Google held that Web Creator summit yesterday at the GooglePlex, where Google told victims of previous search ranking updates including the September 2023 helpful content update, that a new Google search ranking update is coming fairly or very soon, but if they were hit by the helpful content update, they should not expect to recover and they likely should move on to new things. To be clear, “move on” is not something a Googler specifically said but rather a take away from a content creator at the event.
I was not at the event but I saw some posts from site owners who were at the event, these are the same site owners that saw their sites drop significantly due to the September 2023 helpful content update or previous core updates. They were invited to Google to speak directly to the Google Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, and various Google search engineers, including Pandu Nayak, a VP at Google Search.
I should note that I am quoting people, who are quoting people, and it is very possible some of the quotes are misunderstood by me. So keep that in mind.
Morgan at Charleston Crafted, who was one of those creators, posted on X, saying that Google said, “If you were hit by HCU, do not expect a recovery anytime soon.” She added that “they told us repeatedly an update is coming “very soon” and to not expect recovery.” Plus, she added clarity that any feedback from this event won’t be in that update. She wrote, “If the feedback from this event is taken into consideration, it will not be this update OR the next one, MAYBE the next one.”
Morgan went on to write, “If you were hit by HCU & depend on google, MOVE ON. They made it clear SOME of us MAY recover ONE DAY but all would not and who knows when it might be. Build a product. Get new traffic sources. Get a job.”
To be clear, Google did not say “move on” specifically:
Move on is my take away. The exact google verbiage is to wait for google to catch up with us. But they said MANY TIMES explicitly that we may not recover. Many will never recover. And it will NEVER go back to pre September.
So, yeah, move on if you’re waiting.
— Morgan (@CharlestonCraft) October 30, 2024
Here are those posts:
If you were hit by HCU & depend on google, MOVE ON.
They made it clear SOME of us MAY recover ONE DAY but all would not and who knows when it might be.
Build a product.
Get new traffic sources.
Get a job.
Google don’t currrr (once again, Danny is nice. Nice don’t pay my bills) pic.twitter.com/ZI2Ormk2BQ
— Morgan (@CharlestonCraft) October 30, 2024
Mike Hardaker, the founder of Mountain Weekly News, wrote up a more detailed recap of what went down at this event. He wrote, I Drank the Kool-Aid at the 2024 Google Web Creator Summit and documented the event in much more detail. Here are some quotes that stood out related to this:
He quoted Pandu Nayak saying:
I have to say I am very very sorry for you, this is not great at all. I can’t also give you any guarantees about recovery or not, I think that would not be responsible for me to say this. Because I can’t tell what is going to happen. It’s just the unfortunate state of how we operate here. We are here listening to you, I think the whole reason we are having this conference at all is for us to hear you out, to get our teams to hear you out.
Our goal is to surface great content for users. I suspect there is a lot of great content you guys are creating that we are not surfacing to our users, but I can’t give you any guarantees unfortunately. We are focused on things for our users, that is not going to change.
I have to say that it is exactly the kind of things that drives us forward, I don’t see this as a waste, I can see if you don’t recover in a certain amount of time I can see you thinking of this as a waste but we find this incredibly valuable to guide the work that we do.
Just one other comment I would like to make is that we do want to say we have a vested interested in having a great web ecosystem. We are very closely tied to the web ecosystem. I think users benefit hugely from a vibrant ecosystem. Now that doesn’t answer your question if you will recover or anyone else in the room will recover. But we think having a vibrant web ecosystem is important, and that drives a lot of our work.
He quoted Danny Sullivan as saying:
In August some of the sites saw recovery, but some people are saying I want to be back to where I was in September. I was talking to somebody and I said September is not coming back, the whole format of search results has changed.
One of the biggest thing that has happened, I have seen sites that absolutely believe they were hit by the HCU or other updates, but no you are actually ranked 2 or 3, 4. Your ranking in the top results but going from the 1 to 2 can have a big impact. It’s more complicated that. The whole search results have changed, it’s possible that maybe things are better down the line.
That’s why on the recovery thing it is much more likely that hopefully it’s going to be a gradual process. The thing to really watch for is when we do updates. Google will have another update fairly soon, but it probably won’t or won’t have any updates from what we talked about here because we can’t run back and change it that quickly. It kills me because I know that’s going to be depressing and I’m also looking forward to the times on X.
Also one other thing was Google saying that his content was not the issue? So what was the issue? Here is that section:
According to Danny Sullivan, my “content was not the issue” when referencing the Mountain Weekly News so don’t let the HCU update make you automatically question your content. In fact it was clear all the website creators that were in attendance simply got caught up in an algorithm update, nothing more, nothing less.
You’re content doesn’t suck, if it did you wouldn’t be reading this. Even if you managed to lose traffic during HCU update.
So we lost traffic as a whole, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of publishers and it happened to be during the HCU update, but again it wasn’t your content that was the issue, surely not for the heartfelt niche site owners that had the courage to show up to Google and speak face to face with some of the team, perhaps responsible for our current position. But assigning blame won’t help. I came to Mountain View, California to look for solutions.
So it seems we should be seeing Google release a new search ranking update very soon. But at the same time, Google is telling those hit by previous updates not to expect to recover from this next update. I guess it is better than Google telling folks to have patience because they are working on promoting this content…
Later on today, Josh Tyler from Giant Freakin Robot also published his notes on this event named I Attended Google’s Creator Conversation Event, And It Turned Into A Funeral – how is that for a headline.
Here are some quotes that stood out to me, well, the whole thing was an excellent read but I want to focus on the content:
Danny, kind and patient as always, assured us there was nothing wrong with our sites and that we wouldn’t have been invited if there had been.The idea that this might be a funeral, was put forward as a half-joke by one of the shadowbanned attendees during our first Q&A session, in which we asked questions and got no answers. Her funeral joke should have been funny. Only the Googlers laughed.
Most of these site owners seemed certain the funeral they were attending, was their own.
During this small group discussion, I and others tried to get our Googlers to address the biggest problem facing our industry: Google giving big brands special treatment. Each time a site owner brought up the topic, we were quickly steered in another direction.
I kept pushing, and eventually, our Googler (whose name I’m not allowed to tell you) wrote “diversity of results” at the top of the whiteboard he was using, as if to signify I should shut up and move on. Instead of addressing the only topic that matters, I was asked to explain how YouTube works because, somehow, none of the four Googlers assigned to our group knew anything about it.
When our group session was over, I left the room for a break. While I was gone, “diversity of results” was erased from the top of the whiteboard and rewritten at the bottom, in much tinier lettering.
Google’s Chief Search Scientist answered this question using a strategy based around gaslighting and said they hadn’t. Google doesn’t ever derank an entire site, only individual pages, he said. There is no site-wide classifier. He insisted it is only done at the page level.
Many of the shadowbanned site owners attempted to politely push back and point out that the reason all 20 of us were there was specifically because our entire site was deranked from Google in a single night.
He continued insisting this didn’t happen and then looked confused that anyone would disagree with him.
When asked what was wrong with our sites, as if we were jilted lovers in an abusive relationship being kicked to the curb, one Googler actually said “it’s not you it’s me”.
Finally, someone bluntly asked, since nothing is wrong with our sites, how do we recover?
Google’s elderly Chief Search Scientist answered, without an ounce of pity or concern, that there would be updates but he didn’t know when they’d happen or what they’d do. Further questions on the subject were met with indifference as if he didn’t understand why we cared.
And he ended with:
It was then I realized this wasn’t our funeral, it was Google’s.
And if you have a moment, say a prayer for hard-working Danny Sullivan. Pray he won’t be left there at Google, wandering their empty and decaying coffin, all alone, haunted by angry, invisible ghosts.
Here are more of Morgan’s posts, but also check out Mike’s write up:
I am grateful that I had the chance to meet some really cool people. Even within the niche of website creators, it’s hard to make friends who understand where you are coming from. This group of Google Losers really connected and hopefully with be a great network moving forward pic.twitter.com/xY3vPFemNB
— Morgan (@CharlestonCraft) October 30, 2024
The other Google employees there seems to either 1) deny that a problem exists or 2) hear our problems, but be 100% clueless as to how to fix it pic.twitter.com/gqeUtWM4fR
— Morgan (@CharlestonCraft) October 30, 2024
If you were hit by HCU, do not expect a recovery anytime soon. They told us repeatedly an update is coming “very soon” and to not expect recovery. If the feedback from this event is taken into consideration, it will not be this update OR the next one, MAYBE the next one 🫠🫠🫠 pic.twitter.com/cYNufkFJx1
— Morgan (@CharlestonCraft) October 30, 2024
Once again, thankful to be included. Please know I was a VOICE for publishers. I was very vocal. They know how I feel. Now, it is up to Google to take action. PROVE ME WRONG! Make the $400+ I paid out of pocket to be here worth it. Bring my content back to life. I’m watching! pic.twitter.com/c62608kNw0
— Morgan (@CharlestonCraft) October 30, 2024
Google Campus looks like a rad place to work, they have put a lot of thought into how to make their employees more productive, from games to healthy snacks and drinks everywhere. Update to follow later tonight on what went down at the Google Web Creator Conversation Summit…… pic.twitter.com/1GHg96kZ2p
— Mike Hardaker (@mountainweekly) October 30, 2024
Update: Google’s Elizabeth Tucker (Not Liz Reid) was there as well.
She spoke at the start and sat on the panel at the end. Had to catch a flight and you could tell she still had day to day Google work to attend too. I would say about 2-3 hours worth. She answered many questions on stage and off.
— Mike Hardaker (@mountainweekly) October 30, 2024
So if it is not about the content? Well, it seems to be that Google is not getting the content is good on some sites?
So, so many times they said this. Literally Danny hand picked us because we all create helpful and satisfying content. They just cannot get the algorithm to understand that. They are actively doing query debugging based on examples sent by our group.
— Morgan (@CharlestonCraft) October 30, 2024
Apparently Google calls it something entirely different in house? Danny stated he doesn’t even understand many of the lingo the engineers use amongst each other. But yeah weird indeed especially if my content is good per Danny??
— Mike Hardaker (@mountainweekly) October 30, 2024
Also, it seems Google did pay for some travel – which is surprising to me…
For those asking, Google paid for a tiny room at a hotel where they spray the hallways with cologne, and one coach ticket to get there on an airplane.
The rest we paid for ourselves, except that terrible lunch they gave us during the conference.
— Josh Tyler (@joshtyler) October 30, 2024
Update: Here is another thread from a creator who went to the event:
The short of it: as expected, we were given no answers. Nothing solid. Wishy washy, non-commital, as I’d expected.
— Kim Snaith (@ichangedmyname) October 30, 2024
Danny (@searchliaison) is a genuinely lovely guy. His heart is in the right place and it’s obvious he feels very strongly that Google has done wrong to all of us. He was quick to say “there’s nothing wrong with your sites, it’s us”. pic.twitter.com/EvnEDxaKb0
— Kim Snaith (@ichangedmyname) October 30, 2024
That’s not inherently a bad thing and lots of people provided excellent feedback. I do believe Google will use what we’ve said today but whether anything comes of it, who knows.
— Kim Snaith (@ichangedmyname) October 30, 2024
Nobody told us we’re wasting our time or that we should give up. We were all told we are making good content and that content deserves to be surfaced on Google. But they also made no attempt to tell us there’s going to be a fix for us soon.
— Kim Snaith (@ichangedmyname) October 30, 2024
But at the same time my mind is reeling over all the things I could be doing instead, the things I’m wasting time and money on, because there’s no real point in doing XYZ if Google isn’t going to change any time soon.
— Kim Snaith (@ichangedmyname) October 30, 2024
The most useful thing, for me, out of the event was getting to meet a bunch of likeminded people. Everyone in that room was wonderful, outspoken and passionate. Being around so many talented people is uplifting – but the situation itself was far from.
— Kim Snaith (@ichangedmyname) October 30, 2024
Another:
Got to go to the search creator event yesterday. The SEO in me found it so very valuable. The creator in me got a glimmer of hope. The realist in me now sees that hope likely won’t come for months. pic.twitter.com/5qV4FBoo3F
— Steve Weber (@swebermarketing) October 30, 2024
Another:
My takeaway from the Google Web Creator Conversation is that Google wants to elevate independent voices & hasn’t figured out how yet. Both through the algorithm and maybe through SERP features. (1/11)
— Laura & Lance (@TravelerAddicts) October 30, 2024
They didn’t expect the feedback they got from the HCU—both via the form and more broadly. People always complain when they’re hit by an update. But, this time, the feedback was forceful and clear. (3/11)
— Laura & Lance (@TravelerAddicts) October 30, 2024
Google knows something is wrong and discussed fixing specific bugs because of our feedback. Still, 13 months is too long. (5/11)
— Laura & Lance (@TravelerAddicts) October 30, 2024
In my breakout group, our issues were heard & understood. I left feeling like they’re working on algorithm tweaks & tools to help site owners. One Googler said their team is meeting today to start addressing what we discussed, but these aren’t the first meetings. (7/11)
— Laura & Lance (@TravelerAddicts) October 30, 2024
The message was clear that our content isn’t the problem and Google needs to “catch up to us.” After such a long time, that’s disappointing and rings hollow, but, against my better judgement, I still have hope. (9/11)
— Laura & Lance (@TravelerAddicts) October 30, 2024
I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid, but I’m trying to be hopeful anyway. After 18 years of blogging & 10 years of doing this full-time, the alternative is just too sad /
— Laura & Lance (@TravelerAddicts) October 30, 2024
And now Steve Weber posted his Yesterday’s Google Creator Event: An SEO’s Take.
I saw the reaction posts of a few other creators who attended the event where they expressed their discontent with the state of search as well as the event (rightfully so). On a more positive note, I think the event was beneficial for both creators and Googlers alike.
Forum discussion at X.
We all want to be satisfied, even though we know some people who will never be that way, and others who see satisfaction as a foreign emotion that they can’t hope to ever feel.
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