by rapnie on 5/29/25, 11:05 AM with 167 comments
by nilirl on 5/29/25, 12:35 PM
Strongest evidence in support: Drop in traffic coincided with google algorithm update.
Biggest lack of evidence: Nothing that shows it's because of who they are and not their content. Author defended their content by pointing out the cost and labor that goes into making their content.
Was the content really authentic and useful? This is hard to prove (and I suspect hard even for an algorithm to discern), and so I had a look:
- Each article did have that human feel to it with photos of the author in the locations they were talking about. Articles also included small personalized evaluations about topics.
So, yes, I did think it was authentic and useful. But how did it compare to the 1000s of other sites who can replicate this? Human writers aren't rare, and travel isn't a small interest to our species.
And that's the crux of it: Even if you're useful and authentic, search engines have to rank you among other sites that are useful and authentic.
You could be amazing and still end up on page 30 because you're not alone in being amazing on the internet.
I don't know what a fair algorithm looks like, and if a fair algorithm would make everyone equally happy.
For now, someone has the power to direct how the algorithm chooses. Who should have that power is a fair question, but I don't think anything will mitigate the problem of being ranked low even with quality content. It's a ranking against the rest of the internet, not just an evaluation of quality.
At the moment, if two sites are somewhat equally useful, being profitable to Google probably gets you a bump.
by fidotron on 5/29/25, 12:05 PM
They've been boiling the frog here for a long time. The "open web" is a euphemism for the Google Chrome monoculture walled-garden-in-waiting. Google exert so much influence there that building on the web is in practice barely different than building on say iOS. You can do what you want if you don't want to make money, but if you do then you will have to play along with the big G.
My hunch is Google never psychologically recovered from Facebook absolutely wiping out G+, and they have been on a mission to ensure nothing like that ever happens again.
by blinding-streak on 5/29/25, 12:14 PM
This uncited, anonymous quote sounds very made up. Cursory search couldn't find anything like this.
Regardless, while the article makes some good points, it is also dripping with entitlement. Google gave you incredible monetizable traffic for two+ decades. At some point you need to capture your audience and make a real connection with them so they don't need Google to interact with you. Give them a value prop.
by gorjusborg on 5/29/25, 12:22 PM
This is not 'censorship'. It probably isn't banning, nor is it 'shadowbanning'. Google tunes its algorithms and lets the chips fall. Some win, some lose.
While I understand how Google's dominance in search can have outsized effects on Internet commerce, the writer has near-zero credibility with me based on their writing. Honest people making honest statements don't need to exaggerate to make the point.
by kayo_20211030 on 5/29/25, 12:39 PM
As a site owner they seemed to have been happy to play the SEO game under the old rules, winning a little bit, but unhappy to play the SEO game under the new rules, losing a little bit. Depressingly, it's Google's ball, so it Google's rules.
At the end of the post, OP's suggests some remedies for web users, but they seem either impractical or ineffective. The recommendations for the commission also tacitly assume that Google is either a) a monopoly, to be regulated as such, or b) a utility, to be regulated as such. Maybe a) will be proven, but b) seems like a real stretch goal. They're a private enterprise and without congressional action or administrative action to change the laws and regulations, they have wide latitude in how they behave for commercial reasons. I don't believe they can be forced to do anything they don't want to do without statutory or regulatory action.
I do sympathize, but what's lost for a consumer?
by thedevilslawyer on 5/29/25, 12:02 PM
Most people don't want to read an article on travel advice when AI gives us much better and specific advice, with references, when we want it.
by supriyo-biswas on 5/29/25, 12:32 PM
Since Google is an established search player, and that the company has made many public statements on the symbiotic relationship between them and publishers, this means the FTC complaint is likely to go through. Given the current US admin, I also assume they'd pursue some action, either combined with the antitrust efforts, or through a separate legal action as it nicely dovetails with the various accusations of "censorship" that they have.
This means Google would be forced to reduce their AI offerings, and the website publishers in question get the thing that they were looking for. Meanwhile, new search entrants such as OpenAI/Perplexity, etc. are "allowed" to implement the same things that said publishers are opposed to, because of their smaller size and different perceptions, and the lack of similar statements.
Now, because LLMs are rapidly replacing most search engine uses (I've seen this firsthand while travelling on public transport that users in my country first default to ChatGPT etc.), this would mean Google is slowly replaced in an indirect way, not because they could not innovate but because they were not allowed to.
The implications of this are very interesting to me; it means that a corporation should rarely make any statements that have the tiniest chance of creating obligations (which is somewhat similar to Everything is Securities Fraud[1]) and corporate displacement happens not because companies out-innovate each other because the incumbent can do so too, but because legal obligations constrain their actions which ultimately lead to their death (somewhat similar to Planck's principle[2]).
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
by xnx on 5/29/25, 12:30 PM
by redwood on 5/29/25, 12:13 PM
What concerns me about this general shift is that it leads to groupthink. How do you ensure that new ideas, new innovation, new perspectives are being bootstrapped into the hive mind.
by vladyslavfox on 5/29/25, 12:46 PM
We have to fight bots so hard now that it often prevents real people from accessing websites.
I suggest the author to check out Anubis. It's much better for fighting off bots while not blocking humans.
by tndibona on 5/29/25, 12:27 PM
I’m not saying we all have to innovate or perish but how did our rules based order allow Google to get to this point.
by basilgohar on 5/29/25, 12:20 PM
You'd think Google would see this, but instead they're doubling down instead of eking out a sustainable evolution of their technology.
by Barrin92 on 5/29/25, 12:54 PM
"But we later realized the shadowban really was about the type of website we are (i.e., small and independent). While Google gives large publishers an appeal and recovery process, small and independent publishers have no path to appeal our shadowbans.[...]"
That's not an indication of Google liking big players, it's the opposite. Big players have leverage against Google, you the small publisher do not, as you correctly identified in the case of reddit:
"[...]Unlike independent publishers, though, Reddit actually had leverage over Google. Reddit was the owner of a trove of historical user generated content that Google wanted for its grand AI plans. If Google could secure a deal for Reddit’s content, maybe that would spare Google the expense of negotiating licensing deals with the web’s many disparate publishers and rightsholders."
Google doesn't need to negotiate with you, they can kill independent publishers, which is why you're writing this blogpost. That's the entire logic of the internet platform economy. Kill traditional distributors, abuse atomized content creators. Youtube and Google hate publishers as much as Uber hates taxi companies and unions.
Which is why the literal reason given by Google is much more likely, they just don't think your content is good.
by seaourfreed on 5/29/25, 12:14 PM
by FinnLobsien on 5/29/25, 12:29 PM
Now we have LLMs which amalgamate that type of content and spit out a personalized, but still mediocre response.
On the visual side, TikTok and Reels are doing their part to make everyone run to the same picture spot, go to the same mediocre (but cool-looking) restaurants and so on.
by storus on 5/29/25, 2:26 PM
by wilde on 5/29/25, 12:26 PM
I read some of the guides. Google is right that there’s little unique content here.
Perhaps this is the right tone for a letter to the FTC. I find it hard to sympathize with the author with this style (even though they are likely right that Google is killing the web)
by logicchains on 5/29/25, 12:11 PM
by 0x000xca0xfe on 5/29/25, 12:58 PM
I've used Google and Bing to look up my Geocaches because the Geocaching interface is clunky. Except I can't find them anymore. Exact ASCII matches in the <title> tag, even with a unique identifier, but now it's become impossible to find them via search.
Just blank results, ads or SEO spam no matter what I try. site:xxx, inurl:, exact quotes, similar words, repetition, nothing works anymore. What is going on?!
And geocaching.com is a pretty big site. I wonder what is happening to small blogs...
by tasuki on 5/29/25, 12:27 PM
by Aldipower on 5/29/25, 12:09 PM
by rs186 on 5/29/25, 12:25 PM
> You’re always going to have areas where people are robustly debating value exchanges, etc., like app developers and platforms. That’s not on the web, etc. There’s always going to be — when you’re running a platform — these debates. I would challenge, I think more than any other company, we prioritize sending traffic to the web. No one sends traffic to the web in the way we do. I look at other companies, newer emerging companies, where they openly talk about it as something they’re not going to do. We are the only ones who make it a high priority, agonize, and so on. We’ll engage, and we’ve always engaged.
> There are going to be debates through it all, but we are committed to, I’ve said this before, everything we do across all... You will see us five years from now sending a lot of traffic out to the web. I think that’s the product direction we are committed to. I think it’s what users look for when they come to Google, and the nature of it will evolve. But I am confident that that’s the direction we’ll continue taking.
Sounds like he wants to be nice with publishers and direct traffic to them like "for over 25 years" (a phrase he used many times in the interview), but it remains to be see what their action is.
by M1ch431 on 5/29/25, 12:38 PM
by hackerbeat on 5/29/25, 5:07 PM
by p3rls on 5/29/25, 6:28 PM
I built a customized wiki cms, it's the best, most info-dense site in my niche by a mile and I've still been getting fucked by google for a decade.
Literally, please, check right now and look at kpopping.com and then search for some kpop results on google. Things like "Jimin". The top results are always websites like the hindustantimes .com, and sportskeeda.
This has been going on for literally a decade in my niche, a decade! Every quality website we've had in our scene is long dead and has been replaced by indian and ai garbage besides me, it's pathetic. No one builds anything but wordpress copy paste slop these days.
by Sloowms on 5/29/25, 12:34 PM
I don't care for the grand conspiracy claims though. It's pretty obvious Google will optimize their search engine and the question answering to benefit their bottom line.
Maybe there are people actively working towards evil within Google. I think it's more likely some people recognize the implications of changes, some people don't but no one is working against those changes and ultimately the system will be capable to be used for very bad things and will do bad things naturally.
Anyway a better title would have been: Google's AI is the newest website killing feature
by moresea on 5/29/25, 12:03 PM
by sebstefan on 5/29/25, 12:11 PM
And risk providing worse results for "control"..?
citation needed
by ZephyrBlu on 5/29/25, 12:25 PM
Holy based.