.

In travel, our biggest concern was ‘real estate’. On the first 1 or 2 pages of results, there are almost NO blogs being shown anymore. Where before we might have been competing for 5 or so spots in the top 10, there’s literally only one chance now. Unless we get more spots back, traffic is going to be hard to get.

Classifier/Shadowban?

The second takeaway is that almost all of us in the room felt like we had been hit by some sort of site-wide classifier. Nearly all of us had gone from page 1 to page 7 or lower. We can understand being outranked for the odd piece of content, but to suddenly have EVERYTHING drop, it did feel like we had a black cloud over our sites.

It was neither confirmed or denied, but it was hinted that there are many many ranking factors and signals and there was a possibility that maybe we had been caught up by something in the dial but it would be impossible to say what. But we were told multiple times that from looking at our sites, Danny believed that it wasn’t due to our content being too spammy etc.

The frustration for me is that I don’t know what to do next. If I have been flagged for something, I would be more than happy to fix it, if I knew what it was. Many of us suggested that maybe some sort of metric in Google Search Console would be helpful. Speed isn’t enough, Adverts AREN’T the problem.

I did try asking for some sort of guidance and the questions were obviously asked as a group. What do we do next? The phrase ‘keep making helpful content’ did come up ONCE and literally everyone groaned, rolled their eyes and I admit, I slammed down my pen. 

The general consensus was, look at what you used to rank for, and see if there is a way that you could improve it for a user. Does it show immediately what it is about, are they able to get the answer, does it need to be formatted in a different way to make it more interesting etc. But again, it was stressed that it probably isn’t our content, Google needs to get better at understanding it.

So going back, it doesn’t matter that if page one suddenly gets more real estate, if I have a dark cloud over my head that I don’t know how to shift, then it doesn’t matter what page 1 looks like anymore because in my eyes, I’m probably never going to get there.

Google needs to change on both fronts for there to be any sort of recovery. Especially when so many people feel they have been ‘shadow banned’

It was suggested by higher-ups that they can’t guarantee that we will ever recover. Because at the end of the day, if they change it to benefit us, then the people that replaced us will then be the ones getting ‘hurt’, so someone is always going to be the loser in this.

I just hope that they have listened to our general concerns from both a creator AND user perspective and realise that it really isn’t working currently.

I personally don’t use Google for my own searches, because they simply don’t bring back the results I’m after. I can’t find what I’m looking for 90% of the time.

One thing that I did find a bit pointless, was that they have ‘raters’ all around the world A/B testing the results of different queries. BUT unless you are specifically looking for the search term, how do you know it’s truly helpful? It was said that they only have ‘experts’ in things like medical, where the wrong answer could be extremely damaging. 

When it comes to travel, when it’s a location that I’ve been to, if it’s something generic that’s displayed and I know things are a bit rubbish/not worth it, then I know that result is NOT helpful. But for example, if you haven’t experienced it firsthand, how do you know it’s a good answer? Yes, they have guidelines on things to look for, but experience ultimately would top it.

The Other Creators Made It Worth It

BUT I don’t think it was a waste of my time. I went not expecting anything to change. I hope they take our feedback on board and maybe in a year and a couple more updates, hopefully there will be some sort of improvement, but I’m fully aware that this could take time IF there is any improvement at all.

The best thing that came out of it were the people that I met. I have been to several creator events in the past (not by Google) and have often felt looked down on. Like some creators think they are bigger and better than others.

This didn’t happen AT ALL. We all had common ground, regardless of the niche, and it felt like we could brainstorm ideas between us. I hope we can keep in touch and update each other if we see any form of improvements. Because at the end of the day, we really want each other to succeed, and if there is a light at the tunnel I’m sure there won’t be any gatekeeping.

We even laughed and said it would be good if in 12 months time, maybe there’ll be a reunion where in an ideal world things will be on the up. Hey, we can dream.

When it first affected me, I was very much under the impression that it was ‘my fault’, I did something wrong, my posts were terrible. But I know it’s not me now. It is very much a Google problem.

And in case you were unsure still, let’s make it clear, Google is very much still in my bad books.

What’s Next

For the meantime, I’ve decided to pivot away from creating written content. My sites will be live, but I won’t be creating anything new. It takes a lot of time to create a blog post and if it doesn’t pay me anymore, I need to focus my efforts elsewhere on something that does (luckily I have my online teaching to fall back on).

We also made it clear that if people can’t make an income from it anymore, then they will lose a lot of expert voices and ultimately, search will get even worse in the long run.

Instead, I’m turning my attention to more video content. I have been enjoying it more, it takes me a lot less time to create and I do enjoy the community and conversation that comes from it. I am nowhere near being at the point where I can monetise it though, so for now it feels like I am having to start again from scratch.

I might make some minor changes to the content on my site, but it probably won’t be enough for people to really notice, unless you are specifically looking for it.

It was advised that maybe we shouldn’t be reliant on Google traffic anymore, just because of the nature of the changing search. It might come back, it might not. I hope after the conversations we have that it does move in a better direction.

But ultimately if we do diverse and then it does come back, we’ll come back stronger from a business perspective. And I do agree with that. Blogging means you have to wear many many hats. For a while, it felt like I was a jack or all trades, master of none. But when SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) worked for me, I ran with it, because that’s what was bringing in the money.

But on the other hand, my safety net was my online teaching. If 2020 was to repeat itself, I have a whole second industry to fall back on. A business that relies on ONE thing only, is not a good business model.

I like to think that as a group of 20 creators, we did our best to be the voice for EVERYONE in our niche. It wasn’t me me me me me, it was general concerns for the whole industry. I’m thankful for Danny for giving me the opportunity to fly all the way to the other side of the world for literally a day. 

Honestly, I never expected that I would ever be invited to Google HQ. That definitely wasn’t on my Bingo card and I’m thankful that a GIANT company allowed me to have a voice. That alone is extremely rare.

I’m not sure if this will be the end of my blogging journey. What started as a hobby nearly 10 years ago, turned into my job for the past 4 years. I knew it potentially might not be a ‘forever job’, but I rode the wave while I could, and I have loved it. I got to share my passion and have hopefully helped and inspired people over the years.

I have never taken my traffic or the opportunities it’s allowed me to have for granted. I have met people through blogging that will be my friends for life. It kept me sane during one of the hardest times in my life.

Like I said, for now I’ll wait and see if anything comes from the next few updates. If traffic comes back, I’ll go back to sharing the long form written content. Otherwise, for now, you can find me on YouTube, or I post almost daily content on TikTok.

If my posts have helped you at all in the past, you can always support me by ‘buying me a coffee’. For the mean time, thank you for all the support. I truly appreciate it.

And if you’ve made it this far, you deserve a pat on the back.