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There is a recurring lesson with these type of threads: don't build a business that is dependent on an unstable, black-box algorithm of a mega-corp. If your business is so fragile that an algorithm update by Google causes you to have no customers, then you should have built a business with a bigger moat, brand recognition, etc. It sounds like this business was more of an SEO hack.

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Even with brand recognition, it's hard to build a product review business that doesn't rely on Google. Until 2018, I was the head of insights at one of the largest online publishers in the U.S. 90% of the company's revenue was tied to organic search. Sure, branding helped to prevent huge impacts like the one that I saw, but plenty of our competitors suffered big drops that resulted in 100s or 1,000s of layoffs.

True, but I think it points to an inherent weakness in the business model. The reason it's so hard to build these businesses without relying on Google (and playing cat and mouse with their ranking algorithms) is because customers fundamentally don't care whether they get their content from you or someone else.

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