Who Ruined the Internet? Google Core, Adsense, and Discover Updates & a Weird Niche Video Site

Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast. This week’s episode is seriously packed with a ton of important and interesting headlines in the SEO, digital marketing, and content creation space. So grab some popcorn, get comfortable, and let’s get started!

Spencer and Jared kick off the episode by talking about Google’s latest announcement about an impending November core update, which started to roll out on November 2nd. We can expect to see the effects over the weekend. They talk about Google’s explanation for the latest update and how there’s also a review system update coming next week.

Moving on, they share an article in The Verge accusing SEOs of ruining the internet. Spencer summarizes the 8000-word article and he and Jared discuss whether the author ultimately blames SEOs or Google itself for bringing down the quality of the internet. 

What does Jared think about the article? Is The Verge hypocritical for publishing an article like this? What happened to Danny Sullivan, the Google employee who responded to Spencer’s tweet? Tune in to find out!

The conversation then shifts to an article on Detailed, and a tweet, by Glen Allsopp, about product review affiliate keywords. Allsopp shares his findings after analyzing 10,000 search results and he shares some staggering statistics for sites like Reddit and Quora.

The next news item on the agenda has to do with Google’s efforts to fix a bug from the October 2023 update, which impacted Google Discover traffic. Does that mean people who got massive traffic from Google Discover recently will see it disappear? Will people without much Google Discover traffic see it increase?

Continuing with news about Google, Spencer and Jared share an article that shows how Google is inserting paid ads among organic search results. They talk about the implications of this move and how it may or may not affect publishers.

Then Spencer shares an article about updates to Google AdSense, as the network is shifting to per-impression payments for publishers. How will this impact their earnings? Why is Google doing this? Since the network has always been pay-per-click, this is a major change to how it functions. Tune in to hear what Spencer and Jared have to say.

Jared geeks out on the last news item on the agenda, an analysis of Google’s EEAT Knowledge Graph. A recent article took a deep dive into how Google understands what is and isn’t expert content and the importance of getting into the Knowledge Panel and building a brand. Jared shares some good ideas on how to get Google’s stamp of approval, so don’t miss them!

When it comes to Side Hustle Shenanigans, Spencer provides an update on his second faceless YouTube channel, for which the stats are underwhelming. As he is completely hands-off in this endeavor, his advice for anyone looking to do something like this is to be very involved and detail-oriented. Listen in to find out what he thinks about this business model.

Jared reports on his Amazon Influencer side hustle, noting that October was his worst month ever. Why was this? What’s driving all the volatility? What does he expect in the coming months?

There’s just a little bit of time left, and Spencer shares his weird niche site first: Astronaut.io. This fascinating site features videos from YouTube that have zero views. With 105k visitors over the last three months according to SimilarWeb, it seems that some people (mostly in Russia), are enjoying them.

Jared’s weird site is in the celebrity niche, Who’s Dated Who, which offers the dating history of every celebrity you can think of. He and Spencer discuss the site’s ranking system, how it might be getting its data, its use of a forum, and how it’s monetized. This DR56 site is ranking for over 600k keywords, and monthly estimated organic traffic of 1.2 million.

And that brings us to the end of another great episode. Thanks for tuning in for another week and getting the latest in SEO news. See you next Friday!

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