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

(arstechnica.com)
259 points pseudolus | 4 comments | 20 Nov 24 21:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.68s | 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. Electricniko ◴[21 Nov 24 04:57 UTC] No.42201266[source]▶
The air purifier review site Housefresh dug into why sites like theirs were seeing less traffic back in the spring, and it amounts to a handful of companies buying up popular magazine/blog brands and using them as affiliate farms that cross-post to sites within their networks of brands to boost visibility:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

On HN here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40239811

And their previous article mentioned in that post generated a lot of discussion on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39433451

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2. pickledoyster ◴[21 Nov 24 09:59 UTC] No.42202684[source]▶
If an air purifier review site is publishing research on their search traffic and affiliate site rings, I feel it's safe to say that their specialty is in seo, not air purifiers.
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3. viraptor ◴[21 Nov 24 11:08 UTC] No.42203097[source]▶
I think that's unfair. They could've hired someone to analyse this, or maybe it's just run by people who work other gigs too. I can post about dance and in-depth http traffic optimisation - people know more than one thing.
4. pjc50 ◴[21 Nov 24 12:54 UTC] No.42203862[source]▶
Everything is like this. If you want to sell a nonzero quantity of a generic product, you have to be an expert in advertising and SEO.