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Honestly, the whole thing reads as a conspiracy fed by an anonymous (outdated?) source, and the Wikileaks-esque drip of leaks "culminating with full headers!" d

Honestly, the whole thing reads as a conspiracy fed by an anonymous (outdated?) source, and the Wikileaks-esque drip of leaks "culminating with full headers!" doubles down on feeling more like a cry for attention/help than an actual argument against (or even proof of) any kind of manual penalty actually being applied.

_cs2017_ 6y ago
I did come to the same conclusion, with the complaint itself as my sole source of information. It is unfortunate that this type of arguments gain a lot of popularity, even among technical readers. Of course, it is also possible that the complaint is completely justified, and it's just a coincidence that it's written in this conspiracy / paranoia style. Among thousands of consipiracy theories, there's probably some that are actually true. Sorting through them is not something I am interested in doing, though.
- jevgeni 6y ago
  You are looking for emotional excuses for Google’s uncompetitive behavior.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
akersten 6y ago
Yeah, if you hang around HN long enough you'll get the privilege of seeing the man himself lament about the supposed penalty. It's gotten really long in the tooth and it's the same spiel every time. At no point does he consider that there is no penalty, his site is just not as useful as competitors and that is why it does not rank highly.
autoexec 6y ago
Agreed. the whole "some pages are ranked lower than what they've earned on their merit." bit seems pretty vague and subjective. Even when you can prove there's a penalty against your website, I don't see any evidence that those penalties are invalid. I agree that it's unfair for Google to not disclose this stuff, but it seems to me that this guy is just hoping Google gets enough bad press that they work with him, but this seems like a bad attitude to take when asking for help.
mike_d 6y ago
> fed by an anonymous (outdated?) source The majority of Google employees don't work on search. Even fewer have access to webspam tools/code, for obvious reasons.

_cs2017_ 6y ago

I did come to the same conclusion, with the complaint itself as my sole source of information. It is unfortunate that this type of arguments gain a lot of popularity, even among technical readers. Of course, it is also possible that the complaint is completely justified, and it's just a coincidence that it's written in this conspiracy / paranoia style. Among thousands of consipiracy theories, there's probably some that are actually true. Sorting through them is not something I am interested in doing, though.

jevgeni 6y ago
You are looking for emotional excuses for Google’s uncompetitive behavior.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

akersten 6y ago

Yeah, if you hang around HN long enough you'll get the privilege of seeing the man himself lament about the supposed penalty. It's gotten really long in the tooth and it's the same spiel every time. At no point does he consider that there is no penalty, his site is just not as useful as competitors and that is why it does not rank highly.

autoexec 6y ago

Agreed. the whole "some pages are ranked lower than what they've earned on their merit." bit seems pretty vague and subjective. Even when you can prove there's a penalty against your website, I don't see any evidence that those penalties are invalid. I agree that it's unfair for Google to not disclose this stuff, but it seems to me that this guy is just hoping Google gets enough bad press that they work with him, but this seems like a bad attitude to take when asking for help.

mike_d 6y ago

> fed by an anonymous (outdated?) source The majority of Google employees don't work on search. Even fewer have access to webspam tools/code, for obvious reasons.