Why have some major personal financial money sites been hit hard in Google traffic?

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I am thinking of going into this space, and doing research into the personal money financial space. Some of the big names like Wisebread and PennyHoarder have been hit hard in traffic penalties in the last several years. I checked the articles for AI and it passed, so I am wondering why were they hit by Google?

For some of these sites the traffic went from 500k to 50k in the last 3 years.
 
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There are many, many factors that can lead to a drop în traffic. It's not just AI content. For instance, the personal finance niche has seen some changes coming from vloggers - some users prefer to watch videos on how to invest vs. read long articles.
The competition is also very fierce in this field, with very high CPC rates. Probably some bigger players came and took a large slice of the pie. The financial niche is very, very competitive. We all want money, so it's kinda obvious why.
 
Could be anything, really. It's not uncommon for SERPs to fluctuate in any niche. Big and small names alike can come and go and come back again and then maybe go again.

I'm assuming it was likely a combination of google clamping down on YMYL content (Your Money, Your Life) - basically anything finance and health related - for the last several years AND link building, negative SEO, technical issues, better sites overtaking them, etc.
 
YMYL focus and EEAT mean massive fluctuations for those sites in recent times.
 
Could be anything, really. It's not uncommon for SERPs to fluctuate in any niche. Big and small names alike can come and go and come back again and then maybe go again.

I'm assuming it was likely a combination of google clamping down on YMYL content (Your Money, Your Life) - basically anything finance and health related - for the last several years AND link building, negative SEO, technical issues, better sites overtaking them, etc.
The decline was from 500k to 50k and took 2-3 years. If I wanted to go into this niche how can I circumvent the YMYL?
 
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