I have some first-hand experience with this problem. I'll give a specific example: In 2005 I published one of the Internet's earliest articles on the "Baader-M

I have some first-hand experience with this problem. I'll give a specific example: In 2005 I published one of the Internet's earliest articles on the "Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon"[1], also known as Frequency Illusion. In the intervening 15 years, thousands of sites have linked to my article, so you would think it would rank really well. Instead, my article is barely on the first page of Google's search results. Above mine are more recent copycat articles, few of them containing any meaningful details beyond what I included in mine. Some of them are so similar that they are clearly just lazy rewrites of my article (similar jokes, etc). They appear to be ranked higher than mine solely due to being more recent, and presumably some SEO shenanigans. This is not the only example--far from it--but it's one of the clearest. [1]: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomeno...