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

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.

Also phone problems: Google a problem with a phone and the top hit will be a whole bunch of churned out articles with generic copy on the cause (sometimes there are bugs in the software, so reboot your phone).

Any technical issue, really. There's a ton of autogenerated content out there with low-effort troubleshooting tips. A lot of it is used as lead generation for scammy antivirus/antimalware/"cleaner" software, paid tech support, or outright tech support scams.

That's why I append reddit, stackoverflow, superuser when I search for technical solutions. At least those sites are still full of user-generated content with good answers upvoted to the top.

You know, I was joking the last few times the subject came up, but I'm getting seriously worried that the more people mention using that kind of trick on HN, the faster advertisers will catch on and start building reddit-based SEO strategies.

Not sure how we should react :/

Oh, it's no secret. Google's autocomplete will actually suggest appending "reddit" to certain queries. For example, let's take one of the most SEO-spammy queries imaginable, "best mattress 2021". Google will suggest:

- best mattress 2021

- best mattress 2021 consumer reports

- best mattress 2021 reddit

- best mattress 2021 for back pain

- best mattress 2021 wirecutter

etc.

But of course Reddit is already rife with shills. Not sure about CR.

Don't search for "best". That's specifically requesting spam.