Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits podcast!

This week, Jared plays hosts alongside his guest Tony Hill, a niche site expert with about 2 decades of experience. Come along as they dissect and digest the latest news on SEO, digital marketing, Google, niche sites, and beyond.

They kick off the show talking about the October core update, which just completed its 2-week rollout. Tony talks about how many sites got hit by both the HCU and this update, and Jared talks about whether or not the second update was a rollback of sorts by Google. 

What’s the current status of UCG sites? When do sites generally experience volatility during an update? Is Google demoting content that it thinks users don’t need as much when they have access to AI resources like Bard? Is Google taking a different route in interpreting users’ search queries? Tune in to hear their thoughts.

The next topic is Mediavine’s assessment of Google’s Helpful Content Update. The ad company reports that just 5.8% of its sites were negatively affected, but would Mediavine site owners agree with that statistic? How transparent is the company’s analysis? And was ad density one of the characteristics targeted by Google in the update? Find out what Tony and Jared think.

Moving on, they discuss an article on Reuters about Google, AI, and its Search Generative Experience. The news outlet calls the search tool a “red flag” in the lengthy relationship between publishers and Google, and quotes experts who confirm that SGE is going to decrease publishers’ organic traffic. 

Jared and Tony talk about the importance of the situation being reported in the mainstream news to create more awareness. They agree that it’s still the very early days and time will tell how it all plays out. Will the lite version of SGE remain? Will the antitrust lawsuit Google’s facing be a determining factor? Listen to find out what Jared and Tony think.

In the Shiny Object Shenanigans portion of the podcast, Jared talks about the Amazon Influencer Program and how it had taken a turn for the worse. His videos weren’t appearing anymore and clicks had plummeted… until a few days ago. Everything seems to have turned around: clicks are up, his videos are back, and his fingers are crossed for 4Q. Stay tuned to find out how it all ends!

Tony talks about Google Discover and how many websites are seeing a boost in traffic, which can happen after updates like the recent ones. He discusses brand new sites getting Google Discover traffic and sites that have been getting traffic for years going down to zero. He also mentions that Google is now considering a desktop version, and talks about his own experience with his sites on Google Discover.

As for weird niches this week, Jared goes first with Halloween Jokes. This seasonal site ranks for just 1300 keywords, some of which are in the top 10. The site is making some ad revenue and would be relatively easy to recreate using AI. They also talk about the possibility of making a series of sites for different holidays as a way to maintain traffic year-round.  

Tony shares a weird site as well, Find a Grave, which is like a Wikipedia with information about people’s graves. This well-done directory contains information that is crowdsourced and contains a lot of relevant pictures and an active forum with more than 47k people. 

They talk about the site’s smart monetization techniques. Aside from ads, users can send flowers to the gravesites in its database, essentially making it very useful. All in all, a weird and clever niche site. 

And that brings us to the end of another information-packed episode. Join us next week when they analyze the very latest in SEO news and bring some inspiration and laughs with their side hustles and weird sites.

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