
How 80% of first page of Google results is dominated by one company - pseudody
https://medium.com/@loish/ranking-multiple-times-in-google-how-voucher-white-label-sites-dominate-the-results-315ee0b8546
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mistermisterusa
"dominated by voucher white label sites with them representing about 50% of
the overall results." I would have thought Google in its almighty wisdom would
have had automated system in place to detect this. That's terrible.

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luckylion
Good organic SERPs will only distract from ads.

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mistermisterusa
The flagrant abuse of organic SERPS like this destroys the trust of the entire
brand and therefore ads.

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luckylion
The audience targeted with sites like that can hardly differentiate between
ads and organic results and can certainly not tell that those are affiliate
sites that provide little to no value.

They search, they click, they buy. I know, because I've worked for a site
doing exactly that (not mentioned in the article), the metrics are great,
Google does not care _at all_. And why would they - many of the companies
doing this will also spend lots of money on Adwords for the same topics.

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mistermisterusa
If I'm reading this correctly, then I refuse to believe Google - constantly
being criticized for peddling "fake news" \- would be happy to see these big
news websites exploiting Google algorithms to make money like this.

They are essentially hijacking Google's trust signals (meant to try to prevent
fake news from appearing high within the SERPS) and using them for profit. The
only reason they are ranking so well is because of this algorithm. It's
misleading in the extreme. And where does it end? Daily Mail Poker Reviews? Le
Monde Compare Home Insurance?

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luckylion
I don't know if they are "happy", but they've known about it and have ignored
it for > 12 months.

> They are essentially hijacking Google's trust signals (meant to try to
> prevent fake news from appearing high within the SERPS) and using them for
> profit.

That's what everybody does in SEO, though. Very few links to sites monetizing
via affiliate schemes are actually "recommendations", they all get bought &
sold, or rather rented.

> Daily Mail Poker Reviews?

That's benign. They will happily give you great reviews for predatory lending,
very questionable casinos, sports betting etc. The large media companies have
zero limits what they publish, as long as you pay them well, and Google has
zero interest in fixing this.

Most of the sites also blatantly breach GDPR rules. I've personally reported
two. The officials asked them for a statement (after sitting on it for two
months, they are understaffed), they received "we will change that shorty,
thanks for notifying us" as a reply and closed the case. The companies didn't
change anything, of course.

It is what it is, and it's not going to change anytime soon.

