I'm tracking traffic changes for 18,041 websites

My original idea for this email was to investigate HCU winners and losers (and potential recoveries).

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), Google just released the March Core and Spam updates.

So, my focus has shifted from analyzing HCU winners and losers to analyzing current winners and losers of the March updates.

Of course, it’s too early to make any conclusions about these updates (even based on traffic change data), since the updates will take a month to roll out fully.

It’s only been a bit over a day.

But I’m keeping a close eye on over 18,000 websites.

I know I can’t come to any conclusions yet, but I like to observe changes in real-time to see if any patterns emerge.

All members of my community, Website Growth Mastermind, have access to the list of 18,000+ sites and can observe traffic changes along with me.

Here’s what it looks like at the moment:

The sheet includes most of the sites monetized with Medavine and Raptive (18,041 total as of today).

You can sort by estimated organic traffic and % traffic change.

Super easy to find winning and losing sites.

I plan to update the sheet multiple times this month as the updates roll out.

Again, if you want access to the sheet, you’ll need to join Website Growth Mastermind. The current price is $15/mo or $150/year, but I plan to raise it soon, so now’s the best time to join and lock in the current price.

Once inside the group, you can find the link to the sheet in the Algorithm Updates section.

How are my sites faring?

I just checked all my websites. So far, none have received the manual “pure spam” penalty.

Probably because I haven’t broken any of Google’s spam policies.

It’s worth checking though, as many people have reported getting the penalty on sites that are definitely not spam.

From what I’ve seen, it appears one of the following was true for those who received the pure spam penalty:

• Expired domain abuse

• Scaled content abuse

• Site reputation abuse

• Publicly revealed a site they published AI content on

• The site hasn’t been updated for many years

Thankfully, my pure (except for a touch of human editing) AI content sites are going strong:

Not a surprise though, as I haven’t publicly revealed these sites, the content quality is actually fantastic, and I'm not publishing inordinate amounts of content in a short amount of a time.

It will be interesting to see how my sites fare through the rest of the rollout. So far, traffic is steady or increasing on all my sites.

Out of curiosity…

Any thoughts on the Google updates or questions for me?

I’d love to hear from you!

P.S.

• I’m raising the price of Site Stats Database to $39/mo soon. It’s currently $29/mo.

• This newsletter is open for sponsorships. Details here.