December 2024 Spam Update

Klausgocrazy said:
The same thing I did with the last, submit to GSC, submit sitemap, start posting.
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D97EC8F8-3A2D-47D6-ADC5-58A6B0FCADCB.jpeg

I’m here, 15 days old website. No black hat done.
 
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snitcher44 said:
Didn't build any backlinks, there are some natural ones that I didn't build.
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Did you use AI content? How about do you have multiple sites in the same niche?

I got hit Dec 20 and lost all traffic + impressions on multiple sites. Trying to pinpoint the issue and similarities with the sites are:
- Same niche
- Wordpress
- Same theme (kadence)
- A lot of same plugins
- AI content (high quality, using it on other sites without issues - and it's ranking)
- Low DA domains mostly
- Quite new sites (under 1 year)

But then again, I have other sites using the same theme, plugins, content, low da and new domains - and those are either ranking fine or at least not penalized.

It could be that just these sites got flagged and others not for some reason, but still it's quite hard to analyze and pinpoint the issue.
 
DarkLordzz said:
So we just wait? The update is over but nothing changed. Keywords are still gone. Traffic is less than 2 a day. It's bad. It's the only site that earns me money. Extremely depressing
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Since I have multiple sites hit (lost all rankings, 99% - no manual penalty), I will setup few tests and report back:

Site A - 301 ALL inner pages (around 100) to homepage and just leave some legal pages. Google have quite recently added "scaled content abuse" filter which I don't believe is in effect for such small site like this, but I've also noticed that especially newer sites Google don't really like too much too related content. Let's see what this do.

Site B - 301 the whole domain to brand new domain.

Site C - Add few high quality links from very related sources

Site D/E - Any suggestions?
 
domainmadness said:
Did you use AI content? How about do you have multiple sites in the same niche?

I got hit Dec 20 and lost all traffic + impressions on multiple sites. Trying to pinpoint the issue and similarities with the sites are:
- Same niche
- Wordpress
- Same theme (kadence)
- A lot of same plugins
- AI content (high quality, using it on other sites without issues - and it's ranking)
- Low DA domains mostly
- Quite new sites (under 1 year)

But then again, I have other sites using the same theme, plugins, content, low da and new domains - and those are either ranking fine or at least not penalized.

It could be that just these sites got flagged and others not for some reason, but still it's quite hard to analyze and pinpoint the issue.
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When I analyze further some sites which are not affected, I must say that again this update seems rather random.

One site actually have improved in rankings which is basically identical to some of the sites:
- Similar amount of content
- Same high quality AI content
- Same design
- Same niche (but in other language)
- New site
- No links

Also one site which use the same setup, but has only homepage is ranking well for it's main KW.

So to be honest this seems very random - what kind of conclusions should be drawn from this?
 
domainmadness said:
Did you use AI content? How about do you have multiple sites in the same niche?

I got hit Dec 20 and lost all traffic + impressions on multiple sites. Trying to pinpoint the issue and similarities with the sites are:
- Same niche
- Wordpress
- Same theme (kadence)
- A lot of same plugins
- AI content (high quality, using it on other sites without issues - and it's ranking)
- Low DA domains mostly
- Quite new sites (under 1 year)

But then again, I have other sites using the same theme, plugins, content, low da and new domains - and those are either ranking fine or at least not penalized.

It could be that just these sites got flagged and others not for some reason, but still it's quite hard to analyze and pinpoint the issue.
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No AI content at all. My only theory is they don't want your site to grow so fast, If you do they penalize it.
 
Deathclaw said:
My ecommerce website https://harmonystore.pl has been penalized. 3 months old domain, legitimate store (no dropshipping), invested over 15.000$ in shop, brand, and content (including building SM content).

The only thing which comes to my mind is wrong implementation of the company rating widget (global) in the footer. The schema with the rating is identical on every subpage. Every indexed subpage displays the same star rating. Could such implementation be considered spam (in light of the recent December Spam Update)?
View attachment 407261
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Have you already tested some of the theory for recovering website?

Because I have absolutely the same picture for two my websites. One of them 1 your old, but second one is 5 years. And I guess the main issue is not related to age of domain or website.
 
snitcher44 said:
No AI content at all. My only theory is they don't want your site to grow so fast, If you do they penalize it.
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But what's too fast? I've seen people publishing way faster than I have.

One site which got penalized had only around 30-40 posts published, others 50-120. But all sites were new, mostly under 6 months.

I highly doubt it's anything to do growing too fast. Also probably not about AI content since you didn't use it and some of my AI sites with content created exact same way were not deranked.
 
domainmadness said:
But what's too fast? I've seen people publishing way faster than I have.

One site which got penalized had only around 30-40 posts published, others 50-120. But all sites were new, mostly under 6 months.

I highly doubt it's anything to do growing too fast. Also probably not about AI content since you didn't use it and some of my AI sites with content created exact same way were not deranked.
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I feel sorry for you.
But you know, nobody understands this algorithm.
There's no logic in 2025.

In the old days, you had to have content that was relevant to the visitor. And besides SEO, that was the whole point of the internet. Yes, I'm old, but so what? ^^
Today, we're buried under a mountain of instructions that often contradict each other from update to update.

My opinion is that they don't give a damn about the end user and want webmasters to cash in and take adsense.

I'm going back to basics. We'll see in the medium term whether I was right or not.
 
A4C69047-AE75-4D91-A1D6-3E8E29A4E731.jpeg

I started all over and I’ve gotten this under 21 days. It’s little but we’d get there
 
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