Google's Site Reputation offenders seemingly recovering, while HCU victims still waiting years later

Google’s Site Reputation policy has shaken up the online world, targeting sites that lean on third-party content — like freelancers — to churn out low-quality or spammy articles. The idea was to clean up search results and stop big brands from gaming the system with subpar content. But months after its rollout, the story unfolding is a tale of two recoveries. Some major players, like Forbes, are clawing their way back to the top. Meanwhile, smaller sites hit by the earlier Helpful Content Update (HCU) are still stuck in the mud, waiting for a lifeline that might never come.

The policy kicked off with a twist — it’s not an algorithm but a manual process. Google’s reviewers pick out offending pages and slap penalties on them, leaving the rest of a site untouched. They even gave websites a heads-up, with a two-month warning and extra delays before cracking down. The focus? Content from freelancers or outside contributors that rides on a publisher’s reputation to rank high. Think product reviews or finance tips that feel more like clickbait than help. Google says it’s about quality, not who writes it. Yet the results tell a different story.

Take Forbes Advisor. It took an 83% traffic nosedive in January 2025, according to Similarweb (quoted by WSJ), after Google flagged its freelancer-heavy content. Fast forward a few months, and it’s bounced back, recovering nearly $8 million worth of monthly organic traffic, as highlighted by Charles Floate.

How? They ditched the freelancers and switched to in-house writers. Other big names, like Wall Street Journal’s Buy Side and Men’s Journal, are following suit, tweaking their strategies to sidestep the policy. It’s working — traffic’s climbing, and they’re back in Google’s good graces. The pattern’s clear: adapt fast, and you’re golden.

But not everyone’s so lucky. Smaller sites hammered by the HCU  algorithm tweak — which went live in September of 2023 — meant to reward “helpful” content — are still reeling. Unlike the Site Reputation policy, there’s no clear fix here. Traffic’s gone, and owners are left guessing what went wrong.

The worst part is that it doesn’t seem like any blog hit by the HCU has recovered. Not even to 50% of the pre-HCU traffic. Some websites that managed to grab headlines did see slight recoveries, but nothing to be excited over.

This simply makes it seem like Google’s ready to give big brands a pass while it lets small businesses drown. So, where does this leave us? The Site Reputation policy’s a win for some, a bust for others. Big publishers adapt and thrive. Smaller sites and freelancers? They’re still waiting, years later, for Google to throw them a bone. Fair or not, that’s the game right now.

Sadly, the bad news doesn’t end there. It’s not just the HCU that smaller publishers have to deal with. It’s Google’s AI in Search results that’s also stealing whatever little traffic they’re getting. The situation has gone so out of control that Chegg has decided to sue Google for its unfair usage of AI Overviews.

But as expected, Google isn’t budging at all. In fact, it’s doubling down on AI in Search. Just a few hours ago, Google announced its expansion of AI Mode in Search. This mode basically seems to scan the web and provides a detailed response to your query. While Google does provide backlinks to websites it scans for information, I don’t see why users would feel the need to visit those sites when Google’s AI has already highlighted most, if not all, of the key points. 

As a relatively small publication ourselves, we, along with thousands of others, are definitely feeling the impact of Google’s push for AI in Search. It seems like sites like ours will slowly become a thing of the past once AI takes over search engines. So, if you regularly visit any niche blog (ours or otherwise), do those publishers a favor and turn off extensions like ad-blockers to help them keep the lights on. Things are getting tight around here and Google isn’t ready to play nice with us like it does with the top dogs of the internet.