Hey folks,
Elliot here.
Arguably one of the spiciest topics in the SEO world in recent months has been around self-promotional listicles. The catalyst for much of this discussion was an article by Lily Ray.
Lily found that:
- Following the December 2025 Core Update, several large brands saw sharp organic visibility declines all starting around mid-to-late January, drops ranging from 29% to 49%.
- In nearly every case, the company's blog or resource hub was the main driver of the loss, often accounting for 77-93% of the site's total visibility.
- The hardest-hit sites were packed with self-promotional listicles: "best of" articles where the company ranks itself #1. Many of these sites had hundreds of listicles.
We've found that self-promotional listicles are actually not the problem. It's the quality of how they're written.
In this newsletter, I’ll show you why I think that, to help reassure you and your team that listicles are still worth creating if you do them properly.
Does Google actually penalize listicles?
No. Google doesn’t penalize formats. There is nothing about a “listicle” that Google inherently dislikes.
Google’s own guidance says its systems are designed to prioritize “helpful, reliable information that’s created to benefit people,” not content “created to manipulate search engine rankings.”
Listicles are helpful information to benefit people. They are only manipulative if they are poor quality, or lacking information and misconstruing the truth.
If there was something about the listicle format that’s a problem, we would have noticed. We use this strategy for most clients, and we’ve just not seen a clear correlation in search visibility decreasing for listicles over the last few months of core updates.
Here's what the rankings look like for a few examples:
- Example 1: 'Best embedded payment solutions for SaaS' a blog we created for Fiska.
- Example 2: ‘Best fintech marketing agencies’, a blog from our own website. Other than a brief dip in February, it has stayed steady.
- Example 3: This anonymous example from a large payment company takes the form of a ‘[X] alternatives’ listicle. It’s not budged from position 1.
But what Lily documented is still very intriguing: something caused those brands to drop so much search visibility. So what was it?
Listicles are a scapegoat: the problem is low-quality, mass-produced content
What Google has been penalizing is low-quality content produced in large quantities. It just so happens that a lot of this type of content takes a listicle form. Correlation does not equal causation: the problem is the quality, not the fact it’s a listicle or self-promotional.
We can see this clearly in Lily Ray’s research. There are three common themes with the brands that saw a drop in search visibility:
- Similar content was clearly produced en masse. Not 10 or 20…but hundreds of listicles built on identical boilerplate templates, using generic, low-quality info, and ranking their own software as the ‘best’ solution every single time.
2. The quality was poor. Great content takes time. A few lower-quality listicles is probably fine, but hundreds of them are not. If you Google the blog titles Lily quotes, you can quickly find them and see that these blogs are generic and feel overly biased with a lack of any unique insights. Basically, they are not useful to the reader.
3. They were likely produced largely with AI. LLMs can write a passable listicle in seconds. With a bit of light editing (removing those em dashes), some look okay at a glance. But dive deeper and it's clear they're more or less entirely AI-generated.
In 2025, Google updated its Quality Rater Guidelines to crack down on "low-effort" AI content, telling raters to flag mass-produced pages with no original content as "Lowest" quality. AI-generated content is almost always low-effort: by definition, LLMs can’t produce anything ‘original’ that adds unique insight to your listicles.
Why you should definitely still write listicles
Listicles should be on your radar as they're often the highest-converting content you can create.
Below is an example from three clients of ours: this is a list of the top five converting articles for each client. For each client, at least one listicle post appears in the top five.
Here's why they work so well:
- They capture buyers at the bottom of the funnel. Someone searching for "best X software", "X vs Y", or "top X providers" has moved beyond the awareness stage. They're evaluating vendors and preparing to make a decision. If you don't create this content, you're leaving revenue on the table and giving competitors the opportunity to shape the narrative.
- Serious prospects are always looking for comparisons. Any salesperson will tell you they regularly hear questions like, "Why should we choose you over your competitors?" Buyers want help understanding the market, and they're already searching for that information. If they don’t hear it from you, they’ll learn about it from your competitors.
- You're in the best position to answer that question. Your prospects aren't experts in your industry and they often don't know which differences actually matter. You do. A well-written comparison helps buyers evaluate their options using the criteria that genuinely matter, rather than superficial features. This helps build trust with readers, which is key to them deciding to choose your solution.
Tips for writing a high-quality self-promotional listicle
So how do you write a good listicle to avoid any visibility drops from Google?
Here are three tips to improve the quality of your listicles, and a few examples of how we’ve implemented this into real content:
1. Put yourself first: I’ve sometimes seen brands put themselves further down the page, usually in an effort to look non-biased. This is a mistake. Firstly, your reader knows you’re selling to them: they’re on your website. Secondly, as a result of trying to be humble, there’s a much higher chance of a reader leaving the page before they even read about your product.
The best way we’ve found to do this is to own that we’re writing the article, and be clear that we're going to talk about ourselves first. This addresses the elephant in the room – we’re selling to you – and helps establish trust by showing we’re honest and transparent.
For example, even just adding a simple sentence like “We understand our product may not be the best fit for everyone, so here are some other alternatives”
Also, rather than ‘ranking’ providers or claiming to be 'the best', it’s better to point out which use cases each solution might be best for.
2. Keep it objective. Don’t talk badly about or criticize competitors. The goal is to help prospects make a confident decision, not to make other companies look bad. Use neutral language, explain trade-offs clearly, and source any claims you make so readers can trust the comparison.
3. Add original insight. One way to avoid ‘low quality’ listicles is to make sure you add unique insights, like a "what to look for" section that explains how to evaluate each option, and where different tools tend to be stronger or weaker.
This is where your team's expertise becomes so useful. Prospects often don't know what to look for when comparing vendors, so an honest buying guide helps them make sense of the market.
Hopefully by now, you're convinced by the power of listicles.
Check out our article on this topic for more tips on how to write effective, high-quality self-promotional listicles: Why You Should Write About Your Competitors as a Fintech Company
Mint Studios Recommended Reads
- Is Google Finally Cracking Down on Self-Promotional Listicles?: Lily Ray’s substack article, looking at a drop in visibility for certain brands.
- Self-Promotional Listicles Aren't the Problem. Bad Content Is: A great piece by Devesh from Grow and Convert
- The Real Risk of AI-Generated Content: An interesting blog by Peec.AI, that provides a good overview of the risks of AI-generated content
Thanks for reading,
Elliot and the Mint team 🎉
Mint Studios is an agency that turns content into measurable pipeline for fintech and financial services. Learn more about what we do.
