HCU recovery IS possible but, not in any meaningful timeframe for those who lost all their income. I've been doing ridiculous tests and I can 100% categorically say that once your domain/content is "marked" that's it - literally. Take this example - we had nothing to lose, client had lost 95%+ of revenue and gave us permission to go all out. And we did. We culled, cleaned up and revamped content. We changed the UX, we even REMOVED a theme and made the website ultra light, basic theme, super light and clean. We tried radical navigation changes. Reclustering of content and adjustments to internal links. Heck we even: Disavowed ALL links (that's right, we did a full disavow test) - NOTHING, removed the disavow again (nothing). We even looked at the "compression" theory and changed content to use LESS common words and more unique words so that compressed bytes for the page would be HIGHER (lower potential spam score). We really did go that nuts. Subsequently - we've seen SOME recovery and we're working on getting more recovery, but it is clear and it is very real - suppression is suppression. Google said "move on" because they aren't willing to undo their shitshow of algo updates - there is a motive there 100% - its like a PURPOSE driven suppression of sites so that Google can pave the way for other things (not just Forbes, Reddit, General UGC) - there's something else going on. These suppressions are nuts, literally nuts. But, to have suppression like this isn't an accident or a mistake, it's been done on purpose. I believe Mr Whos the Boss referred to it as "Enshittification". I can tell you now - most HCU impacted sites are NON RECOVERABLE in the short term at least - but, we don't know if subsequent updates are going to adjust that classification system - potentially reducing suppression and allowing site owners i.e. affiliate to have the opportunity to recover. It's utter madness out there. #seo #google