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Read past the provocative title, and Google actually seems to be doing the right things here. They cracked down on product reviews that aren’t actually testing

Read past the provocative title, and Google actually seems to be doing the right things here. They cracked down on product reviews that aren’t actually testing the product in 2021, and the article says big media companies (presumably with lower quality review content) suffered as a result. But then those media companies found a loophole with "The Best X" lists that weren't subject to the 2021 Products Review Update changes, which lets them continue spamming affiliate links while avoiding the new requirements. So now independent sites with actual reviews are in a holding pattern for these search terms, waiting for Google to bring the hammer down again on sites that are evading its quality metrics. This article is pretty clearly an open letter trying to bring attention to this issue. If the team at Google working on ranking for product reviews is reading this, I hope you have another update in the works to close this loophole. H1 planning just wrapped up! -- Edit: The title on HN has changed to be less click-baity. The original title was "How Google is killing independent sites like ours". Title aside, the article is quite excellent and does a great job of explaining the product review niche of SEO. Kudos to the authors.

codexon 3y ago
I still believe the original title is warranted. The fact that Google has to manually step in to intervene or else the big domains get all the top rankings tells you that they are very heavily biased towards big media domains.
- permo-w 3y ago
  does it? I would happily believe that Google is corrupt in this manner, but the reason big domains have the advantage here is because they can afford to pay teams of people with the express purpose of gaming the system. this is true in all industries, everywhere, and it can only be fixed with society-wide change, which, short of a world war (or, more likely, two), isn't going to happen
  - codexon 3y ago
    It's not about being corrupt, it is about doing the lazy thing in order to fight spam. No one ever got fired for suggesting New York Times or Better Housekeeping. To me it feels like a big brand website hardly needs to try in order to rank #1 even without doing a bunch of SEO.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > It's not about being corrupt, it is about doing the lazy thing in order to fight spam. No one ever got fired for suggesting New York Times or Better Housekeeping. > To me it feels like a big brand website hardly needs to try in order to rank #1 even without doing a bunch of SEO. To rub salt into the wound, any forum will happily let anyone and everyone post in support of any big brand, but instantly spam-block some lone developer trying to showcase their product (HN is different in this regard). Microsoft/Jetbrains/Apple releases a new paid product, available as a paid subscription only - dozens of people will get upvoted telling the forum about it. Some lone indie dev releases a free-tier search tool with optional paid tier, and they're banned for spamming. Now I understand why you'd want to block people who self-advertise, but there's gotta be a middle ground. Why is advertising on behalf of a company that has a larger ad budget than all the current readers salaries combined okay, but advertising for your own product is a bannable offence? There really should be a middle ground where (like on HN) the audience understands that someone who posts something that took them 6 months to create is not the same as someone selling love potions or stock tips.
      - collaborative 3y ago
        It's become bad to the point an indie dev can't even post to get feedback even when the thing he's poured his blood into completely matches the forum's topic. Extra minus points if he offers it for free (so suspicious!) You are now expected to develop in the dark, without ever mentioning anywhere the thing you are working on and fully knowing that your "blog" gets completely ignored by Google I personally refuse to host my blog on a "trusted" domain. I likewise refuse to use Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, and whatever else works nowadays because search engines can't be arsed to tell the difference between legitimate content and spam AND because people's attention span have become smaller than a tadpole's This is a sore point for me personally. That's why I went through the effort of creating my own personal search engine that filters out all this SEO spam and made it public for others to use https://www.aisearch.vip https://www.aisearch.vip
shostack 3y ago
What is the loop hole?
- cutemonster 3y ago
  That Google cracked down on "product reviews that aren’t actually testing the product", but not on top 10 lists (that mentions some in-fact-fake testing). So therefore the big companies publish loads of trashy top 10 lists

codexon 3y ago

I still believe the original title is warranted. The fact that Google has to manually step in to intervene or else the big domains get all the top rankings tells you that they are very heavily biased towards big media domains.

permo-w 3y ago
does it? I would happily believe that Google is corrupt in this manner, but the reason big domains have the advantage here is because they can afford to pay teams of people with the express purpose of gaming the system. this is true in all industries, everywhere, and it can only be fixed with society-wide change, which, short of a world war (or, more likely, two), isn't going to happen
- codexon 3y ago
  It's not about being corrupt, it is about doing the lazy thing in order to fight spam. No one ever got fired for suggesting New York Times or Better Housekeeping. To me it feels like a big brand website hardly needs to try in order to rank #1 even without doing a bunch of SEO.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > It's not about being corrupt, it is about doing the lazy thing in order to fight spam. No one ever got fired for suggesting New York Times or Better Housekeeping. > To me it feels like a big brand website hardly needs to try in order to rank #1 even without doing a bunch of SEO. To rub salt into the wound, any forum will happily let anyone and everyone post in support of any big brand, but instantly spam-block some lone developer trying to showcase their product (HN is different in this regard). Microsoft/Jetbrains/Apple releases a new paid product, available as a paid subscription only - dozens of people will get upvoted telling the forum about it. Some lone indie dev releases a free-tier search tool with optional paid tier, and they're banned for spamming. Now I understand why you'd want to block people who self-advertise, but there's gotta be a middle ground. Why is advertising on behalf of a company that has a larger ad budget than all the current readers salaries combined okay, but advertising for your own product is a bannable offence? There really should be a middle ground where (like on HN) the audience understands that someone who posts something that took them 6 months to create is not the same as someone selling love potions or stock tips.
    - collaborative 3y ago
      It's become bad to the point an indie dev can't even post to get feedback even when the thing he's poured his blood into completely matches the forum's topic. Extra minus points if he offers it for free (so suspicious!) You are now expected to develop in the dark, without ever mentioning anywhere the thing you are working on and fully knowing that your "blog" gets completely ignored by Google I personally refuse to host my blog on a "trusted" domain. I likewise refuse to use Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, and whatever else works nowadays because search engines can't be arsed to tell the difference between legitimate content and spam AND because people's attention span have become smaller than a tadpole's This is a sore point for me personally. That's why I went through the effort of creating my own personal search engine that filters out all this SEO spam and made it public for others to use https://www.aisearch.vip https://www.aisearch.vip

shostack 3y ago

What is the loop hole?

cutemonster 3y ago
That Google cracked down on "product reviews that aren’t actually testing the product", but not on top 10 lists (that mentions some in-fact-fake testing). So therefore the big companies publish loads of trashy top 10 lists