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Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

retrododo.com

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Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#41

Post by sjs382 »

This post sits wrong with me. They're not entitled to increasing traffic forever, and when traffic drops, it's not always due to an external force being exerted onto you.

I actually subscribe to RetroDodo on Youtube and noticed that I don't view their content anymore. This has less to do with any "algorithm" but rather the fact that their "voice" seems to have changed (both figuratively and literally... a lot of their videos have a new "host" altogether) and that they're directing more energy at different things (books, discussions about the industry, more gimmicky videos, etc) that aren't giving them the same return.

The founder used to post about gaming-related "SEO plays" (some wikipedia for Pokemon or something if I remember correctly?) on his personal YouTube channel. With this in mind, I get the feeling that SEO has become more of a focus than what brought in his audience in the first place.

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#42

Post by Tiktaalik »

fumar wrote: post #32
Tiktaalik wrote: post #20

This is really sad and upsetting to see. The real valuable content created by regular people is being obfuscated by useless AI white noise and nonsense content mill shit from giant corporations. Things just keep getting worse and worse for media.

Do you read retrododo? Their content isn't the gold-standard for retro emulation and most folks in the retro community are on discord or YouTube.

The fact that the "gold standard" content isn't in easily accessible text format doesn't seem like a good thing.

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#43

Post by plagiat0r »

While it is simple to blame Google for traffic surge, the thing is that I have them on my RSS reader for years and I barely visit the site even once a month.

Articles are not interesting to me at large, 99.9% of the time, there is no comments sections to correct them or engage and challenge authors or other readers, seems like owners so not care about what their audience has to say. They only care about views. There is no community at the site, so they are at mercy of a search engine without spending a dime on advertising.

There is only room for a few "best top 10 Pokemon ROM hacks" articles... It was good when it last, but all comes to an end...

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#44

Post by rpgbr »

edude03 wrote: post #9

I'll start by saying, I'm sorry this is happening to the retrododo team, I hadn't heard of them before this article (I'm not really intro retro games) but it seems like they make genuinely good and useful content for the community. On the other hand, more and more these days I see articles & videos that I (possibly unfairly) summarize as "My content deserves to be prioritized by 'the algorithm' and $BIG_CORP is again…

Agreed. I guess the only fair complaining is the text snippet that Google get from sites to put on SERPs, saving a click. This is gross.

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#45

Post by nickfromseattle »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #2

I would be interested to know why Google has presumably identified this site as spam. Too many SEO gimmicks that have flagged the site?

Google has been dealing with a 100,000x increase in low quality content post-LLMs. They were getting a lot of bad PR for their poor search results sending users to spam websites created by nefarious SEOs, so their most recent algo updated prioritized real brands and deprioritized "content sites" monetized with affiliate links and ads. Some "real brands", such as Retro Dodo looked enough like a "content site" that they were negatively impacted by the algorithm changes.

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#46

Post by consf »

miohtama wrote: post #8

The problem is not Google tweaking their algorithm causing large sites getting more traffic. The problem is Google having 90% dominance on the search, without credible competition. The problem is that Microsoft Bing never became a viable search engine. With more diverse Internet, like it was 15 years ago, issues caused by one provider were inconvenience, not a death blow.

[dead]

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#47

Post by spondylosaurus »

seanwilson wrote: post #37
spondylosaurus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Google de-rank pages with HTML/CSS errors? First I'm hearing of it, but it sounds interesting.

I made the Checkbot SEO extension ( https://www.checkbot.io/ ). Common HTML/CSS errors are fairly minor and aren't going to impact ranking, but are usually worth fixing to prevent potential problems. Really serious HTML/CSS errors could get in the way of users and search bots from viewing and understanding a page though. For example, broken HTML might lead to broken links, broken heading tags, broken meta tags and br…

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks for the explanation :)

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#48

Post by hadlock »

A lot of youtubers who run full time travel channels have started their own backup streaming video system. A lot of these guys have half million dollar sailboats or catamarans and getting demonetized would be disastrous.

If you hitch your wagon to the google bus, and the bus crashes, you don't have much recourse.

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#49

Post by jamesrr39 »

miohtama wrote: post #8

The problem is not Google tweaking their algorithm causing large sites getting more traffic. The problem is Google having 90% dominance on the search, without credible competition. The problem is that Microsoft Bing never became a viable search engine. With more diverse Internet, like it was 15 years ago, issues caused by one provider were inconvenience, not a death blow.

Is Bing not viable? It looks pretty ok to me. DuckDuckGo and Ecosia also lean pretty heavily on Bing and they work fine. If you know how to change your default search engine (and want to), you can pretty easily be Google-search-free nowadays.

Of course the problem is that most people just use the default search engine on their device, and Google has paid big money for being the default. And if you're not interested in tech, why would you bother setting up an alternative one?

> The problem is Google having 90% dominance on the search, without credible competition.

Certainly agree with this. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia :

> In January 2023, Ecosia handled 0.29% of European search requests, behind DuckDuckGo's 0.53%, Bing's 3.65%, and Google's 92.23%.

Pretty incredible market shares.

Re: Google Is Killing Retro Dodo and Other Independent Sites

#50

Post by TrevorJ »

hadlock wrote: post #48

A lot of youtubers who run full time travel channels have started their own backup streaming video system. A lot of these guys have half million dollar sailboats or catamarans and getting demonetized would be disastrous. If you hitch your wagon to the google bus, and the bus crashes, you don't have much recourse.

The issue here is that running a website at all is hitching yourself to the google bus.
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