What's your finding after Google December Algorithm update?

It is clear that December Google update is different. Lots of websites got hit hard by this update. But, extra attention got the affiliate websites. Pure affiliate sites are almost destroyed by this Google algorithm update.
Instead of lots, I can say Most of the affiliate websites. You publish 100's of "best" or "review" related articles and after a few months rank and bank. All of those websites got hit, which are following those strategies. Google just hating those sites and don't want to give rankings.

I run a few affiliate websites, and most of these websites got affected by this update.

I always try to help visitors, and thus my website user experience much better than a typical affiliate website. So, Google is not giving much priority to user experience anymore.

I don't create lots of links as well. But, had enough links to rank a website.
So, backlinks aren't an issue either.

I maintain standard offpage and onpage seo too. I am in the affiliate business from the last 5-years. This the first time Google algorithm updates impact so much, and I feel that something has changed Google that didn't on other Updates.


Most of the time, big authority affiliate sites were getting rid of this type of Google update. But, this time, I can see lots of affiliate authority sites punished as well.

My primary findings are publishing lots of "how," "where," or non-affiliate content and publish affiliate content on a small scale.
We have to prove on Google eyes that we don't run an affiliate website instead of that this website is trying to help visitors.

Although I compared a few winners and losers sites. But, It is very hard to find any common issues.

What's your finding of this December Google algorithm update? Please also indicates how many visitors you were getting before this update.

It was a nonsense update only done to steal traffic during holiday season, and now they have reversed it

It's really a killer update hurts more than COVID

It is very difficult to find the common point. I know sudden drop in rankings & traffic will create lot of frustration.

Edit your site pages that lost rankings with extra content, make sure to have good user experience. Fix any other site issues. Never go for cheap PBN links.

Noticed some of the affiliate sites getting rankings back. Hope everything will be fine

I read somewhere that a group of people did a survey on a bad performing affiliate site. They found out that the site had too much "10 best", "10 top" articles and the ratio of those articles to the other informative ones was way too high. The OP said they decided to generate more informative articles like "how to", in-depth review of a particular product, comparison articles, etc. So, after 3-4 months of publishing such informative articles on a daily basis, they started seeing positive changes. So, what you have found might make sense.

I'll start analyzing my published articles right away and see the ratio. And btw, the biggest of my affiliate sites used to have 1500-2000 clicks a day according to search console's performance report, now it is 300-400.

notNewB said:

They found out that the site had too much "10 best", "10 top" articles and the ratio of those articles to the other informative ones was way too high. The OP said they decided to generate more informative articles like "how to", in-depth review of a particular product, comparison articles, etc. So, after 3-4 months of publishing such informative articles on a daily basis, they started seeing positive changes.

Click to expand...

Well, at least now they know how to make affiliate sites.