I was recently at a wedding where there was a magician who asked for my sister's phone. He then (seemingly) opened Google chrome, handed me the phone and then said Google someone famous. He didn't see what I searched but then asked my sister to put the phone in her bag. He then asked me for my phone, opened up Google chrome and then layed it flat face up in his hand. He then asked me to hover my hand over the phone, and then without me or him touching the screen, the celebrity that I search on my sisters phone appeared on my phone.

He didn't have mine or my sisters phone long enough to install any apps or change any settings. I checked my search history and there wasn't anything other than what I had previously searched and then the celebrity.

Please someone tell me how this is done as I have not slept since, and fear I will never sleep again until I know..

The amount of gaslighting since HCU hit has been incredible.

"Niche site? Well, you're probably an affiliate spammer or made-for-Adsense. Not a niche site? Well, we don't like websites that touch on too many topics. That seems like "written for search" spam to us.

The reason your rankings tanked is because your content is bad, but that content is good once it's been copied and pasted on a social media site.

Oh, you have ads on your site? Well, that's bad. We don't care if it's only one small unit that is halfway down the page and barely covers your hosting costs. This article from a large news website that has an ad after every paragraph is better.

When big sites use ads, it's called generating revenue. When small sites use ads, it's called made-for-Adsense."

Unreal.

You have other SEOs cheering on the demise of small publishers because 1) they work in e-commerce or local and therefore aren't impacted by these updates, and 2) they drank the koolaid and genuinely believe that these updates are only impacting those typical over-optimized SEO spam blogs that used to place the answer halfway down the page. That, or their traffic was already so low that they barely noticed the dip.

News flash: every small content creator is getting pulled down by proxy. Bit by bit, independent publishers are being phased out and replaced by large corporations.

When HCU first hit, I came here looking for answers. One comment linked to a tweet from John Mu, who was basically painting all "niche site" owners as spammers who rip content from Reddit. I will always remember that tweet because it perfectly encapsulated the search team's view of small publishers. Everything since has just been gaslighting nonsense that is designed to convince us that we are the sole cause of our problems.

To put it in perspective, there has been no tangible evidence that any HCU-hit sites have recovered.

Do you honestly believe that not one small publisher has managed to increase the quality of their content in the last seven months?

Oh, and don't worry. Your industry might be safe for now. But if you're too small to sue, they'll eventually come for you as well.