That's 100% correct. Since Google's "helpful content update" Webmasters get massive amounts of "Crawled, not indexed" reports for anything Google considers "more of the same" or "thin content". If you're not an authority on a subject, simply meaning: you already rank for similar content, or if you don't get links from more popular domains, your content is in the abyss.

It's all under the guise of "We're fighting SPAM", but the algorithm (or model) they use is heavily skewed towards intents (actions) and brands (because they 'trust' big names).

And it's not working.

A simple, short informative blog about a tool you used that could be of interest to max. 100 people on this planet is no longer getting ranked, if it gets indexed at all.

Those posts tick all boxes: no incoming links, no authority, thin content.

It changes somewhat between "Google Updates", but it's pretty clear that it's no longer working.

Multiply the 100 people not finding that post by millions of queries and it's now a big problem for Google.

My dad asked me the other day if Google got worse because smaller companies are not paying Google enough money.

He didn't see any difference between ads and content, because all results are now big brands only.

"Helpful content" is such a misnomer. It removes all helpful content in favour of AI overviews and only shows intent-driven, commercial content.

We're watching the end of Google's hegemony for sure.