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The top-ranking HTML editor on Google is an SEO scam

(casparwre.de)
1743 points caspii | 1 comments | 07 Jun 21 21:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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ilamont ◴[07 Jun 21 22:47 UTC] No.27428272[source]▶
Same story for various Wordpress plugins and widgety things that live in site footers.

Google has turned into a cesspool. Half the time I find myself having to do ridiculous search contortions to get somewhat useful results - appending site: .edu or .gov to search strings, searching by time periods to eliminate new "articles" that have been SEOed to the hilt, or taking out yelp and other chronic abusers that hijack local business results.

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1. duskwuff ◴[07 Jun 21 23:03 UTC] No.27428439[source]▶
Free WordPress* themes are particularly bad in this regard. Since they're expected to contain HTML anyway, it's altogether too easy for the author of a theme to include a couple of links to a site they want to promote. Some themes take this to the next level by obfuscating the code that generates the promotional links, and/or including other code which makes the site not work properly if the links are removed.

*: and themes for other web applications, but mostly WordPress these days