Google updates in the past few years have decimated a lot of affiliate websites

[Malikbhai]

I wonder why aren't more webmasters talking about it.

Recent HCU updates have specifically deranked tons of once-performing aff sites.

[universal4]

There are quite a number of threads here at the GPWA that discuss the changes at google over the last 20 years not just the last few. In fact almost every single announced update or algo change rollout inspires a discussion.

Here are a few recent discussions of announced changes at google.
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/google-sp...te-262914.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/google-sp...te-262309.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/september...te-261939.html

There are also a number of discussions surrounding:
marking affiliate links with sponsored or not
issues with the search console and errors thrown seemingly for no reason
how to handle old articles
issues from robots txt
how the "people also ask" function has reduced visit counts
dofollow and nofollow ratios

And this short list is in fact only a very short list of the many many factors that have been discussed in the last few months, many that have seemingly come about based on changes in the way that google looks at or interprets pages and content and directly have an impact on affiliate sites.

Rick
Universal4

[Malikbhai]

I meant more in a subjective sense like ranting...

I'll start..

Ecom sites, vBulltein forums enjoyed tons of traffic until about 2010, when Google decided to dump them to make way for long form blog-type promotional and educational articles.

These new blog-type sites got major boosts after 2012, when Google made core adjustments until about 2016 to 2017, when they started (slowly) degrading the visibility until about 2020, when they really tightened the screws.


Sites that survived are now in trouble, since Google has decided to free its SERPs from made-for-affiliate-earning sites.

The sites that will survive the next 3 to 4 years will have to be really big in terms of relatively non-affiliated pages.

There's a reason why news sites are now dominating SERPs.

[Malikbhai]

A lot of gambling affiliate sites that started after 2015 never really grew, other than a handful, and the ones that did get promoted could only hold on for about 12 to 24 months before crashing down.

GPWA is full of users that did good for about a year or two . Now most are living off current clients.

The continuous upward growth either never happend, moved sideways, or simply crashed back to zero.

[Malikbhai]

New kids reading this thread should avoid starting HTML sites. Stick to some strategy on TikTok or YouTube.

But if you still want to go for it, make non-English sites. Google still has a long way to catch up for languages othe rthan German, French and Spanish.

Mediocre affiliate foreign language sites still have a chance of ranking high in Google, something that is seemingly impossible for the English language.

[universal4]

HTML sites still work, are faster than wordpress or other cms in most cases, but the difficult part of html sites for most people is keeping it mobile friendly, which is the main motivation why many do not choose that route.

Rick
Universl4

[patdog]

people are all talking as if Google was the only existing source of traffic on the internet.

Google traffic used to be extremely well targeted a few years ago. But recently, it is not as targeted as it used to be - google search results are becoming so bad, so irrelevant - resulting in lower conversions anyway.

On the other hand, there are 10,000 others ways to get decent quality/targeted traffic but most people don't want to see these.

[Madz]

people are all talking as if Google was the only existing source of traffic on the internet.

Google traffic used to be extremely well targeted a few years ago. But recently, it is not as targeted as it used to be - google search results are becoming so bad, so irrelevant - resulting in lower conversions anyway.

On the other hand, there are 10,000 others ways to get decent quality/targeted traffic but most people don't want to see these.

Care to name a few of them that currently work for UK traffic

[codexman]

HTML sites still work, are faster than wordpress or other cms in most cases, but the difficult part of html sites for most people is keeping it mobile friendly, which is the main motivation why many do not choose that route.

Rick
Universl4

I 100% agree about speed, hence static site generators with CMS backend are the future IMHO.

[codexman]

New kids reading this thread should avoid starting HTML sites. Stick to some strategy on TikTok or YouTube.

But if you still want to go for it, make non-English sites. Google still has a long way to catch up for languages othe rthan German, French and Spanish.

Mediocre affiliate foreign language sites still have a chance of ranking high in Google, something that is seemingly impossible for the English language.

I live in a small European country (Latvia). Top 10 SERPs in my local language are fully occupied by PBN-backed sites. PBN's are very large and professionally maintained. Local guys are working day and night snatching up expired domains with good DA. But Google does not care at all!

So your site can be mediocre, but your PBN has to be top-notch in order to rank in Latvia.