June WiFi Money News Roundup
June WiFi Money News Roundup
Everything that happened last month
Believe it or not, June is already coming to a close and we’re already in the second half of 2023.
Last month wasn’t too groundbreaking in the WiFi money world, but I do have a few updates including a change in Google’s guidance about top-level domains and an expansion of YouTube’s Partner Program.
Let’s dive in.
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John Mueller claims that certain TLDs can hurt your rankings
In a Reddit thread, John Mueller said that using top-level domains that are “super cheap” and “overrun with spam” can hurt your organic rankings.
This is completely different from Google’s official guidance (and John Mueller’s earlier claims) that they treat all TLDs the same.
Normally I would take John Mueller’s statements with a grain of salt. I view him more as Google’s PR guy and someone who tries to steer SEOs into doing things that Google wants them to do but can’t actually enforce.
But in this case his advice seems accurate. How often have you seen a .space or .ninja site ranking for anything?
Read more here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1402iu2/does_it_matter_for_seo_if_my_site_is_com_site_or/
Ahrefs updates their traffic estimations
Ahrefs is a useful tool, but for whatever reason they always have issues with properly estimating traffic. I can’t remember a time when they were ever anywhere near being accurate.
The numbers were off before the update, and they’re still off now, but at least they’re a little bit closer to the real number.
Ahrefs post-update still underestimates traffic numbers by about 50% in my experience.
Read more here: https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-traffic-estimations-update/
Google releases a new search quality user feedback form
Google rolled out a new form that lets anyone report any webpage for “spammy SEO practices”.
One thing that’s noteworthy is that it includes an option for reporting “automatically generated content”.
This is an obvious sign that they’re having a hard time algorithmically detecting sites that spam AI content. We’ll see if it works.
Read more here: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/06/reporting-search-quality-issues
Read my article about the new form here:
YouTube lowers requirements for joining their Partner Program
YouTube lowered the eligibility requirements for channels to join their Partner Program (YPP).
Channels now have to meet the following three requirements before enrolling:
500 subscribers
3 public uploads in the last 90 days
Either 3000 watch hours in the past year or 3M Shorts views in the last 90 days
They’re also expanding their YouTube Shopping affiliate program to channels that are already part of YPP and have at least 20k subscribers.
Read more here: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/more-ways-for-creators-to-earn-on-youtube/
That’s all I have for this month. If you missed it, make sure you check out my April News Update (skipped May).
I’ll be back with another post for paid subscribers at the beginning of next week.