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Google stops letting sites like Forbes rule search for "Best CBD Gummies"

(arstechnica.com)
212 points pseudolus | 3 comments | 20 Nov 24 21:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.216s | source
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NelsonMinar ◴[20 Nov 24 23:59 UTC] No.42199494[source]▶
I'm confused about how or why this is a new policy. My memory is inside Google we were discussing this risk back in 2003, probably earlier. Search quality was on it. I just assumed they'd lost the arms race, or that the parasites' ranking was justified for other reasons that were hard to tease apart. What are they doing new now?

I think often about Mahalo, the sleazy shovel content that was spamming the web back in 2007. Google shut that down somewhat fast, although it did take several years. These days with AI and more aggressive spammers it's a losing battle. The real problem is the financial incentives that make this kind of spamming profitable in the first place.

My tiny little blog gets about 3 requests a week for someone to "pay me to run a guest article". Going rate is $50-$200 and again, my blog is tiny.

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1. stackghost ◴[21 Nov 24 02:51 UTC] No.42200611[source]▶
>My memory is inside Google we were discussing this risk back in 2003, probably earlier.

Yeah but that was before they hired the incompetent grifter Prabhakar Raghavan and eventually made him head of Search.

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2. thephyber ◴[21 Nov 24 04:30 UTC] No.42201132[source]▶
Seems like post hoc fallacy.

But people were complaining about the sAme issues under Matt Cutts. Also, there has been A Ton more money and work chasing the SEO farm game. Now big private equity companies have focused on buying a stable of big brands to do the same that used to be garage startups.

3. robk ◴[21 Nov 24 09:07 UTC] No.42202438[source]▶
I think it's nick fox now and he's old school and as competent as they come