AJnet Magazine has been doing like shit on Google for a while now, and I think I’ve finally figured out why.
Google doesn’t think we’re helpful.
In 2022, Google introduced what it called the Helpful Content Update. The basic idea was that Google would begin prioritizing websites that created original, useful content for human readers while burying websites that existed primarily to manipulate search engines. Content written to answer questions or entertain readers would theoretically rise to the top, while keyword-stuffed garbage produced by content farms would disappear.
In practice, this sounds great. Nobody likes searching for a simple answer and getting a 3,000-word article that spends twenty paragraphs explaining the history of the question before finally answering it. The internet is full of useless websites that exist solely to exploit Google’s algorithm, and I don’t blame Google for trying to clean some of that up.
The problem is that Google is burying plenty of legitimate websites as well.
Exactly who is this Helpful Content Update helping? It’s definitely not helping independent webmasters.
Is it helping the people using Google? I doubt it, since Google Search is shittier than ever. You search for something and get sponsored results, shopping links, Reddit threads, YouTube videos, an AI summary that may or may not be correct, and page after page of borderline irrelevant results from the same handful of giant websites.
Somewhere underneath all that crap, there might be an independent website with the exact information you were looking for. Good luck finding it.
Before anyone accuses me of whining or blaming Google for my own failures, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve repeatedly shot myself in the foot throughout this website’s history.
I publicly quit AJnet in 2012, then returned a year later in 2013. I wrote for a few months before disappearing again. In 2014, I returned with some bullshit story about getting drunk and going to China (which totally wasn’t where Frosty’s Sober Saga eventually came from). I put out two more articles and disappeared yet again until 2015.
That definitely screwed me with both readers and Google. People had no reason to keep checking a website that could go silent for a year without warning, and Google had no reason to take the domain seriously. I basically spent years training everyone, including the search engines, to assume that AngryJerk.net was either abandoned or about to be abandoned.
They probably would have beaten me eventually anyway. They’re a physical business with locations, customer reviews, delivery listings, local press coverage, and social media accounts. After the way I neglected this website, though, I might as well have personally handed them the ranking. I left the door wide open, and they walked right through it carrying jerk chicken.
Once I began writing more regularly and brought additional writers onto the site, I noticed a brief spike in our Google presence. Articles started appearing higher in searches, traffic increased a little, and it seemed like AJnet Magazine was finally recovering from the years when I treated it like a hobby I occasionally remembered existed.
That spike didn’t last very long.
A few individual articles still do reasonably well. My criticism of Letterkenny continues to bring in readers. My exchange with Copytrack still appears in searches, as does my review of Gushing Over Magical Girls. For the most part, though, AJnet Magazine barely ranks on Google at all.
Hell, I’m not listed anywhere when I search for “angry jerk.” The domain is literally AngryJerk.net. How the fuck does Google decide that a website about a guy named Angry Jerk isn’t relevant to a search for “angry jerk”? I understand the restaurant ranking above me, but I don’t even appear several pages down. Google apparently believes that every other result containing those two words is more relevant than the website that has used them as its name for over twenty years.
Some of the results don’t even include both of the words, just one. What kind of bullshit is that?
It would be easy to dismiss this as me being bitter about my own website, but I’m far from the only webmaster complaining.
Reddit and other blogging communities are full of website owners who have reported enormous traffic losses following Google’s Helpful Content Updates and subsequent algorithm changes. I’ve seen people claim that they went from hundreds of thousands of visitors a month to fewer than 5,000 almost overnight.
Maybe some of these people deserved it. I’m sure there were plenty of content farms and affiliate marketing sites crying because Google finally caught up with them.
When enough independent publishers are telling the same story, though, it becomes difficult to assume that all of them were producing worthless garbage.
Many of these people had websites that were several years old, contained thousands of original articles, and had established audiences. Then Google changed something behind the scenes and suddenly decided that almost everything they had ever published was unhelpful. The site owners weren’t given a clear explanation. They were simply expected to read Google’s vague guidelines, guess what they had done wrong, make changes, and hope the next algorithm update showed mercy.
I’ve tried as much SEO stuff as I know how to do. I rebuilt the website, cleaned up the category structure, improved the layouts, submitted the sitemap, created proper staff and author pages, removed junk from the index, and worked on the site’s speed and mobile presentation. I’ve read Google’s recommendations, studied what other websites were doing, and even asked ChatGPT for suggestions.
The impact has been next to nothing.
Maybe there’s still some technical issue that nobody has found, or maybe Google remembers all the years when I kept disappearing and has permanently written off the domain. There’s also a chance that the content simply doesn’t appeal to enough people.
But I also can’t help wondering whether some of this isn’t an intentional ploy to incentivize website owners to buy ads.
I can’t prove Google is deliberately burying independent websites to sell more advertising, but the arrangement is certainly convenient. Your organic search traffic disappears, none of your attempts to recover it work, and the only guaranteed way to get your website near the top of the page is to pay Google.
You know, a good old fashioned pay to play scheme.
Google claims that it doesn’t prioritize large brands and corporations simply because they’re large brands and corporations, but comments from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggest otherwise.
The internet is fast becoming a cesspool where false information thrives. Brands are the solution, not the problem. That’s how you organize the cesspool.
That quote tells me everything I need to know.
Large brands are apparently the trustworthy adults who will organize the internet, while independent websites are part of the cesspool until they can prove otherwise. Unless you have enough money, influence, press coverage, employees, backlinks, and name recognition to become a recognized brand, you’re essentially shit floating around in Google’s toilet.
I’m shit?
No, Eric. Google is shit, and so are you. Eat penguin shit, you ass spelunker.
This is one of the reasons I started placing our various projects under the AJnet Organization umbrella. AJnet Magazine, Rantlister, and the DrakeGTA Archives aren’t just random websites floating around on their own anymore. They’re part of a larger media organization with consistent branding. By doing this, hopefully I can eventually train Google to recognize the AJnet Organization as a brand and, by extension, get it to acknowledge sites like AJnet Magazine and Rantlister again.
When I search for AJnet, Al Jazeera appears first and the AJnet Organization’s official website appears second, at least on my end. We’re neck and neck with the Middle East’s largest news organization, so I’d like to think we’re doing something right.
It’s ridiculous that independent publishers have to play this bullshit game just to be acknowledged.
Maybe I’m looking at the old internet through rose-colored glasses, but smaller websites once had a legitimate chance to compete. Google used to reward websites for publishing good content. A strong article could rank because it answered a question, offered a unique perspective, or entertained people in a way the larger websites didn’t.
Now the quality of the article feels secondary to the power behind the domain.
Independent writers are expected to compete against multibillion-dollar corporations with massive marketing budgets, dedicated SEO departments, established relationships with other major websites, and thousands of employees producing content around the clock. These companies can publish fifty articles in the time it takes one independent writer to research and finish a single piece.
What the fuck are we supposed to do against that?
The average person now has to compete with giant corporations just to be heard. I’m supposed to go head-to-head with media organizations that have bottomless coffers and entire teams dedicated to pleasing Google’s algorithm so somebody can find one of my articles?
Yeah, good fucking luck.
I understand that the internet is full of bullshit. AI-generated articles, fake news sites, affiliate marketing scams, content mills, and SEO spam have made Google’s job significantly harder. I’m not expecting every tiny blog to outrank an established publication simply because the owner worked hard on it.
The problem, though, is that Google’s efforts to clean up the bullshit appear to be destroying legitimate independent publications at the same time.
Every time Google changes its rules, the companies with the most money are in the best position to adapt. They hire another consultant, purchase more backlinks, restructure their content departments, and continue dominating the results. Independent publishers lose most of their traffic and spend the next year trying to figure out which arbitrary rule they supposedly violated. The end result is an increasingly corporate internet where the same handful of companies control what gets seen, which opinions are treated as credible, and who gets the opportunity to build an audience.
Google calls that helpful. I call it bullshit.
As of this time, I have no plans to quit. I’ve already done enough quitting and disappearing for one lifetime. In fact, I plan to expand the AJnet Organization even further with more websites and publications. We’re going to fight the good fight for as long as we can.
I’d be lying though if I said that the situation isn’t disheartening. We’re putting more effort into these sites than ever before, yet it feels like we’re fighting uphill just to convince Google that we exist. I don’t expect millions of readers. I don’t even expect hundreds of thousands. I’d simply like people to have a reasonable chance of finding our work.
I’m going to keep publishing whether Google sends us traffic or not. Google can either figure out that AngryJerk.net is relevant to a search for “angry jerk,” or it can keep proving that its search engine is every bit as broken as I’ve been saying it is.
Just stop pretending any of this shit is helpful.
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