“Travel Lemming lost more than 95% of our Google organic search referral traffic in these updates.”
Google’s 2023 and 2024 updates wiped out thousands of independent sites. Big publishers get a path to recovery and small ones get nothing. Google flew 20 of those publishers to headquarters, apologized, and told them the traffic may never come back. The promised public discussion on AI controls turned into a contact form and one webinar. Google was negotiating a content deal with Reddit at the same time.