Unconfirmed Google Update Wiping Out Top of Funnel Sites (Here’s What’s Surviving)

0:00It looks like we are in the midst of another Google algorithm update and some people are really suffering with this one. I myself experienced a huge drop, which I've since rebounded from. And I didn't know what was going on. It was crazy. I lost 50% of traffic from February 5th, this is with one of my top of funnel sites, from February 5th to

0:21February 7th. Traffic got cut in a half. And now, 3 days later, traffic is back at where it was, organic clicks. It's just crazy Google volatility. But Google won't confirm it. So this is a chatter from the SEO community shared by Search Engine Roundtable, Mr. Barry Schwartz, friend of the podcast, he's been on

0:41twice. Can't wait to have him on again. And he said, "Google search ranking volatility gets heated again February 10th. I'm seeing some early signs of yet another unconfirmed Google search ranking update with more volatility touching down today, February 10th. The chatter within the SEO community is starting to spike and some of the third-party tracking tools are showing volatility. It seems unrelated to the February 2026 Google Discover core

1:06update which started on February 5th." Barry shares all these dates on which volatility occurred, February 2nd, January 29th onwards, January 26th, 27th, and says, "Sadly, Google is not commenting on these unconfirmed updates, but we did see some evidence of Google going after self-serving listicles with those previously unconfirmed updates. And Glenn Gabe believes it was beyond listicles and was a Google review system, formerly product review system of sorts, an update to Google review system. I reported on this, I made a video on it. Crazy video, crazy study by Lily Ray with commentary from Glenn

1:42Gabe. That was episode 946 of the show. Google is firing shots, self-promotional listicles are getting wiped out. So now I'm going to share some commentary from the SEO community on this, and then I'm going to give my take on what I see happening and where the most volatility really is. Because interestingly, my bottom of funnel sites remained pretty much completely stable. And if you're watching on YouTube, not listening on Spotify or Apple Podcast, I'm showing screenshots. This is SEO industry

2:12chatter grabbed from Webmaster World. "Whiplash from all the head shaking over the nonsense this Google update is causing right now. I had proper Discover traffic again, but general rankings are going up and down. If I didn't know better, I'd say Google's systems are running amok." Another one. "Since yesterday, traffic is in a free fall.

2:32User engagement, zero. Zombies, 100%. Bots up again." Another one. "We're so depressed of the bad traffic in more ways than one that we are still in the January 2026 instead of a new February 26 post. The downward swings are just so wild that you just lose complete hope in what you are doing. The recalibration, or as we used to say in the earlier days, Google dance has started once again." And Semrush search volatility is

3:01ranked at a 9.3 out of 10. That is high. That's a Google quake. Sistrix volatility is way spiked. Honestly, just the graphs all over the place are going nuts. The top comment on the Search Engine Roundtable post is actually why I'm making this video. So this top comment says, or this podcast episode, this top comment says by somebody named Hunaar, and it says, "I finally had to get a job after months of Google just

3:27killing any type of money I would make. I find myself coming to this site less and less. Sad after almost 20 years in this industry. Sad times for sure." There's a lot of people commiserating with Hunaar. Even Barry Schwartz commented and said, "Sorry." So, okay, this is my take on all of this. My take is that the sites that are mostly focusing on top of funnel keywords are

3:50the ones that are getting hit the worst. And that could be if you were just a pure news play. If you're just a pure news site, you're not selling anything, you might get hit really bad, especially now because you're depending more on Google Discover traffic. Back in December, I made an episode, episode 904, "Google just cut news traffic in a half, 51% to 27%, now what?" And the data is showing a massive decline in Google search traffic to news publishers. At the same time, publishers are becoming increasingly dependent on Google Discover, which is a traffic source that is very volatile, that is unpredictable, that is difficult

4:27to control. But you don't have to just be a news site. You could also be an affiliate site focusing only on top of funnel keywords. Now, from what I've seen over the past, I don't know, many years, actually, is that if you are selling things and you have a portion of your SEO that is going after bottom of funnel keywords, especially keywords that are under-targeted, and lots of bottom of funnel keywords are, most bottom of funnel keywords actually are under-targeted, because it's only a small subset of people who know what

4:58they want, who are looking to convert. And because there's a small subset of people, most SEOs don't bother to go after those keywords. And these keywords are not getting affected by Google algorithm updates. Year after year after year, my bottom of funnel SEO landing pages remain stable within Google algorithm updates. And again, these are pages that are targeting people who are looking to buy something, to use something, to make a discovery call, versus the top of funnel pages targeting informational content, informational searches, who, what, why, when, where, how, those are experiencing a lot of volatility. And it's those webmasters who have the the hardest stories, who

5:39are sharing these stories as comments in updates like this. So okay, let's say that you are in this unfortunate position where you are mostly targeting top of funnel queries, you're experiencing volatility with your top of funnel pages. This is my recommendation. My recommendation is don't depend on pure ad revenue. If you're going to be doing affiliate, do it with pages targeting keywords where people are specifically looking for a solution. And these aren't generic, you know, best X for Y keywords. That's what a lot of people think these keywords mean. It's It's not keywords like that. All you have to do is start with just a general

6:18keyword that comes to mind that you might think is bottom of funnel in your niche. Find competitors that are targeting the keyword well, and then go and see what else they are ranking for. A lot of the time, if you have a competitor who is targeting a keyword very, very well, as in they put it in their page title, they put it in their URL slug, they put it in their H1, they put it at the beginning of the first sentence, they put in their meta description, and they're ranking well, a lot of the times these competitors are also ranking well for lots of other desirable keywords to you. So you just

6:48find these competitors who are ranking well for these keywords, then you see what else they are they are ranking well for, and a lot of times these other keywords that they're ranking well for, they're not even properly optimizing for these keywords. So now you have a whole slew of keyword ideas, things that you can go after, that you can actually target properly, where you can put the keyword in the places that I just described. And these are bottom of funnel keywords, where lots of other

7:11people aren't targeting these keywords. And because you have existing rankings in probably a topic or a niche, you stay within that topic and niche, and these are the types of keywords that bring customers, that bring users, that bring leads, where there's not a ton of volatility behind them because not a lot of people are targeting them. There's huge gaps in Google surfaces for content that satisfies these keywords. So you can continue putting up the top of funnel content, which is honestly still improving your topical authority, but while you're doing that, make a product or sell affiliate products and do it with bottom of funnel keywords. Again,

7:49not the typical best X for Y keywords, keywords that you might not expect to go after, you might not think of immediately, but during keyword research you find those types of keywords. If you're worried that you can't make a product, I assure you you can. Making products is easier than ever now. Like I had a a co-founder of mine, Ram Beruet, on this show, episode 908 of the podcast, "Vibe Coding for SEO, Building Rankable Apps, Tools, and Revenue in Minutes." And Ram shares, it's just so easy to vibe code apps now. You can have

8:19them as subdomains on your root domain. You can make linkable assets. There's all sorts of things that you can do, and it's really easy. Ram tells you how to start in that episode. I see Ram making 2 months' worth of iterations on one of our companies, and he does it in an hour using Google's anti-gravity. It's insane what people can do right now. So my recommendation is to not experience this volatility, because honestly, my sites that primarily go after bottom of funnel keywords, I'm not saying this to brag or or to or to be inconsiderate for people who are getting hit, but these sites have not experienced any significant

8:57volatility over years. Versus I'm not immune to volatility. My sites that go after top top of funnel keywords, these sites get hit a lot more. These sites experience way more volatility as I showed in this episode. So just switch up your keyword targeting already. You have the topical authority, because if you are already if you are ranking for keywords and getting volatility, you have the topical authority. Just go after smarter, more hidden keywords. See what competitors are ranking for. Take those keywords which they're not optimized for properly. Make things that you can sell, please, or sell affiliate products, and sell them with these keywords that are going overlooked, that

9:34don't experience the volatility. That's my advice, but this is a crazy algorithm update that we're seeing, an unconfirmed algorithm update that we're seeing, and that's what I wanted to share with you on this episode of the show. If you want to go deeper into my method of finding these keywords, I have a 2-hour section on how to find me showing how to find these overlooked purchase intent keywords, my exact system for it. That's just a small part of my SEO course Compact Keywords, which is really like what Compact Keywords is about. You probably could, if you get Compact Keywords, you probably could just start with that section and then go and watch

10:08the other sections and look through the other sections. You could probably just start with that section. I've had people who have done that. But Compact Keywords is my entire SEO system and you can check that out at compactkeywords.com. This is episode 955 of The AdWords Show. This is my daily digital marketing podcast. 955 days in a row doing this show. I'm getting over a cold. Two days ago I had a temperature of 104, 100, sorry, 100.4 Fahrenheit, 38 Celsius, and I still am doing the show every day. No days missed. I recorded yesterday. I recorded the day before. I'm recording today. No days missed. If you watch this on

10:45YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.