Google’s Algorithms?
*Google Algorithm Suspicions: The author suspects that Google’s algorithms might be suppressing their [sic] website due to its focus on left-leaning political, economic, and social topics, including discussions of war and genocide.
*Website Visibility Issue: The author’s website, mirroring their Substack space, experienced a sudden drop in views after implementing Google’s optimization advice.
*Substack Advantages: Substack allows for writing without self-censorship and offers a platform for personal perspectives, but it lacks easy discoverability on the internet.
*Reason for Leaving CounterPunch: Dissatisfaction with the website’s decreasing publication of the author’s work and lack of payment for writers.
*Author’s Goal: To reach a wider audience with their [sic] writing.
Several months ago, I set up a website to reflect, mirror, my Substack space on the web. It has the same name and is thelastnewleftist.com. When I set the site up, the techs at GoDaddy, which hosts my WordPress writing, told me that there were some things that I could do to enhance the site so that the so-called robots at Google could discover my writing. I followed that advice and the emails I received from Google on how to optimize my site. What seems to have happened in the last several days is just the opposite of what I had hoped for in making the site more discoverable by Google and anyone who searched for the issues that I write about.
I had heard over the last several years that the algorithms that Google establishes favor some kinds of subjects over others. In other words, Google may not like writing on the political, economic, and social left. Those are the topics I write about. The robotic searches may not like certain references to wars and genocide. That’s also what I write about. I’m pretty careful when I cite sources, so that couldn’t be an issue, if indeed there is an issue.
The advantage of writing on Substack is that a writer can write about what is important from a personal perspective. Substack, however, for whatever reasons, is not easily discoverable on the internet. But the single greatest advantage on Substack is that self-censorship is not an issue. People either read writing or they don’t.
About a week ago, I began following the views on my WordPress GoDaddy site, and the views suddenly went down, a phenomenon that I have read about but I will not cite now. It appears that the so-called optimization from Google may have been limiting the visibility of my writing. I don’t know, but the coincidence of Google “kicking in” and the loss of views seems a bit out of the ordinary.
I began writing on Substack and WordPress because I was disgusted with the online political site on which I had written for years. That site, CounterPunch, is well regarded, but they seemed to have taken less of my writing beginning some time during the past year, and in any case, they don’t pay for their writers’ work. I just want to get my writing out to more people. That doesn’t seem so unreasonable from a writer’s perspective.
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