Does Wordpress negatively affect rankings?

I’ve got a friend who is convinced that Wordpress negatively affects rankings, he’s done a case study of over 30 sites and on average 8/10 of the Wordpress sites have been penalized in some capacity regardless of how content is created, unique ip, unique hosts, etc.

and I’m curious does anyone else have this mindset? And if so what’s an alternative CMS?

That's is correct assumption. Google hate wordpress as wordpress itself is free.
Try squarespace, weebly, webflow.

IM Dude said:

That's is correct assumption. Google hate wordpress as wordpress itself is free.
Try squarespace, weebly, webflow.

Click to expand...

pretty much the same reason I thought about it as well, which sucks because there’s personally so many amazing plugins with Wordpress.

- I am thinking more from the angle of using their custom fields / taxonomies, is this still possible with the options you’ve listed? Last time I used square space I didn’t entirely enjoy the experience.

- I looked into some options today like Galv, Laravel, and Buldit, all of them seem to offer some great things, but they’re also all free

AutomationIsKey said:

pretty much the same reason I thought about it as well, which sucks because there’s personally so many amazing plugins with Wordpress.

- I am thinking more from the angle of using their custom fields / taxonomies, is this still possible with the options you’ve listed? Last time I used square space I didn’t entirely enjoy the experience.

- I looked into some options today like Galv, Laravel, and Buldit, all of them seem to offer some great things, but they’re also all free

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I guess, but if your are in for a long haul you still wanna use wordpress.

For freelancing check out webflow.

Maybe grab bigger data and analyze that. That's scandalous if it's even 10% true.

Given than wordpress powers 33 million+ sites

https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/WordPress
And that it powers 43.2% of all CMS based websites

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress
Saying WordPress penalises sites by looking at 30 sites is so untrue.

Despite your conclusion, you need to 100X your sample size to get a decent conclusion on whether WP is good or not.

GrantsKing said:

Given than wordpress powers 33 million+ sites

https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/WordPress
And that it powers 43.2% of all CMS based websites

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress
Saying WordPress penalises sites by looking at 30 sites is so untrue.

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Not proud of my data science black hatters here. I mean, OP's friend.

I do not think so. Majority sites are hosted on WordPress . Many sites ranking for the first page are using WordPress.

reaaski said:

Maybe grab bigger data and analyze that.

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Well that’s the exact reason I made this thread.

So how is splishsplash still running his website farms for real businesses? And the clinic I worked at is still top 1 on WordPress. Their PBN on clean domains is mostly WP and Drupal mix.

Do not listen to ppl who say google penalizes WordPress websites, that would count also the 73%+ of the websites made worldwide and the fortune 500s who use wordpress, what is your friend's credentials to conduct this case study with these 30 websites and advise the digital space with false theories. I can do one case study and show you why elementor wordpress websites and similar page builders are deranking or not performing well. But wordpress itself is not a issue. It is the page builders that are getting hit and they do not know how to structure page builders because they are visually dragging and dropping and some of those image columns are not recognized and a bunch more other stuff long story to explain , but definitely the real answer is either master every aspect technical and visual of the page builder if you go that route or custom wordpress from scratch. If google deranks wordpress websites, yoast and hundred other plugins would no longer be in business.

rusomike90 said:

Do not listen to ppl who say google penalizes WordPress websites, that would count also the 73%+ of the websites made worldwide and the fortune 500s who use wordpress, what is your friend's credentials to conduct this case study with these 30 websites and advise the digital space with false theories. I can do one case study and show you why elementor wordpress websites and similar page builders are deranking or not performing well. But wordpress itself is not a issue. It is the page builders that are getting hit and they do not know how to structure page builders because they are visually dragging and dropping and some of those image columns are not recognized and a bunch more other stuff long story to explain , but definitely the real answer is either master every aspect technical and visual of the page builder if you go that route or custom wordpress from scratch. If google deranks wordpress websites, yoast and hundred other plugins would no longer be in business.

Click to expand...

It's easier to learn coding. At least more fun for me. So cool skill. And can be turned into engineering.

Static landers and sites on plain html and js enough to publish links. Then some cloaking using node.js here and there.

Doing it with page builders would kill me. I don't know how to optimize page speed for it. It's harder than coding and optimizing page speed. It's just so chaotic and hard to understand. Especially when there are no docs.

Doing all these optimizations with WordPress api to optimize 40 plugin woocommerce theme... God. Thanks I don't have to do that. Tried once. I'm happy to not work at this.

reaaski said:

It's easier to learn coding. At least more fun for me. So cool skill. And can be turned into engineering.

Static landers and sites on plain html and js enough to publish links. Then some cloaking using node.js here and there.

Click to expand...

Yes, you are right what your saying, Even tho I have background in code, I enjoy the pleasure of page builders its like digital painting because I can optimize them easily technically and since we been using the same page builder for years (elementor) We have encountered every possible trial and error it could have an affect on google over a 6 year period and have solved all those issues which we generated millions in revenue combined in those years for clients (my team included). Now google is going for those issues and we already seen them as problem years back and people now are panicking. I was even thinking about making a no code academy a while ago for elementor I asked BHW users here before but def no time now to do that I got a few yes answers, Its been a while I freelanced, but if I was making websites again. I would forsure use page builders because we have made them rank #1 for years and seen the proof of concept. But I have also seen people who just know how to use a page builder and nothing else backend which is not enough and then they complain about SEO results. Even page builders should know a level of coding to read and understand what to fix and edit.

Im not sure the demand still for elementor pro websites & seo for the future to come I have to watch what is going to happen with search engines, Ai, websites in general. If it is a demand maybe this year I will release something that could be helpful by summer or sooner if I did see alot of curious interests. E-course whatever you guys call it, Wouldnt mind making some extra passive cash by providing REAL info and in return seeing a bunch of tech page builders be better at what they do.

Old BHW Thread of mine on Elementor:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/no-code-academy-is-it-worth-it.1528089/

A lot of big sites are wordpress, so no, Google won't discriminate it, just you need speed loading and clean code enough.

Here is my argument:

Google spider can recognize wordpress from miles away

Https://www.searchenginejournal.com...rdpress-not-inherently-better-for-seo/474737/Google hates blog posts.
Google don't want you to create blogs, it wants you to read news from NYT, get med advice from heathline and buy products after you read the reviews from wirecutter.
In short it favors huge authority sites
and
it wants you to click google ads at google real estate aka serp results.
What are those 73% wordpress sites are?
Most of them are bogs and not websites. If not lots and lots of them are that takes huge resources from google, indexing , ranking etc
So you can see a clear conflict of interest.

I don’t think wp itself is the issue, but it could be the themes he used. Not all wp themes are created equally. If he used a completely custom theme, pretty sure he would have gotten better results. I am not sure if he did that.

IM Dude said:

Here is my argument:

Google spider can recognize wordpress from miles away

Https://www.searchenginejournal.com...rdpress-not-inherently-better-for-seo/474737/Google hates blog posts.
Google don't want you to create blogs, it wants you to read news from NYT, get med advice from heathline and buy products after you read the reviews from wirecutter.
In short it favors huge authority sites
and
it wants you to click google ads at google real estate aka serp results.
What are those 73% wordpress sites are?
Most of them are bogs and not websites. If not lots and lots of them are that takes huge resources from google, indexing , ranking etc
So you can see a clear conflict of interest.

Click to expand...

The main question of that article you sent whether its better for SEO to use WordPress websites then coded scratch websites. and all it basically said is no using wordpress is not suppose to be better for seo then coding website. How do you send a source and rephrase it haha. Even the article you sent John Mueller literally said on that blog you sent , that some seo people like to focus content and use wordpress cms and some ppl like to build their own cms so they even laid out the differences implying both are good options and the theory he debunked was that Wordpress was suppose to be better then coded websites, he said no to that, but he did not down wordpress itself at all and laid the differences to give ppl options to choose. That itself should show wordpress is not the issue, its the elements used within wordpress (Page builders, plugins, speed etc). Nothing from that article you sent references to this specific thread the person asked if wordpress affects SEO in a bad way.

and even to what you are saying about google spider, still that spiders mention would be pointless, if we are referring to specific scenario on just blogs topic then I can see your point with blogs and serps and on page content itself but nothing with wordpress correlation yet. I like to be careful with my responses and detailed as possible because even passing info that maybe could not be inaccurate or accurate but just presented wrong could give a different answer to someone trying to find answers. The short answer is no, there is 0 affect with wordpress websites and Google serps. They have other motives, but it is not because of wordpress. Do you really think google will be trying to down a valuable partner open source like wordpress who brings a good portion of market value. Literally there are plugins built by google to integrate with wordpress and others.

For me wordpress sites are perfom best in google search result.

Grok Answer:

No, it's not accurate to suggest that Google would intentionally try to undermine or "down" a valuable partner like WordPress. In fact, Google has a vested interest in supporting open-source platforms like WordPress because they contribute to the growth and diversity of the web, which aligns with Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Google provides various tools, plugins, and resources that integrate with WordPress precisely because it recognizes the popularity and significance of the platform. These integrations benefit both Google and WordPress users by enhancing functionality, improving analytics, and facilitating various interactions with Google services.

The existence of plugins built by Google to integrate with WordPress underscores the cooperative relationship between the two entities. Such plugins enable users to leverage Google's tools and services within the WordPress ecosystem, ultimately enriching the overall web experience.

Overall, it's more accurate to view Google's support for WordPress as a collaboration aimed at empowering website owners and developers rather than as an attempt to undermine or diminish WordPress's value as a platform.

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Google provides several plugins and tools that can be integrated with WordPress websites. Some of these plugins include:

1. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP by ExactMetrics (formerly GADWP): This plugin allows you to easily integrate Google Analytics with your WordPress site, providing detailed insights and analytics reports directly within your WordPress dashboard.
2. Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin generates a special XML sitemap to help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com to better index your site.
3. Google Tag Manager for WordPress: With this plugin, you can easily add Google Tag Manager to your WordPress site, allowing for more advanced tracking and management of tags, scripts, and snippets.
4. Google Adsense: Google offers an official plugin for WordPress that makes it easy to integrate Google AdSense ads into your WordPress site and manage your ad placements.
5. Google reCAPTCHA: This plugin helps protect your site from spam and abuse by adding Google reCAPTCHA to your WordPress forms, such as registration, login, and comment forms.
6. Google Maps Widget: This plugin allows you to easily add customizable Google Maps to your WordPress site using widgets or shortcodes.

These are just a few examples of plugins provided by Google or developed by third-party developers in collaboration with Google. Integrating these plugins can enhance your website's functionality and improve its visibility, analytics, and user experience.


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I would really advise for people to critical think for themselves before listening to anyones answer that could affect your work. No matter how creditable they sound or the articles they provide. Including mine!! You cant just understand SEO or marketing and have all the answers to evolving changes, real marketers understand that you have to understand capitalism as well and understanding the perspective on how these disciplines operate within larger socio-economic systems.