Tips Tuesday – WP 6.5, CrUX Report Workshop, HCU Recovery
Hello Happy Site Owner!!
Tips this week include:
- WordPress 6.5 rollout was delayed 1 week, should be out today
- New Google CrUX Report Workshop
- How many sites have seen recovery from the HCU update
- Are paid ads the problem on sites losing ranking?
- Rumors on what is triggering Google to de-rank sites
BlogAid Happenings
Tips Tuesday is going to be a bit short on news this week because I was laid out with something from Wednesday through Sunday. I didn’t know if it was too much yard work or food poisoning or a combo or something else. But it took me all the way down.
It’s been over a decade since I’ve been ill with anything and I had forgotten what that kind of misery felt like.
I turned the corner with it on Sunday and felt good all day, so started eating normally again.
And then I discovered the food that poisoned me.
But on Round 2 I’m not depleted from yard work, so I’m not totally incapacitated. However, I still need to go easy until this fully passes. I’m sure I’ll be back to normal by mid week.
Needless to say, I’ve had no time at my desk last week, so I’m way behind on client work and tutorials and such. I’ll be catching up as best as I can this week while being careful not to overdo it.
My dog, Zak, has been so good through all of this and keeping low energy and letting me rest. But we have some playtime and walks to catch up on when I’m feeling better too.
WordPress Tips
WP 6.5 release date delayed 1 week
There were some bugs and one bit of controversy found in what was planned for WP 6.5 that caused the release to be delayed by one week.
The controversial thing was on where the fonts for the new Font Library would be stored because it used a path that was unconventional and would break some themes. They changed it to a better path. Here’s more on the discussion.
Why We’ll Wait to Update
There are a couple of other changes in WP 6.5 that I want to see tested in the wild for a couple of weeks.
I’ll be sending my site audit Hub members and Webmaster Training members instructions when I feel it is safe for us to update.
SEO Tips
CrUX Report Workshop
In the DIY SEO course this week we’re going to have a live workshop on how to get our site’s CrUX report from Google.
And, we’ll see how valid it is for most of our real site visitors because only Chrome users feed into this report.
We’ll also compare notes on how we’re doing with the new INP metric and other Core Web Vitals.
No Recovery from HCU Yet
As we near the end of the March Core Update, Search Engine Roundtable has reported on the 360+ sites that are being tracked by Glenn Gabe.
He’s been tracking these sites since September’s Helpful Content Update.
None have recovered yet from the HCU despite many making significant changes to their sites.
However, some have recovered from other algo updates a bit. Keep in mind that there were significant monthly updates from August through November. The HCU update was in September and that’s when so many site owners saw such a drastic drop.
According to the survey I sent to my DIY SEO course members back in November, 95% of those who responded were not negatively impacted.
But of the ones that were hit, I would consider them well written, and highly authoritative sites.
Are Ads a Problem?
Almost all of the sites of my survey responders run ads. Some have more than others.
So, we are not finding a common thing that Google raters are triggering on other than perhaps an ad to content ratio, but we can’t confirm that.
Plus, all of my peeps are with the upper ad agencies, not the bottom scraper ones. And I consider Google Ads to be a bottom scraper, though ads from that marketplace and others are placed by these upper ad agencies.
If those were an issue, Google would be cutting off its own nose to spite its face to de-rank sites with ads.
What is the Trigger?
It’s hard to say what all Google may have triggered on for each of these sites, and what it will take for these sites to recover their rank.
I don’t think it’s as simple as saying it’s the ads, as evidenced by how many sites with ads are still ranking.
And it wasn’t AI generated content sites. In fact, the HCU skipped a LOT of sites that clearly had junk, AI generated content. It seems the first half of the spam update in this huge March algo change got them.
I have seen some pretty harsh op-eds from SEOs claiming that one of Google’s human Quality Raters may have flagged a site and none of Google’s bot checks have been run to re-evaluate yet. So no recovery efforts on the part of site owners has had any effect to date.
Like I said, that’s from an op-ed, not a proven fact.
