Google is periodically releasing updates to apparently make the results shown in SERPs better and more relevant to the searched query. Results that are inline with their HCU and Google’s best SEO practices.
But is it the case?
Today we take a closer look at the latest June Core Update that started to roll on 30th June and lasted 16 days and 18 hours, meaning, it stopped just days back.
Let’s analyse English speaking markets for very competitive niches.
If you are as obsessed with tracking as me, you have noticed this happening – Parasite SEO is taking over:
Now, just in case you are not sure what Parasite SEO is, let me explain.
Parasite SEO is a shady practice used in competitive niches to abuse domain authority of a website and rank in a short time for difficult and valuable money keywords.
This is done in several different ways:
Subdomain: This one is easy to spot. Basically a new subdomain is added to an existing big and well-known website. This was abused a lot in the USA market for coupons a lot.
Subfolder: this works in 2 ways, either you buy a strong website and add a barely relevant or totally irrelevant folder to it, internally link it and buy external links and outrank everyone doing the best they can with whitehat SEO practices, used a lot in shady and competitive niches like online casino. Tons of domains were bought and changed this way – honourable mentions Techopedia, Business2community, Esportsinsider, Culture dot org.
Or you can make a deal with the webmaster/owner of the website and share the profits, again very typical for the niche above.
Post: This is the most commonly used practice for many niches including SEO, pharma, cosmetics, vitamins and much more.
This is as well the cheapest way, you basically buy a post on a reputable website, usually news like https://www.thesun.co.uk/ (very well known to sell these kind of posts), usually place a toplist and buy many external links to the post to rank fast and faster!
And now, the many times unintentional parasitic rankings happen with LinkedIn articles, Reddit posts and comments and lately even Facebook, as posts are now indexable.
We know that Instagram is starting to index their posts, so wait and see how these will be abused in no time!
If you are in SEO and/or marketing, you know that Google has decided to fight this phenomenon on the 5th of May 2024, so a bit over a year. But they are failing, full stop!
Google is fighting this only with manual penalties, so basically you need to report your competitors’ parasite SEO posts/websites. This is an extremely insufficient approach and needs to be changed to algo penalties to achieve any significant results.
All this fight for what? That with the latest update parasite SEO is dominating the SERPs?
Naturally, as an experienced SEO I know the drill, after the update is completed, Google rolls back as the results are not satisfying.
Google looks broken lately and I can only wish that they will fix all their issues asap as they are becoming a search engine from hell.
Till the next update, most likely in September and for sure in December.
We will be back with more analyses of the SERPs soon!
