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We have a blog on agrifood tech associated with our site and we’ve published over 1,000 articles often interviewing some of the most successful entrepreneurs, V

We have a blog on agrifood tech associated with our site and we’ve published over 1,000 articles often interviewing some of the most successful entrepreneurs, VCs, and senior execs at food and ag companies. We’re by far the most authoritative thought leader in the industry and if you go to any industry you’d hear our name a few dozen times but we get massively outranked by Forbes articles, TechCrunch, CB Insights (which is a poor authority in our space). It’s quite sad just how bad Google can still be.

ISL 8y ago
What do those out-ranking publishers do differently?
- paulpauper 8y ago
  higher domain name authority
  - rdlecler1 8y ago
    But not domain expertise. Google has a rich get richer ranking that favors broad generalist publications. If you’re seen as an authority in anything then it seems like you can also rank high for something tertiary.
    - paulpauper 8y ago
      yea VOX ranks high for everything even though they are generalists than specialists. .
- awwaiid 8y ago
  They have bigger and more general-purpose audiences and thus a higher probability that someone going to google is looking for them. Self reinforcing.
throwawaymath 8y ago
That sounds to me like Google is optimizing retrieval for deeper searches within a narrower set of "authoritative" websites. The ideal solution would involve putting in the logistical and theoretical engineering work to classify and validate a huge number of websites good for fewer, specialized answers. But for whatever reason, the reality seems to be a relative few websites are selected to provide "good enough" answers on shallow queries for a huge number of topics or objects, Wolfram Alpha style. Maybe this is due to developer laziness, gradual dilution of cutting edge engineering, explicit desire for simpler solutions or real practical limitations, even at Google's scale. In any case, the result appears to be that sites like yours are poorly surfaced because they're not very generalizable. Whereas CB Insights claims it knows about your query already, there's an internal API setup for exposing CB Insights already, and CB Insights passes a basic sanity check on the answers. This is really unforunate and I sympathize with you. I think there is a lot of opportunity for a search engine that can optimize for very specialized queries across many domains, including arbitrarily historical resources. But I think such a search engine would have very different goals and incentives than Google from the outset.
- dannyw 8y ago
  I think you’re onto something. Google’s “fake news” algorithm change probably didn’t want to be seen as politically or viewpoint driven, so an easier approach was to just de-prioritise large “authoritative” websites even for deep searches where more relevant results exist. Actually, that’s almost exactly how Google described the algorithm update...
- rdlecler1 8y ago
  People still seem to find us depending on the exact search terms you’re using but it’s Google’s user experience that really suffers. If someone randomly publishes “the top 25 Agtech companies” on Forbes it’ll jump to the top of the list when searching for Agtech and stay there for half a year. Google is embarrassing itself with these kind of shallow and superficial results.
allenz 8y ago
If your industry doesn't have a large web community, then it's difficult for Google to know that you're authoritative. From Google's outsider perspective, all the links are going to Forbes.
- natch 8y ago
  You are thinking in terms of the old world, the PageRank algorithm. Everything you say is true in that old world. In today's world, Google is optimizing for ad revenue. I could see how optimizing for PageRank could go out the window in such a world. Even if PageRank still has influence, it's not clear to me the site doesn't have a large web community with a lot of links. Maybe it does, and the ad revenue considerations are overriding that.
opportune 8y ago
doesn't google "rank" journalistic sources by perceived credibility? Could be that nobody at google has bothered to give your website a rank?
- pessimizer 8y ago
  No, Google ranks journalistic sources by revenue and distribution, and pretends that it is ranking by credibility.
jlgaddis 8y ago
What is an "authoritative thought leader"?
- 9935c101ab17a66 8y ago
  Are you actually incapable of looking up the definitions, or are is your comment a snarky, backhanded way of pointing out the redundancy of such a label rather than just outright saying it? Andto be fair, OP said “most authoritative”.
Tomte 8y ago
> the most authoritative thought leader That sounds both terrible and very much like Silicon Valley.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't snark here and please don't post unsubstantive comments.

ISL 8y ago

What do those out-ranking publishers do differently?

paulpauper 8y ago
higher domain name authority
- rdlecler1 8y ago
  But not domain expertise. Google has a rich get richer ranking that favors broad generalist publications. If you’re seen as an authority in anything then it seems like you can also rank high for something tertiary.
  - paulpauper 8y ago
    yea VOX ranks high for everything even though they are generalists than specialists. .
awwaiid 8y ago
They have bigger and more general-purpose audiences and thus a higher probability that someone going to google is looking for them. Self reinforcing.

throwawaymath 8y ago

That sounds to me like Google is optimizing retrieval for deeper searches within a narrower set of "authoritative" websites. The ideal solution would involve putting in the logistical and theoretical engineering work to classify and validate a huge number of websites good for fewer, specialized answers. But for whatever reason, the reality seems to be a relative few websites are selected to provide "good enough" answers on shallow queries for a huge number of topics or objects, Wolfram Alpha style. Maybe this is due to developer laziness, gradual dilution of cutting edge engineering, explicit desire for simpler solutions or real practical limitations, even at Google's scale. In any case, the result appears to be that sites like yours are poorly surfaced because they're not very generalizable. Whereas CB Insights claims it knows about your query already, there's an internal API setup for exposing CB Insights already, and CB Insights passes a basic sanity check on the answers. This is really unforunate and I sympathize with you. I think there is a lot of opportunity for a search engine that can optimize for very specialized queries across many domains, including arbitrarily historical resources. But I think such a search engine would have very different goals and incentives than Google from the outset.

dannyw 8y ago
I think you’re onto something. Google’s “fake news” algorithm change probably didn’t want to be seen as politically or viewpoint driven, so an easier approach was to just de-prioritise large “authoritative” websites even for deep searches where more relevant results exist. Actually, that’s almost exactly how Google described the algorithm update...
rdlecler1 8y ago
People still seem to find us depending on the exact search terms you’re using but it’s Google’s user experience that really suffers. If someone randomly publishes “the top 25 Agtech companies” on Forbes it’ll jump to the top of the list when searching for Agtech and stay there for half a year. Google is embarrassing itself with these kind of shallow and superficial results.

allenz 8y ago

If your industry doesn't have a large web community, then it's difficult for Google to know that you're authoritative. From Google's outsider perspective, all the links are going to Forbes.

natch 8y ago
You are thinking in terms of the old world, the PageRank algorithm. Everything you say is true in that old world. In today's world, Google is optimizing for ad revenue. I could see how optimizing for PageRank could go out the window in such a world. Even if PageRank still has influence, it's not clear to me the site doesn't have a large web community with a lot of links. Maybe it does, and the ad revenue considerations are overriding that.

opportune 8y ago

doesn't google "rank" journalistic sources by perceived credibility? Could be that nobody at google has bothered to give your website a rank?

pessimizer 8y ago
No, Google ranks journalistic sources by revenue and distribution, and pretends that it is ranking by credibility.

jlgaddis 8y ago

What is an "authoritative thought leader"?

9935c101ab17a66 8y ago
Are you actually incapable of looking up the definitions, or are is your comment a snarky, backhanded way of pointing out the redundancy of such a label rather than just outright saying it? Andto be fair, OP said “most authoritative”.

Tomte 8y ago

> the most authoritative thought leader That sounds both terrible and very much like Silicon Valley.

dang 8y ago
Please don't snark here and please don't post unsubstantive comments.