Thank You to My Readers – Update on Google Changes

For several years I have provided Costco members with insight on new products, calorie and nutritional info on new bakery and deli items, product reviews, heating and cooking tips for holiday meals items and of course the Costco coupon book ad scans. I’ve received a plethora of inquires from readers, some a little frustrated, asking where some of these updates have gone. Those who’ve noticed are correct that some have nearly or completely stopped. I am very sorry for those who came to rely on finding that here, and I thought the behind the scenes things were my problem and didn’t want to make that anyone else’s problem, but perhaps now it’s appropriate to share a little about how my site works and why those have stopped.

How CostContessa Works

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Like all things in life, nothing is black and white, but I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible. I write content, I spend money to purchase the items and I spend time to write/photograph/handle tech stuff, and I pay for hosting/cloudflare/technology. I do not charge a subscription fee to read the content, and instead I run ads on my site so it’s free to read CostContessa. I am paid per view on the ads – which means I earn my revenue on volume. Google has historically been my primary source of traffic (Google has a monopoly in search, they are the largest source of traffic in the world, and pretty much every site’s largest organic search traffic source) – they also happen to be the primary source of ads (via my ad network, Raptive).

March 2024

In March of 2024, Google made major changes – I’ll spare you the sob story but CostContessa’s traffic dropped 80% overnight (more details on that at the bottom of this if you’re interested in seo/techy stuff). To frame this in the grand scheme, I had my highest volume day ever in December of 2023. So this has not been a slow decline or death. My site was healthy and doing great in the Google algorithm, and then one day, 80% of my business was gone. That means revenue dropped 80% overnight and what was a small, at-home, entrepreneurial business is now barely covering the expenses to run it. I hung on with hope for a while and continued writing, changed website hosts, upgraded some technology and cleaned up my site…but it’s now been six months, and I’ve seen only immaterial progress.

All this to say…this is why the posts and content that some of you have come to expect to find here have slowly disappeared. I’ll explain what happened at the very bottom for any techy nerd types who are interested, and I’ll spare everyone else lol 🙂

The Bottom Line

There is currently no longer enough return on investment to spend the time to create to new content. I have poured years into CostContessa, and it’s hard to just let it go…so yes, I’m still updating as much as I can justify. Sadly, unless there is a major algorithm change that would allow me to have a sustainable content business, I can no longer afford to invest my time to create content. At this point, I don’t see more time making a difference.

I hope that Google reconsiders how their current algorithm, search generated content and Reddit search prioritization impact the real content creators on the web, because I’m not the only site experiencing this, in fact it’s a widespread challenge with smaller content creators like myself – we’re dying off one by one.

Thank you to everyone who reads CostContessa. If you made it this far, then you’re a patient person. This wasn’t easy to write and I’m still not sure that I should even write it at all. As I begin to pull away more significantly, it just feels appropriate to say something for those who are wondering (and irritated) – and I hope this helped shed some light without thoroughly putting you to sleep! Tech nerds see the next section if interested 🙂

Thank you for your continued support,

Marie

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What Exactly Happened?

You’ve probably noticed Reddit search results sit on the top of Google – and all Costco searches are now directing to Reddit. Google and Reddit have an agreement and Reddit links are placed at the top of results for many keywords including all of mine. This has been catastrophic for me, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Google has also added some AI generated results, which often keeps users on the Google site, instead of linking out to find information from Content Creators like me. Links to actual websites now sit far, far down and that means much, much less traffic to them.

CostContessa was also down ranked for an unknown reason. In 2022, I was a an early tester for a Google Pilot Program (yes, Google paid me over a 8 month period of time to test a new web tool under development) – so my site has been fully vetted in the Google system for years. I am not told specifically why this changed, but it doesn’t make sense as my content has been the same since day one…but between Reddit’s prioritization and lower ranking in the algorithm, it’s effectively killed my business.

I hired an SEO expert to try to understand how I could improve the ranking and he had one leading opinion which boiled down to this…some of the information users come to my site for is viewed by Google as duplicated information. In other words, when I report on a new item at Costco – say the flavor of a new protein drink that Costco is carrying, and how many come in a case and how much it costs – this all is viewed as not-unique. Of course, as Costco members, we know that the amount in the case at Costco is different than other stores (it’s going to be way more!), and that the drink may come in 9 flavors in the grocery store but Costco is only going to carry one (or rotate them, or maybe it’s a variety pack with 3 flavors in it, so what is in the case that’s at Costco?) – so you all want to know which one Costco has and how much it costs and that’s the specific info I report on…but when the algorithm reads my site…it doesn’t understand this, it just sees text about a brand and flavor name that already exist on a thousand grocery store websites already. I kind of understand that in theory – but at the same time it’s also exactly why Costco members are looking on my site so I don’t know how to fix this. If you have any ideas, I’m all ears!