Google Slaughtered Independent Journalism, dictates Do-As-I-Say

The Google search has changed over time, pushing AI-generated search results to give priority to corporate giant news sites and Reddit specifically in the name of enhancing user experience.

The article published on HouseFresh.com on “How Google is killing independent sites like ours” highlights how Google is mass murdering small sites and product reviews.

The article published on housefresh.com talks about how Google rolls out updates about product reviews and similar product-related search results; meanwhile, we have noticed similar behavior for small, independent news publishers.

Similar article published on dailysabah.com “Google’s algorithm monopoly: New struggle for Turkish media” talks about how Google has created a crisis in Turkish media due to an algorithm change.

Google is well aware and understands that corporate media houses are well paid, and they write the news and editorials based on what their respective governments wish, and small independent news and journalism websites publish the news based on ground reality and research based on facts. The information shared on small sites reflects how an ordinary person can understand, English isn’t the first language in the majority of the world, including Pakistan, so people’s searches depend on their understanding of the news or the information, which might not be the way Google thinks quality content should be presented.

How exactly does Google want small publishers to improve and write better? The behavior is completely the opposite by the search engine, and instead of it, irrelevant sites gain attention by using the keywords as the domain name and writing the content using ChatGPT or similar AI models and then humanizing the content without research. The outdated content and repetitive use of keywords make Google happy. Such publishers rank better on Google Discover and Google News.

Talk about the user experience and quality content. Without a warning or any manual actions in Google Search Console, thousands of sites were deranked in Google Core Update 2023, and our site suffered the impact and, to this date, has not been able to recover, the majority of the keywords were gone within no time and google awarded those keywords to websites that literally had no background related to the topic or even to the extent keywords as a domain to rank on Google were giving priority, leaving small publishers frustrated. At first the thought was Google might revert back and fix search-related issues in the upcoming core update; however, even after multiple core updates, websites like ours never gained the attention of being honest and not pushing paid or unwanted backlinks.

The Google team is well aware that most of the backlinks are paid links, and this dirty business is part of the SEO game. The majority of the sites publish the content and get linked from reputable DA/PA sites to elevate their article ranking in search results. For Google, this practice is permissible.

Google’s guidelines and policies never showed a single sign in Manual Actions in Search Console, and will Google ever understand the mental torture and stress small publishers have gone through because of their practices? Instead, Google doesn’t accept the content as publishers write it; it dictates how it should be almost like a “do-as-I-say” rulebook. Is it Google or North Korea we are dealing with? That, apparently, is Google’s definition of quality content. Meanwhile, we as a team have been disappointed to see which sites are given priority in Google Discover.

Google’s definition of “quality content:

Think about the topic you want to publish
Get it written with the help of AI tools
Get it humanized so that No AI detector can detect it
Use the keyword in the first paragraph (MUST)
Publish it and get the backlinks, paid or dirty tricks Google doesn’t care.
Check your article ranking using SEO tools.

Now that we are disappointed that Google doesn’t care how much time you spent on research and writing, how you gather the information, and how well you understand the people you write for, maybe this technique works for the people of the UK and USA, but for someone in Pakistan, people understand differently; the search terms are different, for the general public words have different meanings, and they prefer to find the information based on their knowledge and understanding, and Google is well aware that even then, deranked impressions dropped and the site suddenly was not fit for ranking.

Now that we are not expecting a miracle from Google, publishing this article means we are no longer relying on core updates and guidelines. We will continue to publish for our visitors, those who appreciate our work and know that we have contributed since 2012.

The search results are not based on the quality of the content; instead, they are SEO tricked to rank on top.

Most of the publishers don’t dare to write against Google but we dare to speak the truth and this is the truth.

PS: Google Team, this article was not written using ChatGPT nor humanized using AI tools still, Copyleaks says it’s 100% AI content! Lord have mercy.