My side project was annihilated by Google | Hacker News Reader

My side project was annihilated by Google

7 pointslilouartz3 comments

I created Pillser. It's a database of supplement research that I've been enriching for couple of years.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Probiotics/comments/1s2kxpy/for_over_2_years_ive_been_using_ai_to_analyze/

I used to get thousands of users every day and the project was growing daily.

However, something happened last year and the search traffic just completely tanked. It's now down to just a dozen of clicks per day, and no amount of product updates or blog posts is moving the needle. New content is not being indexed. I suspect that the website was labeled YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) by Google and as a result practically delisted. Even if you Google the name of the website, at this point you are finding links from other websites to the website, rather than the website itself.

This was meant to be a consumer facing product where people discover and research supplements by searching for research papers. Now it feels like a dead end.

What are my options?

If we assume a YMYL label, I can't guarantee this will fix your problems, but here are a few immediate steps you could take.

- Byline your content and include biographical information. "Lilouartz Smith is a supplement researcher in Anywhere, USA, focused on delivering top health-supplement information to blah blah blah" or whatever. Something along those lines. Google wants to see that you're some kind of authority and not some nameless faceless SEO hack or charlatan.

- If you have sources you can cite for anything (even if it's just a backlink to, like, a New York Times article relevant to some tangential point you're making), do so.

- Make sure your entires are dated and there's some kind of trackable update history in your content.

The only other thing I'll say: It's also possible that SGE is killing your site (i.e., the Google Gemini summaries). That's been happening with MANY sites for a while now; people aren't clicking through anymore on Google results because the AI search gives them a high-level overview in a sentence or two. There's not a lot you can do about that.

You could aggressively pursue an AIO strategy by posting regularly about your site and information in sources that AI loves to reference (Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, etc.). But that won't get you site visitors necessarily; it will just maybe get you more citations in GenAI.

Thank you –

With regards to your suggestions about attribution:

The whole premise of Pillser is that every single health claim of any sorts is backed by research papers.

Example:

Let's say you are exploring this probiotic:

https://pillser.com/supplements/spore-probiotic-6066

It makes claim that it helps with Reduced Abdominal Discomfort:

which then links to all the research papers that establish a relationship (or no relationship) between the ingredients in the supplements and the health claim:

https://pillser.com/health-outcomes/reduced-abdominal-discom...

which then links to the actual research papers:

https://pillser.com/research-papers/effect-of-the-probiotic-...

That's the core value proposition – every claim is either backed or dismissed by medical research.

I don't know how much more credibility I can add to the site.

A lot of the innovation happened in how we analyze every supplement by extracting the ingredients, normalizing them, and then doing the same with research papers. It has been a very exciting product to work on from the technical perspective. As far as I know, we are the only database to have this level of insight about the supplement market and research. However, it all does not matter if people cannot find it and use it.

I am in between of (1) Trying to get coverage and hopefully revitalizing the SEO (However, all attempts over the last 6 months didn't move the needle) (2) Finding a buyer who would benefit from the underlying technology. (3) Just reflecting on everything I've learned and moving to another project.

I am pretty stubborn so (1) is what I am pursuing, but it is hard to ignore the monetary loses. I was not thinking about it while the project was growing (I always thought I will grow it big and then monetize using referrals or by licensing the data), but that increasingly feels unlikely.

Just need advice from someone with more experience.

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