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I wouldn't consider ProtonMail a competitor of Google. I would assume they got penalized in search rankings like everyone else. The fact that they went throug

by Steeeve 10y ago

I wouldn't consider ProtonMail a competitor of Google. I would assume they got penalized in search rankings like everyone else. The fact that they went through Matt Cutts to get this resolved is telling - since he's the public face of Google for anti-web-spam/anti-blackhat-seo. > @mattcutts We know Google is intentionally hiding ProtonMail from search results. Interested in talking before our data goes public? Apparently threats help get you attention.

tinodotim 10y ago
Matt Cutts isn't the public face for the webspam team anymore, for months if not years now. I think since 2014. He even left google and works for the US Digital Service since this summer. And on the topic: Nope, no penalty. At least no ordinary / known version of typical penalization.
- paganel 10y ago
  Just found out right now that the "famous" Googleguy user that was posting stuff on Websmasterworld around 2002-2004 has been confirmed as having been Matt Cutts (the article is a little older, from 2011, https://www.seroundtable.com/cutts-googleguy-intheplex-13291.html https://www.seroundtable.com/cutts-googleguy-intheplex-13291...). Those were interesting times, when Google was still playing the "good guy" card trying to get most of the websites' data. I'm pretty sure nothing of that facade has remained in place now.
  - Steeeve 10y ago
    I'm old...
tyingq 10y ago
They have been caught tweaking the algorithm to their advantage in the past: "One example from the FTC report shows how hazy the line can be. When testing changes to its ranking algorithm, Google has “raters” manually assess different sets of search results for the same query and rate which one is better. In one such experiment, Google tried demoting “comparison shopping websites” like NexTag to see if its raters liked the results better. When they didn’t, Google tweaked the demotion algorithm until they did."[1] [1]http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2015/03/google_ftc_report_here_s_why_the_government_and_the_company_agreed_to_a.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2015/03/...

by Steeeve 10y ago

tinodotim 10y ago

Matt Cutts isn't the public face for the webspam team anymore, for months if not years now. I think since 2014. He even left google and works for the US Digital Service since this summer. And on the topic: Nope, no penalty. At least no ordinary / known version of typical penalization.

paganel 10y ago
Just found out right now that the "famous" Googleguy user that was posting stuff on Websmasterworld around 2002-2004 has been confirmed as having been Matt Cutts (the article is a little older, from 2011, https://www.seroundtable.com/cutts-googleguy-intheplex-13291.html https://www.seroundtable.com/cutts-googleguy-intheplex-13291...). Those were interesting times, when Google was still playing the "good guy" card trying to get most of the websites' data. I'm pretty sure nothing of that facade has remained in place now.
- Steeeve 10y ago
  I'm old...

tyingq 10y ago

They have been caught tweaking the algorithm to their advantage in the past: "One example from the FTC report shows how hazy the line can be. When testing changes to its ranking algorithm, Google has “raters” manually assess different sets of search results for the same query and rate which one is better. In one such experiment, Google tried demoting “comparison shopping websites” like NexTag to see if its raters liked the results better. When they didn’t, Google tweaked the demotion algorithm until they did."[1] [1]http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2015/03/google_ftc_report_here_s_why_the_government_and_the_company_agreed_to_a.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2015/03/...