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Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host

646 points by greg_V 2y ago

skeeter2020 2y ago
I need the author to tell me again who runs Forbes Marketplace. I assume it's Forbes. It's not?
scarface_74 2y ago
I just did the “best pet insurance” search and once reputable sites came up. - US News and World Reports - CBS News - Forbes - Motley Fool The entire web is a shit show.
graeme 2y ago
Very good article. Not clear to me why Google has let parasite SEO become so successful. Possibly they are starved of human generated content kept to a certain quality level. But it's very strange to see sites leveraging a legacy brand to expand far beyond their expertise. Forbes is the most prominent example.
- thmsths 2y ago
  Complacency? Google has such a dominance in search that their name is used as a verb. Combine that with their culture of automating everything to an extreme degree. And the end result seems to be: search that is just good enough that people keep using it and requires little human fine tuning/curation making it cheap at scale.
  - fakedang 2y ago
    Not to mention how flawed the current search tool really is. If you search for something, page 1 shows results from page 7 to some infinite number. But click on that large number, and you find out that the last page was page 3.
    - jajko 2y ago
      That was there for many years
- thrance 2y ago
  Since there is no competition and people will keep using Google whatever happens, might as well push the ad-filled garbage site than the ad-free handwritten blogpost. The former probably makes them more money, everything else humanity holds dear be damned.
- miohtama 2y ago
  On why Google allows bad quality results nowadays: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Also discussed on HN earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976
  - nick3443 2y ago
    One of the commenters on wheresyoured seemed insightful: "wonder if organic search results being worse generates more ad clicks, as the ads are more likely to be more useful than the actual search results".
    - morkalork 2y ago
      Someone once described the state of mobile gaming on Android like this. Games that are good make less money. Games that are just good enough to get you to open them but are also just shitty enough that when you hit an ad in-game, you click on it and leave, make more money.
      - bee_rider 2y ago
        It is astonishing to me that people click ads in general, but especially ads in a game. At least ads on websites, you were probably just mindlessly scrolling…
        mschuster91 2y ago
        Some mobile game ads are actually advertising for decent other games. Or a few weeks ago, some shipping company on Instagram closing down one of their locations and selling off stuff at a heavy discount, got about 1200€ worth of stuff for barely 400€. The key thing is the luck to get shown such ads... about 95% IME are utter garbage, and Google should go and not just mandate that game ads show actual gameplay but also that what the ads show must be the main part in the game, not just some irrelevant side quest.
      - adamc 2y ago
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  Because Google makes money through all this. These move ads. That's all they care about at this stage. I had stated a few years back Google is dying. It will take a while and it's going to be painful but we will get over this soon. 20 years is a good run.
  - paulpauper 2y ago
    google search result can be shit and they will still make tons of money from 3rd party/publisher ads and youtube, cloud, gmail, atc.
- scottyah 2y ago
  Nobody has come up with a scalable metric for determining quality that can't be appropriated by SEO. Pagerank was one of the best for awhile (number sites that link to your site, weighted by their rank). Whether it be clicks, time on page, percentage of people who clicked onto the page then ended the session, etc it all gets gamed. Like it or not, it's what the people want. The "trashy" movies, books, music, etc. all sell like wildfire, why do most people on hn think that the internet should be any different?
  - visarga 2y ago
    I think today we can use LLMs to decide what websites are shit. The wheel is turning. SEO artists will have to provide actually useful, non-spammy content. If Google doesn't do it, some uBlock like service will implement it on user side. Or we'll just use chatGPT with search and not see the cesspool at all. You can edit its system prompt to avoid shit in search results.
    - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
      Your comment assumes both that current LLMs can scale to replace Google which seems unlikely from. both a business and compute perspective. And if they do, you'll get maybe a decade out of them before they succumb to the same problems as Google have.
  - 10000truths 2y ago
    > Nobody has come up with a scalable metric for determining quality that can't be appropriated by SEO Nor will it ever happen, at least as long as search is a Google monoculture. One effective player in the search space means that everyone sets their sight on the same target. Which naturally leads to SEO being an extremely one-sided arms race not in favor of Google - "good content" is hard to quantify, and whatever proxy (or combinations thereof) Google uses to estimate that quality will be ruthlessly uncovered, reverse engineered and exploited to its last inch by an unyielding, unending horde of "SEO optimizers". The only way that Google maintains search quality is if it properly accounts for the fact that websites will adopt the path of least resistance, i.e. put in the least amount of effort to optimize only specifically the things that Google measures. Which means that the heuristics and algorithms Google uses to determine search rankings must always be a moving target whose criteria needs to be vigilantly updated and constantly curated by people. Any attempt to fully automate that curation will result in the cyber equivalent of natural selection - SEO-optimizing websites adapting by automating the production of content that hits just the right buttons while still being royally useless to actual visitors.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  It has to do with these old brands exploiting domain authority, plus buying tons of backlinks. Investopedia.com is another example of this. Google assigns too much weight to authority domains. Google doesn't actually penalize paid backlinks for old domains, I think.
- nickfromseattle 2y ago
  > Not clear to me why Google has let parasite SEO become so successful This was in response to the millions of SEOs flooding the SERPs with ever increasing amounts of low quality / incorrect / harmful AI generated content. Google didn't know how to keep the SERPs clean except over index on authority. The highly authoritative websites abused that to shill CBD oil, air fryers, mattresses, etc.
ramesh31 2y ago
It's coming for all the old "legacy" web names with strong domain ranking and decades of backlinks. Private equity is snapping them up as fast as possible, loading them with ads, and bleeding the brand dry.
- Animats 2y ago
  Right. I get offers for my decades-old domains every day or two now.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  bingo. this is 100% the reason
drcongo 2y ago
This man is surprised that his google results are terrible. I have to assume this is a frog boiling thing and he's only just noticed the water heating up. Having switched to Kagi years ago, I'm immediately horrified by the state of Google if I ever end up on it. It's appalling and has been for a few years now.
- toast0 2y ago
  Google does a lot of personalization of search results. But if you don't give it your searches, it won't know what you want. So when you come back after switching, it's much worse.
- charlie0 2y ago
  It's getting closer to the point where we will compare Google to Kagi like web-browsing without an ad-blocker. It's hell surfing the web with ad-blocking off.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Reading this comment just above your comment is funny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41594450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41594450
    - charlie0 2y ago
      Lol, guess you can't really escape. One benefit of Kagi is you can block websites from appearing. Maybe website blocking lists will appear similar to ad blocking lists. Maybe Kagi already lets you do this.
- burkaman 2y ago
  Try those same search terms in Kagi and you'll see Forbes at the top of the results. I use Kagi and like it a lot but you should be aware that most of their results come from Google.
  - bloopernova 2y ago
itissid 2y ago
Actually googling some of the terms from his post and seeing Forbes up there is oddly surprising, even after reading it all.
davidu 2y ago
This is such a big story and yet most of HN just doesn't care. It should make the WSJ though.
- charlie0 2y ago
  Yes, this is a big deal, but most of us have simply stopped using Google and moved on to other tools.
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    > most of us have simply stopped using Google Citation needed
    - magic-michael 2y ago
      Google has lost a small amount of market share, but nothing too significant to warrant "most of us have simply stopped using Google": https://searchengineland.com/googles-huge-search-market-share-loss-wasnt-real-data-revised-440191#:~:text=While%20it%20wasn't%20as,market%20share%20since%20August%202023.&text=Statcounter%20has%20revised%20data%20indicating,and%20Yahoo%20made%20ludicrous%20gains https://searchengineland.com/googles-huge-search-market-shar....
- crote 2y ago
  It isn't exactly news, though. This isn't a Forbes issue, or a Google issue. Pretty much every single large company is actively being ruined by parasites. We're dealing with a generation of CEOs / CFOs who were taught to care about nothing except short-term shareholder value. Quality and reputation doesn't matter anymore, so you replace your products with cheap garbage and hope nobody notices. When that inevitably fails, every single part of the company including its name is being torn apart and sold piece by piece, until nothing is left but an empty shell with a lot of debt. We're intentionally ruining our economies and praising the people doing it. If the "Western" world gets economically steamrolled by Asia in the next couple of decades, we've got nobody to blame for it but ourselves.
CM30 2y ago
Damn, didn't realise that Forbes Marketplace was run separately to Forbes itself. Knew it was always a parasite SEO operation, but the idea of it being a separate company entirely (and how much they tried to hide the fact) is really interesting here. But yeah, it's still crazy that this site is even allowed in Google, and that they've shown no signs of cracking down on these types of parasite SEO schemes.
- MitziMoto 2y ago
  To be fair, Google HAS shown "signs" of cracking down on this; but they haven't actually done it in any useful capacity yet. They call it "Site reputation abuse". https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#site-reputation https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-po...
MisterBastahrd 2y ago
I implemented something similar years ago for the publisher I worked for. Like 2006ish. It was after Katrina, I'd never had a full time dev job, and I created it as a POC to show to my employer that they could invest in me full time as a developer (I was helping put their magazines together when I wasn't working on their CRM). I created a marketplace with finely tuned SEO for my employer to advertise (and charge) companies in niche industries. My SEO was better than the SEO of the developers who worked on their sites, and our audience was obviously much larger than theirs, so we ranked higher. Any time you would search for the company name or the product type in a certain geographic area, you'd find links to our pages dominating the search results. One of the interesting things is the shenanigans some of these companies would pull to show up first in our local results. A whole lot of A1 and AAA names began to spring up as they decided that if the list was going to be alphabetical by default, then they needed to be the first in their category.
- JadeNB 2y ago
  > One of the interesting things is the shenanigans some of these companies would pull to show up first in our local results. A whole lot of A1 and AAA names began to spring up as they decided that if the list was going to be alphabetical by default, then they needed to be the first in their category. This well predates Google, though; it was a common trick for placement in the (physical) phone book.
  - magic-michael 2y ago
    When online directories were still relevant, this issue was already a common occurrence. For example, DMOZ, and the number of spammy directories that existed for link building purposes.
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
So, Google can kill their whole business if they simply stop giving Forbes unfair prioritisation in the search results.
- erehweb 2y ago
  Sure, and Google and FB have killed businesses before by changing algorithms. But what is fair prioritization? Non-trivial Q.
- coliveira 2y ago
  And then get negative press from Forbes for the next few years! Is that something useful for Google? No, better let them keep part of the money.
  - roughly 2y ago
    > negative press from Forbes for the next few years Who the fuck reads Forbes anymore? You seen the garbage they're shilling on their website these days?
    - coliveira 2y ago
      This is not just Forbes, most mainstream media sites are using the same affiliate scheme.
- magic-michael 2y ago
  Is it unfair though? While there’s definitely optimization for search, it doesn’t appear to be purely about that. A lot of the content, particularly on Forbes Advisor and Forbes Health, seems user-driven and genuinely helpful. If you spend some time exploring those areas, you’ll notice well-researched, in-depth guides aimed at offering practical advice. Just some quick research and Google searching: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/financial-emergency-preparedness-survey/#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways,no%20emergency%20savings%20at%20all https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/financial-eme.... https://www.forbes.com/health/nutrition/diet/healthy-life-expectancy-worth/#:~:text=One%20Healthy%20Year%20Is%20Worth%20%245%2C000%20on%20Average%20to%20Most%20Adults,-Among%202%2C000%20survey&text=The%20survey%20found%2C%20however%2C%20that,longer%2C%20healthy%20life%20than%20others https://www.forbes.com/health/nutrition/diet/healthy-life-ex.... https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/digital-wallets-payment-apps/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/digital-wallets-payme...
miki123211 2y ago
Is this an US thing? This has to be an US thing, right? How come I've literally never seen this in the EU? I usually search in English and find SEO spam somewhat often, but never from these brands.
- OvbiousError 2y ago
  Just searched "best pet insurance", am inside Europe. Forbes is #1. I distinctly recall seeing this from time to time. Interestingly they're also the #1 for pet insurance on duckduckgo.
  - sweezyjeezy 2y ago
    About 10th in the UK with that search, so probably this isn't across every geography.
  - phatfish 2y ago
    For me in the UK "best pet insurance" is squatted by The Telegraph and "best cbd gummies" has Forbes top and The Independent second. I assume all media companies that have a "trusted domain" and are already involved in aggressive SEO are using this as a revenue generator. The sites that turned exclusively into link farms like about.com could be whacked by Google eventually and everyone was happy. But if they try that with well known media brands there will be cries of censorship--whether it is collateral damage to some genuine journalistic content, or Google "taking away" a revenue stream.
    - slyall 2y ago
      "best cbd gummies" is interesting for me. I get a mix of "health" and vendors with some old media brands. I get Forbes 4th and 5th Chicago Magazine is 9th The Independent, Kirkland Reporter and The Observer are 12th, 13th and 14th
- yas_hmaheshwari 2y ago
  Happens in India as well. Forbes is #1 for "best pet insurance"
jeffwask 2y ago
I miss the days of a searchable internet
neves 2y ago
Cory Doctorow article nails it https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-google-enshittified-its-search-1ffd3b02d205 https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-go... It is Google "do no evil" to blame.
- tempfile 2y ago
  he really never misses
vgeek 2y ago
The same thing happens every 3-5 years. HowStuffWorks, About.com (now like 10 different domains), many IAC acquired properties, RedVenture sites, even random sites like LiveStrong.com will be wildly prominent when the domains historically aren't relevant or authoritative for a given niche. Even recently, sites like CNN were using subdomains with affiliate offers managed by third parties(1). These sites weren't being de-ranked algorithmically-- someone at Google would have to apply a manual action to remove them from the SERPs. What incentive would there be to do so if a prior agreement was in place? Google doesn't really care about discoverability for smaller domains that may have good content. They are either being risk averse (avoiding potential spammers, junk AI content) by favoring trusted domains, favoring brands who are likely to spend on display or search ads, or maybe a combination of these. 1) https://searchengineland.com/google-begins-enforcement-of-site-reputation-abuse-policy-with-portions-of-sites-being-delisted-440294 https://searchengineland.com/google-begins-enforcement-of-si...
- stackghost 2y ago
  >The same thing happens every 3-5 years. [...] Google doesn't really care about discoverability for smaller domains that may have good content. What's galling is that (ostensibly) they used to care. So much for "organizing the world's information" and "don't be evil".
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    Well they are certainly organizing the world's information, and continue to be incentivized to do so. Deeply. For advertisers.
- Animats 2y ago
  It's really frustrating. I currently want to buy a mattress and a refrigerator. The results for those are so awful as to be useless.
  - supportengineer 2y ago
    A lot of classic software essentially worked more like a database. In the last 10-15 years it's all moving to an algorithm. Here is what I mean. Photos apps used to let you search through your photos using filters. The same kinds of things are happening on the web which already happened to apps (desktop and mobile). In the modern world, some marketing company wants to tell YOU which of YOUR photos you wanted, so they can sell you some prints, harvest your data, or something. I would like any apps that have to do with collections of files, photos, music, etc to be more of a deterministic DATABASE and less of a nondeterministic algorithm.
EcommerceFlow 2y ago
BlackHat SEO's have insiders at many of these companies that'll publish your article for $X amount of money. Or edit existing articles and insert your URL.
- janesvilleseo 2y ago
  You don’t need an insider for you know where to just buy the link. They hang their shingle out on at least one link buying marketplace.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  I suspect that's how geeksforgeeks got so dominant with their student written drivel.
ericmcer 2y ago
"So we have $29M in annual revenue on an average of 3.4M searches per month in 2021." Is this real? That averages out to 40m searches, so .75 per. It seems insane to get close to $1 per search. I figured the return was closer to a penny or even a fraction of one.
- 55555 2y ago
  Many types of sites get ~$1 per visitor from search engines. Quite possible, yeah.
- cyost 2y ago
  Seems likely that the articles in question include affiliate links to the products they're advertising
- rwmj 2y ago
  When I did search (AdWords) for Thomas Cook, a now defunct but then major travel agency, we'd pay £10 or more to Google for a single click sometimes. (Full story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21046731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21046731)
- ren_engineer 2y ago
  if they are doing affiliate marketing than it's realistic
OptionOfT 2y ago
This is not that different from this guy who posted how he 'stole' CEO traffic from his competitor. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38433856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38433856 And it is not that different (albeit at a smaller scale) from what websites like mini partition wizard has been doing. Their sitemaps are full of articles that don't relate at all to their tool: https://www.partitionwizard.com/news_en_sitemap.xml https://www.partitionwizard.com/news_en_sitemap.xml https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic_en_sitemap.xml https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic_en_sitemap.xm... All these 'articles' pollute search engines.
EricE 2y ago
One of the best things about Kagi search (https://kagi.com https://kagi.com) is you can ban domains from search results. Forbes was one of the first I entered!
- zeusk 2y ago
  and pinterest; scourge of the web
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I had honestly forgotten it existed until you mentioned it. Thanks, Kagi!
  - rizky05 2y ago
    [dead]
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    quora is even worse
- gman83 2y ago
  You can do a similar thing for Google with the uBlackList extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe?hl=en https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmia...
  - ClassyJacket 2y ago
    This should come preconfigured with pinterest and quora blacklisted.
    - yas_hmaheshwari 2y ago
      Haha :-) I always feel bad if I click on any of those sites.
  - noisycarlos 2y ago
ghaff 2y ago
Forbes as a whole basically sold its soul for clicks. It used to be one of the three top business magazines depending on your preferences. After the web became dominant, at some point after Malcolm Forbes died, you ended up with a ton of blog writers--with plenty of biases and axes to grind--and essentially advertorial content.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  fortune.com too. same thing . these brands realized they can cash in on their domain authority to create content farms full of ads. scales really well too
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Fortune's case was mostly the whole Time-Life magazine empire going to the dogs partly by way of TWB. Forbes just kind of faded away post-Malcolm (and with a distracted Steven Forbes). But, in general, the magazine and journalism businesses aren't what they were so most of the relatively mass market magazines pretty much cashed in on their brands to the degree their owners decided to keep them around.
- roughly 2y ago
  Bit of a microcosm of the entire business world nowadays. Forbes made something - a magazine that produced enough good content to gain a reputation. In the new school of business, that's an asset, and assets are things we turn into cash as quickly as possible, so now Forbes sells CBD, and now anyone who sees "forbes.com" in the URL knows it's useless crap, but hey, someone made some money, and now they can go find the next thing to flip for a couple bucks.
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    I was talking to a friend about this recently. I bought a pair of Doc Martens boots a while back. And they're shit. I remember them from the 80's and they were really solid, good leather, well made, etc. The modern ones are crappy leather and fell apart after only a few months. But they still cost a decent amount because they're Doc Martens. My friend pointed out that Doc Martens are primarily worn by teenage girls these days, and are almost "fast fashion". My expectations based on the brand are not matching with reality, because the brand has moved on from being the de rigeur footwear for the entire 80's alternative scene. From this, I have come up with the "reverse Vimes" theory of boots. That actually the most cash-efficient approach to footwear is to buy cheap K-mart shoes, expecting them to last for a year, instead of buying expensive branded shoes which are actually made just as badly as the cheap ones and still only last a year. The point being that Doc Martens, like Forbes, are trading in their reputation for quality. In ten years time they will be known as shitty boots that used to be worn by edgy teenage girls, and the brand will be worthless. But the shareholders will have made significant bank from the destruction of that brand. Late-stage capitalism win, I guess.
coliveira 2y ago
It's not just Forbes that is using this strategy. Many traditional media sites, including CNN and USA Today are running the same type of content. And of course they'll not report on this issue, which might just well be why Google is doing this, a kind of kickback for traditional media.
- seo-throwaway 2y ago
  The dirty secret is those are also run by Marketplace, it’s the same team under the hood once you get past the handful of people dedicated to each brand. The model has proven very successful and these brands are happy to lease their reputation for a cut of the profit and none of the work.
  - plewd 2y ago
    Is there a source for this?
    - seo-throwaway 2y ago
      I work here.
      - vlexo1 2y ago
        What do you do there? And how would you know all this? I find it hard to believe this to be the case
        seo-throwaway 2y ago
        As you can see this is a throwaway since I don’t want to identify myself, but a wrote a lengthy comment elsewhere in the tree describing how the company has changed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466#41598797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466#41598797 The aforementioned companies in the parent comment have partnerships with Marketplace to replicate the Forbes model. I didn’t mean to imply everyone who does this thing is using Marketplace.
aaa_aaa 2y ago
In Turkey, all searches hits to newspaper sites. Its like a sad joke. Related page is full of repetitive garbage where information is hidden somewhere.
throwawayl3ll 2y ago
Just start browsing search results from the second page.
smusamashah 2y ago
There are 2-3 very detailed articles on how only a few media companies that own top few hundred domains have spammed SEO and hijacked top spots in search results. I made a list of block-able domains (dot dash meredith sites only). I have roughly explained how I searched these domains. https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/6573b27441d99a0a0c79243170c9e6b1 https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/6573b27441d99a0a0c792431... Just copy paste this list to UBlacklist (or other tool). Need to sit down and search and add more sites including forbes someday.
darby_nine 2y ago
Google basically destroyed itself when it decided to become an ad network rather than a dumb pipe you pay to access. You have to pick a base to sell to. Selling to two different bases at once (advertisers/seo and actual users) means both resent you and neither respect you. When google gets split up the whole world will cheer.
- thfuran 2y ago
  >Google basically destroyed itself when it decided to become an ad network rather than a dumb pipe you pay to access. It didn't destroy itself, it became one of the largest and most profitable companies ever.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    Right! Imagine how big they'd be if they hadn't given up on microtransactions in the 90s. I'd guess not trying to be broken up by the DOJ.
    - thfuran 2y ago
      Probably they'd have closed shop long ago, because someone else would've done ad-funded search, and it's nearly impossible to compete with free.
      - darby_nine 2y ago
        We'll never know because nobody tried. The internet is too broken now to bother searching. For a group of people that claim to love empirical analysis people on this site sure do love writing off anything but the current state of affairs.
seo-throwaway 2y ago
I’ve worked here a while. He’s a bit aggressive about it but a lot of what he says is on point. The relationship with Forbes has always been a weird one. The understanding I’ve had was the company was spun off from an effort that kind of started in Forbes but they didn’t really want to deal with themselves. It was always an SEO driven content strategy but for a while we had a pretty sizable content apparatus. Really big editorial teams for each vertical, a bigger cultural emphasis on the quality of the content and more collaboration across teams. The editorial teams had a lot of voice in what got published and tried to respect that we were using the Forbes brand and what that meant when we made recommendations or wrote about something. The only thing I’ll say to our (meagre) defense is there are panels of experts that are consulted for recommendations on a lot of products, and the teams that do research for the actual written content (not the affiliate/partner garbage that often takes up sponsored slots) do try and work hard to provide data to meet the demands of the SEO and BD teams. A lot of that has changed over the years. The company has grown explosively in the time that I have been here. The company something like tripled its size last year alone. I went from being a newbie on a team of less than ten to a senior member on a team in the mid double digits in the space of a year. The culture has become increasingly bureaucratic and disconnected. We’ve always been a fully remote team but it used to be much more collaborative and cross-functional. We don’t hear much at all from leadership. It’s always been a fairly insulated operation from one vertical layer to the other. There have been two pretty big layoffs this year which came out of the blue. Editorial teams have been gutted across every vertical and the strategy has pivoted more and more towards shovelware content and partner posts. The latter being especially frustrating because they are handled by a completely separate team from the editorial team but are formatted to look like our written content even though they’re actually sponsored posts. At a team meeting after the last layoffs the CEO answered a question about the company’s plans and said something to the effect of “if we’re not growing we are dead” which I think is obviously seen in how the company is re-shaping itself. It’s been disappointing to say the least. I don’t think any of us ever operated under the illusion we were doing important journalism or anything, but we all seemed to strive to make something good of the system we were working in. I’ve seen and heard of a lot of things I find commendable of my co-workers. Editorial and mid-level leadership have worked for a long time to ensure a separation of biz dev and edit so that they don’t have influence over the written content. I heard of times when BD really tried to push, however indirectly, for partners to get higher rankings in content. As edit gets increasingly sidelined in the business by the SEO content teams I’m not sure how much this is being maintained but I don’t work in that side of the business so I can’t speak specifically. All of this is to say. He’s right, we are just ultimately doing our jobs. Unfortunately, I’ve outlasted a lot of people who were hired after me, and up til the layoffs it was very rare for someone to quit. Now more and more of the people who have been here since the early days (even before me) are peeling away. Those of us who stay are seeking more and more checked out. Honestly the benefits are excellent and I think that’s what keeps most of us around but no one is passionate these days. That was a super rambling post, but I don’t ever see anyone talking about this place I’ve been at for a while. I wanted to share some insight into our world and get stuff off my chest as it’s been disappointing to watch go down, if not all that unique or surprising.
krick 2y ago
> As for oversight, Forbes only has 2 board seats. And really it only has one. It doesn't matter though. They have permission to use the name and domain, Forbes clearly knows what they are doing and why. If it wouldn't be ok with them, they'd revoke the permission (I'm not sure, but I assume they can, right?) So, yes, you can claim there is an oversight. If anything, Google's definition is a bit clunky, since it doesn't grasp the essence of the problem. But it also shouldn't matter, since it should be pretty obvious there is a problem indeed. Now, why Google is ok with that (or didn't notice that) is another and very valid question. I mean, great, Forbes can host whatever bullshit they see fit, but then it would be appropriate for the whole domain to never appear on the first page of Google. Or second. Or tenth. But then again, it doesn't seem like Google really tries to battle other, lesser doorways and LLM-generated content. And it's easy to see why.
LarsDu88 2y ago
Damn this opened my eyes to a whole 'nother world of online marketing
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
Meta comment: I consider myself pretty adept at finding things people don't want to be found in securities filings, registration records, et cetera. The author is uniquely competent at this as well.
- not_math 2y ago
  Do you happen to have a blog? This type of investigative journalism is really interesting and would love to read more.
- lo0dot0 2y ago
  Why would they not want what to be found?
visarga 2y ago
When I am using Chrome on the phone to read the Google Discover news feed I am often horrified how shitty the experience is. Popups, cookie warnings, almost no article is visible initially, and some of them actively make it hard to scroll to the text. It looks like there is no use friendly news site left in Google's feed. I prefer LLM slop, thank you very much. The only attractive proposition is the fresh and targeted feed. Probably Google is not allowed to offer a reading mode that hides the cruft.
- yas_hmaheshwari 2y ago
  Try Brave on iOS. It is a much better experience than Chrome ( Maybe because Brave comes with Ad blocker installed, but not 100% sure )
talkingtab 2y ago
In the past I have wondered why Hacker News had so many articles from Forbes. Now I know. And this from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10871410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10871410 [Edit, add link to article about Forbes and Hacker News]
fredgrott 2y ago
People, Google is not in the Tech business.... Its tech powering an search and ad monopoly.... Things only change when ctr of ads and amount of ads displayed go down.
- thfuran 2y ago
  To zero, I hope.
- chiefalchemist 2y ago
  To your point, my theory is that all their other tech efforts - that are very often sunset'ed in a couple+ years - are merely a smokescreen of the ad monopoly. Worst case, if they have to: "Tech is hard and competitive. Look at how many other businesses we started and were unable to be successful at. Search + ads is one click away from slipping away from us. We're not a monopoly. We're alone and very scared for our future..."
arn3n 2y ago
An aside about Forbes: I used to be subscribed to a few of their newsletters. About two years ago, I would notice that nearly all the newletter content would say something along the lines of "as reported by The Information" and I realized that a huge portion (>60%) of the newsletter content was just summarizations or rephrasing of articles from The Information. Which, I mean, great that you're citing your sources, but are you really providing a service here? I just read The Information, now.
joshdavham 2y ago
Is there a way I can blacklist Forbes from my google search results?
nurorda 2y ago
Why Forbes brand is so powerful? Can anyone share their views on this?
hofo 2y ago
So what? What’s missing is why I should care and what difference this makes to anyone other than the author.
1obituary 2y ago
Great Article it's been pretty sad with google for a while, poisoned ad networks thanks for sharing.. I was wondering if you could give your input about nature.com as well they seem to post on hackernews all the time seems like a ranking game as well. cheers

646 points by greg_V 2y ago

skeeter2020 2y ago

I need the author to tell me again who runs Forbes Marketplace. I assume it's Forbes. It's not?

I just did the “best pet insurance” search and once reputable sites came up. - US News and World Reports - CBS News - Forbes - Motley Fool The entire web is a shit show.

graeme 2y ago

Very good article. Not clear to me why Google has let parasite SEO become so successful. Possibly they are starved of human generated content kept to a certain quality level. But it's very strange to see sites leveraging a legacy brand to expand far beyond their expertise. Forbes is the most prominent example.

thmsths 2y ago
Complacency? Google has such a dominance in search that their name is used as a verb. Combine that with their culture of automating everything to an extreme degree. And the end result seems to be: search that is just good enough that people keep using it and requires little human fine tuning/curation making it cheap at scale.
- fakedang 2y ago
  Not to mention how flawed the current search tool really is. If you search for something, page 1 shows results from page 7 to some infinite number. But click on that large number, and you find out that the last page was page 3.
  - jajko 2y ago
    That was there for many years
thrance 2y ago
Since there is no competition and people will keep using Google whatever happens, might as well push the ad-filled garbage site than the ad-free handwritten blogpost. The former probably makes them more money, everything else humanity holds dear be damned.
miohtama 2y ago
On why Google allows bad quality results nowadays: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Also discussed on HN earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976
- nick3443 2y ago
  One of the commenters on wheresyoured seemed insightful: "wonder if organic search results being worse generates more ad clicks, as the ads are more likely to be more useful than the actual search results".
  - morkalork 2y ago
    Someone once described the state of mobile gaming on Android like this. Games that are good make less money. Games that are just good enough to get you to open them but are also just shitty enough that when you hit an ad in-game, you click on it and leave, make more money.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      It is astonishing to me that people click ads in general, but especially ads in a game. At least ads on websites, you were probably just mindlessly scrolling…
      - mschuster91 2y ago
        Some mobile game ads are actually advertising for decent other games. Or a few weeks ago, some shipping company on Instagram closing down one of their locations and selling off stuff at a heavy discount, got about 1200€ worth of stuff for barely 400€. The key thing is the luck to get shown such ads... about 95% IME are utter garbage, and Google should go and not just mandate that game ads show actual gameplay but also that what the ads show must be the main part in the game, not just some irrelevant side quest.
    - adamc 2y ago
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Because Google makes money through all this. These move ads. That's all they care about at this stage. I had stated a few years back Google is dying. It will take a while and it's going to be painful but we will get over this soon. 20 years is a good run.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  google search result can be shit and they will still make tons of money from 3rd party/publisher ads and youtube, cloud, gmail, atc.
scottyah 2y ago
Nobody has come up with a scalable metric for determining quality that can't be appropriated by SEO. Pagerank was one of the best for awhile (number sites that link to your site, weighted by their rank). Whether it be clicks, time on page, percentage of people who clicked onto the page then ended the session, etc it all gets gamed. Like it or not, it's what the people want. The "trashy" movies, books, music, etc. all sell like wildfire, why do most people on hn think that the internet should be any different?
- visarga 2y ago
  I think today we can use LLMs to decide what websites are shit. The wheel is turning. SEO artists will have to provide actually useful, non-spammy content. If Google doesn't do it, some uBlock like service will implement it on user side. Or we'll just use chatGPT with search and not see the cesspool at all. You can edit its system prompt to avoid shit in search results.
  - disgruntledphd2 2y ago
    Your comment assumes both that current LLMs can scale to replace Google which seems unlikely from. both a business and compute perspective. And if they do, you'll get maybe a decade out of them before they succumb to the same problems as Google have.
- 10000truths 2y ago
  > Nobody has come up with a scalable metric for determining quality that can't be appropriated by SEO Nor will it ever happen, at least as long as search is a Google monoculture. One effective player in the search space means that everyone sets their sight on the same target. Which naturally leads to SEO being an extremely one-sided arms race not in favor of Google - "good content" is hard to quantify, and whatever proxy (or combinations thereof) Google uses to estimate that quality will be ruthlessly uncovered, reverse engineered and exploited to its last inch by an unyielding, unending horde of "SEO optimizers". The only way that Google maintains search quality is if it properly accounts for the fact that websites will adopt the path of least resistance, i.e. put in the least amount of effort to optimize only specifically the things that Google measures. Which means that the heuristics and algorithms Google uses to determine search rankings must always be a moving target whose criteria needs to be vigilantly updated and constantly curated by people. Any attempt to fully automate that curation will result in the cyber equivalent of natural selection - SEO-optimizing websites adapting by automating the production of content that hits just the right buttons while still being royally useless to actual visitors.
paulpauper 2y ago
It has to do with these old brands exploiting domain authority, plus buying tons of backlinks. Investopedia.com is another example of this. Google assigns too much weight to authority domains. Google doesn't actually penalize paid backlinks for old domains, I think.
nickfromseattle 2y ago
> Not clear to me why Google has let parasite SEO become so successful This was in response to the millions of SEOs flooding the SERPs with ever increasing amounts of low quality / incorrect / harmful AI generated content. Google didn't know how to keep the SERPs clean except over index on authority. The highly authoritative websites abused that to shill CBD oil, air fryers, mattresses, etc.

ramesh31 2y ago

It's coming for all the old "legacy" web names with strong domain ranking and decades of backlinks. Private equity is snapping them up as fast as possible, loading them with ads, and bleeding the brand dry.

Animats 2y ago
Right. I get offers for my decades-old domains every day or two now.
paulpauper 2y ago
bingo. this is 100% the reason

drcongo 2y ago

This man is surprised that his google results are terrible. I have to assume this is a frog boiling thing and he's only just noticed the water heating up. Having switched to Kagi years ago, I'm immediately horrified by the state of Google if I ever end up on it. It's appalling and has been for a few years now.

toast0 2y ago
Google does a lot of personalization of search results. But if you don't give it your searches, it won't know what you want. So when you come back after switching, it's much worse.
charlie0 2y ago
It's getting closer to the point where we will compare Google to Kagi like web-browsing without an ad-blocker. It's hell surfing the web with ad-blocking off.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Reading this comment just above your comment is funny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41594450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41594450
  - charlie0 2y ago
    Lol, guess you can't really escape. One benefit of Kagi is you can block websites from appearing. Maybe website blocking lists will appear similar to ad blocking lists. Maybe Kagi already lets you do this.
burkaman 2y ago
Try those same search terms in Kagi and you'll see Forbes at the top of the results. I use Kagi and like it a lot but you should be aware that most of their results come from Google.
- bloopernova 2y ago

itissid 2y ago

Actually googling some of the terms from his post and seeing Forbes up there is oddly surprising, even after reading it all.

davidu 2y ago

This is such a big story and yet most of HN just doesn't care. It should make the WSJ though.

charlie0 2y ago
Yes, this is a big deal, but most of us have simply stopped using Google and moved on to other tools.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  > most of us have simply stopped using Google Citation needed
  - magic-michael 2y ago
    Google has lost a small amount of market share, but nothing too significant to warrant "most of us have simply stopped using Google": https://searchengineland.com/googles-huge-search-market-share-loss-wasnt-real-data-revised-440191#:~:text=While%20it%20wasn't%20as,market%20share%20since%20August%202023.&text=Statcounter%20has%20revised%20data%20indicating,and%20Yahoo%20made%20ludicrous%20gains https://searchengineland.com/googles-huge-search-market-shar....
crote 2y ago
It isn't exactly news, though. This isn't a Forbes issue, or a Google issue. Pretty much every single large company is actively being ruined by parasites. We're dealing with a generation of CEOs / CFOs who were taught to care about nothing except short-term shareholder value. Quality and reputation doesn't matter anymore, so you replace your products with cheap garbage and hope nobody notices. When that inevitably fails, every single part of the company including its name is being torn apart and sold piece by piece, until nothing is left but an empty shell with a lot of debt. We're intentionally ruining our economies and praising the people doing it. If the "Western" world gets economically steamrolled by Asia in the next couple of decades, we've got nobody to blame for it but ourselves.

CM30 2y ago

Damn, didn't realise that Forbes Marketplace was run separately to Forbes itself. Knew it was always a parasite SEO operation, but the idea of it being a separate company entirely (and how much they tried to hide the fact) is really interesting here. But yeah, it's still crazy that this site is even allowed in Google, and that they've shown no signs of cracking down on these types of parasite SEO schemes.

MitziMoto 2y ago
To be fair, Google HAS shown "signs" of cracking down on this; but they haven't actually done it in any useful capacity yet. They call it "Site reputation abuse". https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#site-reputation https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-po...

MisterBastahrd 2y ago

I implemented something similar years ago for the publisher I worked for. Like 2006ish. It was after Katrina, I'd never had a full time dev job, and I created it as a POC to show to my employer that they could invest in me full time as a developer (I was helping put their magazines together when I wasn't working on their CRM). I created a marketplace with finely tuned SEO for my employer to advertise (and charge) companies in niche industries. My SEO was better than the SEO of the developers who worked on their sites, and our audience was obviously much larger than theirs, so we ranked higher. Any time you would search for the company name or the product type in a certain geographic area, you'd find links to our pages dominating the search results. One of the interesting things is the shenanigans some of these companies would pull to show up first in our local results. A whole lot of A1 and AAA names began to spring up as they decided that if the list was going to be alphabetical by default, then they needed to be the first in their category.

JadeNB 2y ago
> One of the interesting things is the shenanigans some of these companies would pull to show up first in our local results. A whole lot of A1 and AAA names began to spring up as they decided that if the list was going to be alphabetical by default, then they needed to be the first in their category. This well predates Google, though; it was a common trick for placement in the (physical) phone book.
- magic-michael 2y ago
  When online directories were still relevant, this issue was already a common occurrence. For example, DMOZ, and the number of spammy directories that existed for link building purposes.

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

So, Google can kill their whole business if they simply stop giving Forbes unfair prioritisation in the search results.

erehweb 2y ago
Sure, and Google and FB have killed businesses before by changing algorithms. But what is fair prioritization? Non-trivial Q.
coliveira 2y ago
And then get negative press from Forbes for the next few years! Is that something useful for Google? No, better let them keep part of the money.
- roughly 2y ago
  > negative press from Forbes for the next few years Who the fuck reads Forbes anymore? You seen the garbage they're shilling on their website these days?
  - coliveira 2y ago
    This is not just Forbes, most mainstream media sites are using the same affiliate scheme.
magic-michael 2y ago
Is it unfair though? While there’s definitely optimization for search, it doesn’t appear to be purely about that. A lot of the content, particularly on Forbes Advisor and Forbes Health, seems user-driven and genuinely helpful. If you spend some time exploring those areas, you’ll notice well-researched, in-depth guides aimed at offering practical advice. Just some quick research and Google searching: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/financial-emergency-preparedness-survey/#:~:text=Key%20Takeaways,no%20emergency%20savings%20at%20all https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/financial-eme.... https://www.forbes.com/health/nutrition/diet/healthy-life-expectancy-worth/#:~:text=One%20Healthy%20Year%20Is%20Worth%20%245%2C000%20on%20Average%20to%20Most%20Adults,-Among%202%2C000%20survey&text=The%20survey%20found%2C%20however%2C%20that,longer%2C%20healthy%20life%20than%20others https://www.forbes.com/health/nutrition/diet/healthy-life-ex.... https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/digital-wallets-payment-apps/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/digital-wallets-payme...

miki123211 2y ago

Is this an US thing? This has to be an US thing, right? How come I've literally never seen this in the EU? I usually search in English and find SEO spam somewhat often, but never from these brands.

OvbiousError 2y ago
Just searched "best pet insurance", am inside Europe. Forbes is #1. I distinctly recall seeing this from time to time. Interestingly they're also the #1 for pet insurance on duckduckgo.
- sweezyjeezy 2y ago
  About 10th in the UK with that search, so probably this isn't across every geography.
- phatfish 2y ago
  For me in the UK "best pet insurance" is squatted by The Telegraph and "best cbd gummies" has Forbes top and The Independent second. I assume all media companies that have a "trusted domain" and are already involved in aggressive SEO are using this as a revenue generator. The sites that turned exclusively into link farms like about.com could be whacked by Google eventually and everyone was happy. But if they try that with well known media brands there will be cries of censorship--whether it is collateral damage to some genuine journalistic content, or Google "taking away" a revenue stream.
  - slyall 2y ago
    "best cbd gummies" is interesting for me. I get a mix of "health" and vendors with some old media brands. I get Forbes 4th and 5th Chicago Magazine is 9th The Independent, Kirkland Reporter and The Observer are 12th, 13th and 14th
yas_hmaheshwari 2y ago
Happens in India as well. Forbes is #1 for "best pet insurance"

jeffwask 2y ago

I miss the days of a searchable internet

neves 2y ago

Cory Doctorow article nails it https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-google-enshittified-its-search-1ffd3b02d205 https://doctorow.medium.com/the-specific-process-by-which-go... It is Google "do no evil" to blame.

tempfile 2y ago
he really never misses

vgeek 2y ago

The same thing happens every 3-5 years. HowStuffWorks, About.com (now like 10 different domains), many IAC acquired properties, RedVenture sites, even random sites like LiveStrong.com will be wildly prominent when the domains historically aren't relevant or authoritative for a given niche. Even recently, sites like CNN were using subdomains with affiliate offers managed by third parties(1). These sites weren't being de-ranked algorithmically-- someone at Google would have to apply a manual action to remove them from the SERPs. What incentive would there be to do so if a prior agreement was in place? Google doesn't really care about discoverability for smaller domains that may have good content. They are either being risk averse (avoiding potential spammers, junk AI content) by favoring trusted domains, favoring brands who are likely to spend on display or search ads, or maybe a combination of these. 1) https://searchengineland.com/google-begins-enforcement-of-site-reputation-abuse-policy-with-portions-of-sites-being-delisted-440294 https://searchengineland.com/google-begins-enforcement-of-si...

stackghost 2y ago
>The same thing happens every 3-5 years. [...] Google doesn't really care about discoverability for smaller domains that may have good content. What's galling is that (ostensibly) they used to care. So much for "organizing the world's information" and "don't be evil".
- Nevermark 2y ago
  Well they are certainly organizing the world's information, and continue to be incentivized to do so. Deeply. For advertisers.
Animats 2y ago
It's really frustrating. I currently want to buy a mattress and a refrigerator. The results for those are so awful as to be useless.
- supportengineer 2y ago
  A lot of classic software essentially worked more like a database. In the last 10-15 years it's all moving to an algorithm. Here is what I mean. Photos apps used to let you search through your photos using filters. The same kinds of things are happening on the web which already happened to apps (desktop and mobile). In the modern world, some marketing company wants to tell YOU which of YOUR photos you wanted, so they can sell you some prints, harvest your data, or something. I would like any apps that have to do with collections of files, photos, music, etc to be more of a deterministic DATABASE and less of a nondeterministic algorithm.

EcommerceFlow 2y ago

BlackHat SEO's have insiders at many of these companies that'll publish your article for $X amount of money. Or edit existing articles and insert your URL.

janesvilleseo 2y ago
You don’t need an insider for you know where to just buy the link. They hang their shingle out on at least one link buying marketplace.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
I suspect that's how geeksforgeeks got so dominant with their student written drivel.

ericmcer 2y ago

"So we have $29M in annual revenue on an average of 3.4M searches per month in 2021." Is this real? That averages out to 40m searches, so .75 per. It seems insane to get close to $1 per search. I figured the return was closer to a penny or even a fraction of one.

55555 2y ago
Many types of sites get ~$1 per visitor from search engines. Quite possible, yeah.
cyost 2y ago
Seems likely that the articles in question include affiliate links to the products they're advertising
rwmj 2y ago
When I did search (AdWords) for Thomas Cook, a now defunct but then major travel agency, we'd pay £10 or more to Google for a single click sometimes. (Full story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21046731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21046731)
ren_engineer 2y ago
if they are doing affiliate marketing than it's realistic

OptionOfT 2y ago

This is not that different from this guy who posted how he 'stole' CEO traffic from his competitor. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38433856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38433856 And it is not that different (albeit at a smaller scale) from what websites like mini partition wizard has been doing. Their sitemaps are full of articles that don't relate at all to their tool: https://www.partitionwizard.com/news_en_sitemap.xml https://www.partitionwizard.com/news_en_sitemap.xml https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic_en_sitemap.xml https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic_en_sitemap.xm... All these 'articles' pollute search engines.

EricE 2y ago

One of the best things about Kagi search (https://kagi.com https://kagi.com) is you can ban domains from search results. Forbes was one of the first I entered!

zeusk 2y ago
and pinterest; scourge of the web
- kstrauser 2y ago
  I had honestly forgotten it existed until you mentioned it. Thanks, Kagi!
- rizky05 2y ago
  [dead]
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  quora is even worse
gman83 2y ago
You can do a similar thing for Google with the uBlackList extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe?hl=en https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmia...
- ClassyJacket 2y ago
  This should come preconfigured with pinterest and quora blacklisted.
  - yas_hmaheshwari 2y ago
    Haha :-) I always feel bad if I click on any of those sites.
- noisycarlos 2y ago

ghaff 2y ago

Forbes as a whole basically sold its soul for clicks. It used to be one of the three top business magazines depending on your preferences. After the web became dominant, at some point after Malcolm Forbes died, you ended up with a ton of blog writers--with plenty of biases and axes to grind--and essentially advertorial content.

paulpauper 2y ago
fortune.com too. same thing . these brands realized they can cash in on their domain authority to create content farms full of ads. scales really well too
- ghaff 2y ago
  Fortune's case was mostly the whole Time-Life magazine empire going to the dogs partly by way of TWB. Forbes just kind of faded away post-Malcolm (and with a distracted Steven Forbes). But, in general, the magazine and journalism businesses aren't what they were so most of the relatively mass market magazines pretty much cashed in on their brands to the degree their owners decided to keep them around.
roughly 2y ago
Bit of a microcosm of the entire business world nowadays. Forbes made something - a magazine that produced enough good content to gain a reputation. In the new school of business, that's an asset, and assets are things we turn into cash as quickly as possible, so now Forbes sells CBD, and now anyone who sees "forbes.com" in the URL knows it's useless crap, but hey, someone made some money, and now they can go find the next thing to flip for a couple bucks.
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  I was talking to a friend about this recently. I bought a pair of Doc Martens boots a while back. And they're shit. I remember them from the 80's and they were really solid, good leather, well made, etc. The modern ones are crappy leather and fell apart after only a few months. But they still cost a decent amount because they're Doc Martens. My friend pointed out that Doc Martens are primarily worn by teenage girls these days, and are almost "fast fashion". My expectations based on the brand are not matching with reality, because the brand has moved on from being the de rigeur footwear for the entire 80's alternative scene. From this, I have come up with the "reverse Vimes" theory of boots. That actually the most cash-efficient approach to footwear is to buy cheap K-mart shoes, expecting them to last for a year, instead of buying expensive branded shoes which are actually made just as badly as the cheap ones and still only last a year. The point being that Doc Martens, like Forbes, are trading in their reputation for quality. In ten years time they will be known as shitty boots that used to be worn by edgy teenage girls, and the brand will be worthless. But the shareholders will have made significant bank from the destruction of that brand. Late-stage capitalism win, I guess.

coliveira 2y ago

It's not just Forbes that is using this strategy. Many traditional media sites, including CNN and USA Today are running the same type of content. And of course they'll not report on this issue, which might just well be why Google is doing this, a kind of kickback for traditional media.

seo-throwaway 2y ago
The dirty secret is those are also run by Marketplace, it’s the same team under the hood once you get past the handful of people dedicated to each brand. The model has proven very successful and these brands are happy to lease their reputation for a cut of the profit and none of the work.
- plewd 2y ago
  Is there a source for this?
  - seo-throwaway 2y ago
    I work here.
    - vlexo1 2y ago
      What do you do there? And how would you know all this? I find it hard to believe this to be the case
      - seo-throwaway 2y ago
        As you can see this is a throwaway since I don’t want to identify myself, but a wrote a lengthy comment elsewhere in the tree describing how the company has changed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466#41598797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41590466#41598797 The aforementioned companies in the parent comment have partnerships with Marketplace to replicate the Forbes model. I didn’t mean to imply everyone who does this thing is using Marketplace.

aaa_aaa 2y ago

In Turkey, all searches hits to newspaper sites. Its like a sad joke. Related page is full of repetitive garbage where information is hidden somewhere.

throwawayl3ll 2y ago

Just start browsing search results from the second page.

smusamashah 2y ago

There are 2-3 very detailed articles on how only a few media companies that own top few hundred domains have spammed SEO and hijacked top spots in search results. I made a list of block-able domains (dot dash meredith sites only). I have roughly explained how I searched these domains. https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/6573b27441d99a0a0c79243170c9e6b1 https://gist.github.com/SMUsamaShah/6573b27441d99a0a0c792431... Just copy paste this list to UBlacklist (or other tool). Need to sit down and search and add more sites including forbes someday.

darby_nine 2y ago

Google basically destroyed itself when it decided to become an ad network rather than a dumb pipe you pay to access. You have to pick a base to sell to. Selling to two different bases at once (advertisers/seo and actual users) means both resent you and neither respect you. When google gets split up the whole world will cheer.

thfuran 2y ago
>Google basically destroyed itself when it decided to become an ad network rather than a dumb pipe you pay to access. It didn't destroy itself, it became one of the largest and most profitable companies ever.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  Right! Imagine how big they'd be if they hadn't given up on microtransactions in the 90s. I'd guess not trying to be broken up by the DOJ.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    Probably they'd have closed shop long ago, because someone else would've done ad-funded search, and it's nearly impossible to compete with free.
    - darby_nine 2y ago
      We'll never know because nobody tried. The internet is too broken now to bother searching. For a group of people that claim to love empirical analysis people on this site sure do love writing off anything but the current state of affairs.

seo-throwaway 2y ago

I’ve worked here a while. He’s a bit aggressive about it but a lot of what he says is on point. The relationship with Forbes has always been a weird one. The understanding I’ve had was the company was spun off from an effort that kind of started in Forbes but they didn’t really want to deal with themselves. It was always an SEO driven content strategy but for a while we had a pretty sizable content apparatus. Really big editorial teams for each vertical, a bigger cultural emphasis on the quality of the content and more collaboration across teams. The editorial teams had a lot of voice in what got published and tried to respect that we were using the Forbes brand and what that meant when we made recommendations or wrote about something. The only thing I’ll say to our (meagre) defense is there are panels of experts that are consulted for recommendations on a lot of products, and the teams that do research for the actual written content (not the affiliate/partner garbage that often takes up sponsored slots) do try and work hard to provide data to meet the demands of the SEO and BD teams. A lot of that has changed over the years. The company has grown explosively in the time that I have been here. The company something like tripled its size last year alone. I went from being a newbie on a team of less than ten to a senior member on a team in the mid double digits in the space of a year. The culture has become increasingly bureaucratic and disconnected. We’ve always been a fully remote team but it used to be much more collaborative and cross-functional. We don’t hear much at all from leadership. It’s always been a fairly insulated operation from one vertical layer to the other. There have been two pretty big layoffs this year which came out of the blue. Editorial teams have been gutted across every vertical and the strategy has pivoted more and more towards shovelware content and partner posts. The latter being especially frustrating because they are handled by a completely separate team from the editorial team but are formatted to look like our written content even though they’re actually sponsored posts. At a team meeting after the last layoffs the CEO answered a question about the company’s plans and said something to the effect of “if we’re not growing we are dead” which I think is obviously seen in how the company is re-shaping itself. It’s been disappointing to say the least. I don’t think any of us ever operated under the illusion we were doing important journalism or anything, but we all seemed to strive to make something good of the system we were working in. I’ve seen and heard of a lot of things I find commendable of my co-workers. Editorial and mid-level leadership have worked for a long time to ensure a separation of biz dev and edit so that they don’t have influence over the written content. I heard of times when BD really tried to push, however indirectly, for partners to get higher rankings in content. As edit gets increasingly sidelined in the business by the SEO content teams I’m not sure how much this is being maintained but I don’t work in that side of the business so I can’t speak specifically. All of this is to say. He’s right, we are just ultimately doing our jobs. Unfortunately, I’ve outlasted a lot of people who were hired after me, and up til the layoffs it was very rare for someone to quit. Now more and more of the people who have been here since the early days (even before me) are peeling away. Those of us who stay are seeking more and more checked out. Honestly the benefits are excellent and I think that’s what keeps most of us around but no one is passionate these days. That was a super rambling post, but I don’t ever see anyone talking about this place I’ve been at for a while. I wanted to share some insight into our world and get stuff off my chest as it’s been disappointing to watch go down, if not all that unique or surprising.

krick 2y ago

> As for oversight, Forbes only has 2 board seats. And really it only has one. It doesn't matter though. They have permission to use the name and domain, Forbes clearly knows what they are doing and why. If it wouldn't be ok with them, they'd revoke the permission (I'm not sure, but I assume they can, right?) So, yes, you can claim there is an oversight. If anything, Google's definition is a bit clunky, since it doesn't grasp the essence of the problem. But it also shouldn't matter, since it should be pretty obvious there is a problem indeed. Now, why Google is ok with that (or didn't notice that) is another and very valid question. I mean, great, Forbes can host whatever bullshit they see fit, but then it would be appropriate for the whole domain to never appear on the first page of Google. Or second. Or tenth. But then again, it doesn't seem like Google really tries to battle other, lesser doorways and LLM-generated content. And it's easy to see why.

LarsDu88 2y ago

Damn this opened my eyes to a whole 'nother world of online marketing

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

Meta comment: I consider myself pretty adept at finding things people don't want to be found in securities filings, registration records, et cetera. The author is uniquely competent at this as well.

not_math 2y ago
Do you happen to have a blog? This type of investigative journalism is really interesting and would love to read more.
lo0dot0 2y ago
Why would they not want what to be found?

visarga 2y ago

When I am using Chrome on the phone to read the Google Discover news feed I am often horrified how shitty the experience is. Popups, cookie warnings, almost no article is visible initially, and some of them actively make it hard to scroll to the text. It looks like there is no use friendly news site left in Google's feed. I prefer LLM slop, thank you very much. The only attractive proposition is the fresh and targeted feed. Probably Google is not allowed to offer a reading mode that hides the cruft.

yas_hmaheshwari 2y ago
Try Brave on iOS. It is a much better experience than Chrome ( Maybe because Brave comes with Ad blocker installed, but not 100% sure )

talkingtab 2y ago

In the past I have wondered why Hacker News had so many articles from Forbes. Now I know. And this from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10871410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10871410 [Edit, add link to article about Forbes and Hacker News]

fredgrott 2y ago

People, Google is not in the Tech business.... Its tech powering an search and ad monopoly.... Things only change when ctr of ads and amount of ads displayed go down.

thfuran 2y ago
To zero, I hope.
chiefalchemist 2y ago
To your point, my theory is that all their other tech efforts - that are very often sunset'ed in a couple+ years - are merely a smokescreen of the ad monopoly. Worst case, if they have to: "Tech is hard and competitive. Look at how many other businesses we started and were unable to be successful at. Search + ads is one click away from slipping away from us. We're not a monopoly. We're alone and very scared for our future..."

arn3n 2y ago

An aside about Forbes: I used to be subscribed to a few of their newsletters. About two years ago, I would notice that nearly all the newletter content would say something along the lines of "as reported by The Information" and I realized that a huge portion (>60%) of the newsletter content was just summarizations or rephrasing of articles from The Information. Which, I mean, great that you're citing your sources, but are you really providing a service here? I just read The Information, now.

joshdavham 2y ago

Is there a way I can blacklist Forbes from my google search results?

nurorda 2y ago

Why Forbes brand is so powerful? Can anyone share their views on this?

hofo 2y ago

So what? What’s missing is why I should care and what difference this makes to anyone other than the author.

1obituary 2y ago

Great Article it's been pretty sad with google for a while, poisoned ad networks thanks for sharing.. I was wondering if you could give your input about nature.com as well they seem to post on hackernews all the time seems like a ranking game as well. cheers