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Google is coming for your bad content: The Media Roundup

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Google is coming after bad SEO content again

There are three guarantees in life: death, taxes, and SEOs trying to game Google. But when there are 5.6 billion searches per day, is it any wonder that people will try to get their piece of the pie? Now however, Google is cracking down on those blatantly gaming the system.

This overview of the changes from Jacob Donnelly is really helpful from a publisher perspective. There are two big changes worth noting: one is that sites deemed to have ‘relatively high amounts of unhelpful content’ are going to be penalised (Google have provided a long list of questions to ask yourself to determine how unhelpful you might be!)

The second change is affecting publishers who re-write or curate original reporting. There’s a tonne of history and quite complex issues with this change which I don’t have space to get into here. But generally these changes are good for quality publishers with original content.

This publisher was the victim of a ransomware attack: how they minimised the impact and lessons you can apply

In June 2022, a local, independently-owned publisher found its servers had been hacked and were being held ransom. The good news is they were prepared. Here are their lessons you can take and apply. This has just given me a kick up the butt to refresh some of our own security.

10 free sources of data on the media industry

Journalism.co.uk has rounded up ten best places for media research on the internet to help you get the relevant numbers on everything from digital news to diversity.

The biggest challenges facing subscription publishers

Toolkits went and asked a few thousand publishers what subscription challenges are top-of-mind at the moment. Unsurprisingly, subscriber acquisition and retention topped the list, but data and analytics, pricing and promotional approaches and emerging technologies also featured heavily.


This content originally appeared in The Media Roundup, a daily newsletter from Media Voices. Subscribe here: