by greg_V on 9/19/24, 10:44 AM with 299 comments
by vgeek on 9/19/24, 6:07 PM
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-si...
by ghaff on 9/19/24, 8:04 PM
by graeme on 9/19/24, 1:34 PM
by EricE on 9/19/24, 7:24 PM
by arn3n on 9/20/24, 12:46 PM
I just read The Information, now.
by smusamashah on 9/19/24, 10:39 PM
Just copy paste this list to UBlacklist (or other tool). Need to sit down and search and add more sites including forbes someday.
by ramesh31 on 9/19/24, 4:12 PM
by JumpCrisscross on 9/20/24, 5:44 AM
by darby_nine on 9/20/24, 1:15 AM
When google gets split up the whole world will cheer.
by MisterBastahrd on 9/19/24, 4:50 PM
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.
by coliveira on 9/19/24, 9:01 PM
by jeffwask on 9/19/24, 5:36 PM
by visarga on 9/20/24, 9:50 AM
by ericmcer on 9/19/24, 6:49 PM
by itissid on 9/19/24, 4:37 PM
by miki123211 on 9/19/24, 5:24 PM
I usually search in English and find SEO spam somewhat often, but never from these brands.
by aaa_aaa on 9/19/24, 9:02 PM
by fredgrott on 9/20/24, 12:43 PM
Its tech powering an search and ad monopoly....
Things only change when ctr of ads and amount of ads displayed go down.
by EcommerceFlow on 9/19/24, 6:13 PM
by drcongo on 9/19/24, 4:13 PM
by neves on 9/19/24, 6:04 PM
It is Google "do no evil" to blame.
by 1obituary on 9/23/24, 3:41 PM
by throwawayl3ll on 9/19/24, 9:09 PM
by cynicalsecurity on 9/19/24, 5:06 PM
by scarface_74 on 9/19/24, 10:17 PM
- US News and World Reports
- CBS News
- Forbes
- Motley Fool
The entire web is a shit show.
by talkingtab on 9/20/24, 12:42 PM
And this from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10871410
[Edit, add link to article about Forbes and Hacker News]
by OptionOfT on 9/19/24, 7:02 PM
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/partitionmagic_en_sitemap.xm...
All these 'articles' pollute search engines.
by CM30 on 9/19/24, 4:47 PM
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.
by seo-throwaway on 9/20/24, 4:29 AM
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.
by davidu on 9/19/24, 4:42 PM
by nurorda on 9/21/24, 12:54 PM
by LarsDu88 on 9/20/24, 5:19 AM
by joshdavham on 9/20/24, 8:45 PM
by krick on 9/20/24, 4:38 AM
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.
by hofo on 9/22/24, 2:13 PM
by skeeter2020 on 9/19/24, 9:39 PM