One SEO professional asked John Mueller during the submitted Question and Answer segment about whether Google has different algorithms per niche.
They asked: is it true that Google has different algorithms for indexing and ranking of different niches?
They have two websites of the same type. And they have built them with the same process.
The only difference is that the two sites are in different niches, and currently one site is ranking just fine, while the other one has lost all rankings.
John explained that he doesn’t believe that they have anything specific regarding different niches.
Obviously, though, different kinds of content are less critical for Google’s search results than other types of content.
John references the quality raters guidelines, where they talk about things like YMYL, or your money or your life sites.
In this case, Google does have more critical algorithms that are involved in crawling, indexing, and ranking the sites.
But, it’s not the case that it’s something where you would say perhaps a bicycle shop has entirely different algorithms than a shoe store, for example.
They are both e-commerce type stores. But, the thing that they also mentioned in the question is that these are content aggregator sites and they are built with the same process and some of them work, and some of them don’t work.
To John, this feels like it’s more of a low-effort affiliate site where you’re just taking content feeds and re-publishing them. And this is where Google’s algorithms are not as invested in this content in terms of crawling and indexing, because it’s the same content that Google has already seen elsewhere.
From this perspective, if you think this may apply to your site, John would recommend focusing on making fewer sites and making them significantly better.
This way, it’s not just aggregating content from other sources, but you’re actually providing something unique and valuable.
This happens at approximately the 23:47 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 23:47
Let’s see, is it true that Google has different algorithms for the indexing and ranking of different niches? We have two websites of the same type and we’ve built them with the same process. The only difference is that the two sites are different niches, and currently one is ranking, while the other one has lost all ranking.
John (Answer) 24:06
So I don’t think we have anything specific with regards to different niches. But obviously, different kinds of content is differently kind of like critical to our search results. And if you look at something like our quality raters guidelines, we talk about things like your money or your life sites, where we do kind of work to have a little bit more critical algorithms involved in the crawling and indexing and ranking of the sites.
But it’s not, it’s not the case that you would say like a bicycle shop has completely different algorithms than, I don’t know, a shoe store, for example. They’re essentially both ecommerce type stores. But the thing that you also mentioned in the question is that these are content aggregator sites and they’re built with the same process and some of them work and some of them don’t work.
That to me feels like it’s kind of like, I don’t know your sites, it feels a bit like low effort affiliate sites where you’re just taking content feeds and publishing them. And that’s the kind of thing where our algorithms tend not to be kind of so invested in to make sure that we can crawl and index all of that content, because essentially, it’s the same content that we’ve already seen elsewhere.
So from that point of view, if you think that might apply to your site, I would recommend focusing on making fewer sites and making them significantly better so that it’s not just aggregating content from other sources. But actually, that you’re providing something unique and valuable in the sense that if we were to not index your website properly, then the people on the internet would really miss a resource that provides them with value.
Whereas if it’s really the case that, like, if we didn’t index your website, then people would just go to one of the other affiliate aggregator sites, then there is no real reason for us to kind of focus and invest on crawling and indexing your site. So that’s something where, again, I don’t know your websites. But that’s something that I would look into a little bit more rather than just, Oh, Google doesn’t like bicycle stores, they like shoe stores instead.
