I started Geekflare in 2015, and Google recognized our work and started ranking. I won’t rant much, as Google ranked us without doing much SEO work. It was entirely based on quality, but in 2023, everything changed.

Flash back: pre-HUC, we were getting ~6 million pageviews monthly, we were 33 full-time and ~20 freelancers. We had a great, happy team. Our articles were performing well, and one day Google rolled out the algo updates, and everything started going upside down.

At first, we thought it was a general ranking correction, but Google had a different plan altogether. We listened to their guidelines, spent many months improving stuff, and hired industry leaders to give us some ideas, but nothing worked. Soon, it became obvious that Google HCU was not a typical search improvement algo but a plan to keep Google healthy financially.

Whatever it was, it impacted us in a hard way. We had no other options than to start downsizing. I was optimistic and planned to do it in phases, thinking if we see some recovery, we will stop it, but the ringmaster didn’t show any mercy.

Today, we are left out with just 2 people in the content team and have completely lost trust in Google.

I wish Google had been transparent, instead of implying 'just improve your content.' It would have saved us money and heartbreak.

Future: We are going to focus on building products where reliance on Google is less.

That’s the end. Chandan