‘Google is broken’: how search giant’s algorithm and spam filter changes cost livelihoods

Online businesses have been left considering lay-offs after Google’s massive upgrade in March and April caused catastrophic drops in traffic

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Google’s latest update sent search engine optimisation experts into a tailspin, desperately trying to unpack why some sites were boosted and others getting downranked. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 3:50pm, 2 Jul 2024Updated: 4:32pm, 2 Jul 2024

Google made major changes to its search algorithm and spam filters earlier this year to get rid of low-quality content – but the effects have proved devastating to some smaller websites.

Online businesses have been left considering lay-offs and even site closures after Google’s massive upgrade in March and April caused catastrophic drops in traffic.

Gisele Navarro is one of the unlucky ones whose website got caught up in Google’s dragnet. The 37-year-old Argentine runs the HouseFresh website with her husband, and they had been building a healthy niche in product reviews for air purifiers since 2020.

There were no ads, no product placements and no soft-pedalling – if a product was bad, the site’s reviewers would say so. They earned commissions from click-throughs to Amazon.com. But Google’s update changed all of that.

People walk next to a Google logo during a trade fair in Hanover, Germany, on April 22, 2024. Photo: Reuters

“We found that we went from ranking number one – because we were one of the only people who had actually done a review – to not even showing up,” Navarro told Agence France-Presse.