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Anecdata: At a conference a couple of years ago I was talking on-stage about my product. It's a direct competitor to Google in an area that they don't do very w

Anecdata: At a conference a couple of years ago I was talking on-stage about my product. It's a direct competitor to Google in an area that they don't do very well (quite often, comically badly), and my customers are people who care about getting really good results in this area. I made a couple of joking quips about the poor quality of the Google product during this presentation and moved on. Two days later my product completely vanished from the Google rankings. No cause that I could think of; I wasn't doing any questionable SEO or other manipulation at the time. I later found out there were Google people at the conference, though I don't know whether they were at the talk or not. Correlation != causation so I'm hesitant to definitively call shenanigans on this. But it does make me believe ProtonMail's story a little more.

corobo 10y ago
Do you have proof or even just evidence of this? You could just be someone that wants to get the jab in at Google.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  How could you prove how a black box algo ranks you?
  - corobo 10y ago
    You can't prove that. The parent can however make the decision to not hide behind a throwaway account, give their company name, suggest how they found out Google employees were in the audience, document the dates they were ranked highly vs low, tell us what area Google is comically bad in, detail what if any SEO practises they were using at the time. Link the site if nothing else so we can all have a look into back links dodgy practises, archive.org copies. You can't prove how a black box algo ranks you, but you can do a damn sight more than a throwaway comment accusing Google of cooking their algorithm out of spite.
    - QuercusMax 10y ago
      Exactly - I call BS. Google won't artificially boost search rankings for their own products - in some cases the search folks have told other groups that need to do SEO if their rankings are too low. (Disclaimer: I work for an Alphabet company)
      - hackuser 10y ago
        I don't buy that everyone at Google is too honest to abuse their power. They are human beings, and there are many of them.
        Guest98123 10y ago
        Search is their primary business though. I can't see them jeopardizing that by blacklisting a random competitor that poked fun at them in a presentation. It makes no sense. However, they're the only ones that know their ranking algorithm. This means they can tailor their sites for the best possible ranking. It also means they can rewrite the algorithm in ways that better rewards Google (Let's give a boost to sites with the highest traffic, and exponentially drop off the boost as traffic decreases. Oh look, it turns out our own Google.com is quite popular, all of our services are under that domain, and they'll all see higher rankings).
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > The parent can however make the decision to not hide behind a throwaway account I think you have a reasonable point, but given their prior experience with publicly criticizing Google, they also have a reasonable desire to remain anonymous.
      - corobo 10y ago
        The best way to remain anonymous in this situation to say nothing. I mean if Google is going to penalise them and risk their search integrity for a quip what's to stop them asking a bud over at HN to see if this account's IP is associated with another? Infeasible of course but around the same likelyhood of happening
londons_explore 10y ago
If you could communicate to a google employee the name of your site, they could investigate internally and identify any wrongdoing here. Whether they'd be able to show you the results after the fact I don't know though.
drieddust 10y ago
This must be related. Don't believe in coincidence of this level. Never blame on stupidity what can be blamed on malice when power centres are involved.
appleflaxen 10y ago
If this is happening, I hope we get someone who recognizes how wrong it is and becomes a whistleblower.
ExpiredLink 10y ago
Listen to this TED talk. They are Google's competitor ... http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_yen_think_your_email_s_private_think_again http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_yen_think_your_email_s_private...
- Tharkun 10y ago
  Well that was a waste of time. Poor talk, no technical information, nothing innovative.
  - ExpiredLink 10y ago
    That's not the point. You know why Google removed them from the search results.

corobo 10y ago

Do you have proof or even just evidence of this? You could just be someone that wants to get the jab in at Google.

brianwawok 10y ago
How could you prove how a black box algo ranks you?
- corobo 10y ago
  You can't prove that. The parent can however make the decision to not hide behind a throwaway account, give their company name, suggest how they found out Google employees were in the audience, document the dates they were ranked highly vs low, tell us what area Google is comically bad in, detail what if any SEO practises they were using at the time. Link the site if nothing else so we can all have a look into back links dodgy practises, archive.org copies. You can't prove how a black box algo ranks you, but you can do a damn sight more than a throwaway comment accusing Google of cooking their algorithm out of spite.
  - QuercusMax 10y ago
    Exactly - I call BS. Google won't artificially boost search rankings for their own products - in some cases the search folks have told other groups that need to do SEO if their rankings are too low. (Disclaimer: I work for an Alphabet company)
    - hackuser 10y ago
      I don't buy that everyone at Google is too honest to abuse their power. They are human beings, and there are many of them.
      - Guest98123 10y ago
        Search is their primary business though. I can't see them jeopardizing that by blacklisting a random competitor that poked fun at them in a presentation. It makes no sense. However, they're the only ones that know their ranking algorithm. This means they can tailor their sites for the best possible ranking. It also means they can rewrite the algorithm in ways that better rewards Google (Let's give a boost to sites with the highest traffic, and exponentially drop off the boost as traffic decreases. Oh look, it turns out our own Google.com is quite popular, all of our services are under that domain, and they'll all see higher rankings).
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > The parent can however make the decision to not hide behind a throwaway account I think you have a reasonable point, but given their prior experience with publicly criticizing Google, they also have a reasonable desire to remain anonymous.
    - corobo 10y ago
      The best way to remain anonymous in this situation to say nothing. I mean if Google is going to penalise them and risk their search integrity for a quip what's to stop them asking a bud over at HN to see if this account's IP is associated with another? Infeasible of course but around the same likelyhood of happening

londons_explore 10y ago

If you could communicate to a google employee the name of your site, they could investigate internally and identify any wrongdoing here. Whether they'd be able to show you the results after the fact I don't know though.

drieddust 10y ago

This must be related. Don't believe in coincidence of this level. Never blame on stupidity what can be blamed on malice when power centres are involved.

appleflaxen 10y ago

If this is happening, I hope we get someone who recognizes how wrong it is and becomes a whistleblower.

ExpiredLink 10y ago

Listen to this TED talk. They are Google's competitor ... http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_yen_think_your_email_s_private_think_again http://www.ted.com/talks/andy_yen_think_your_email_s_private...

Tharkun 10y ago
Well that was a waste of time. Poor talk, no technical information, nothing innovative.
- ExpiredLink 10y ago
  That's not the point. You know why Google removed them from the search results.