What was in the HCU Update

Since there is still not OFFICIAL website that have recovered from the HCU, there is something we can get from this.

Data.

Every loss we have, is not a loss, but failing forward.

Something to learn from.

So I came across an article you will want to check out.

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The article is from Cyrus over at Zyppy.com and he has a doozy study that we should all check out.

It’s called Winning and Losing Big Google Updates: 50 Site Case Study

This article goes over on-page correlations of sites that were destroyed during the HCU, but it also shares correlations among sites that thrived during the HCU.

Here are some notable insights I found interesting.

Mediavine had a conference this past week and was suspiciously absent from the talking heads. There was no mention of the HCU, and it’s pure hatred for spammy site ads.

I’ve always been one to think sites with Mediavine and Raptive were higher level type ad networks, but their Facebook groups back in September and October will tell you otherwise.

From the image above, there were a ton of pages that had sticky or “fixed” footer ads, fixed video ads, too many ads, and push notifications when you landed on sites that got slapped.

However, sites with contact information in the header, about info in the header, first-person pronouns, and first-hand experience won out.

But notice how negative factors were stronger than positive factors. Meaning you got hit harder than you got gains.

This tells me that we should avoid more things than we do to make the experience better, which I don’t like.

We don’t publish content on the site for free. Otherwise, we won’t do it.

This is a hole that Google is falling in that seemingly won’t be a big problem until years down the line when most of us have gotten tired of Google’s antics and moved on.

With that said, I’m still going down with the ship.

SEO still works when you have a decent budget and the ROI is still there. But studies like Cyrus’ really help show what Google is thinking.

They got what they wanted, but it’s coming at the expense of honest creators.

That is sad. It truly is.

Chat soon,
Chris Myles
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