In February, HouseFresh managing editor Gisele Navarro called out publishers like BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone as some of the culprits that publish content about air purifiers despite a lack of expertise — but Google rewards these sites with high rankings all the same. The result is a search results page filled with SEO-first content, designed to do not much more than rank highly on Google.
In a piece published today, she says HouseFresh has “virtually disappeared” from search results: search traffic has decreased 91 percent in recent months, from around 4,000 visitors a day in October 2023 to 200 a day today.
“We lost rankings we held for months (and sometimes years) for articles that are constantly being updated and improved based on findings from our first-hand and in-depth testing, our long-term experience with the products, and feedback from our readers,” Navarro writes. “Our article [previously ranked at #2] is now buried deep beneath sponsored posts, Quora advice from 2016, best-of lists from big media sites, and no less than 64 Google Shopping product listings. Sixty. Four.”
SEO-first affiliate content is being deployed ruthlessly at countless sites.
There is no obvious editorial necessity for Forbes to write articles like “Top 20 Largest Dog Breeds” or “What Fruits Can Dogs Eat?” — until you take a look at the sidebar of these stories, which are filled with dozens of affiliate links for pet insurance that Forbes gets a kickback from every time someone signs up.
Last year, when CNET was discovered to be using artificial intelligence tools to produce dozens of stories, it was SEO-heavy “evergreen” articles it focused on first. In the cases of Sports Illustrated and USA Today’s AI content debacles, it also was product reviews that were being churned out using automation tools.
The aggressive targeting of top Google search spots — with or without AI — by big media outlets affects small sites like HouseFresh the most. A significant loss of traffic for independent publishers is often enough to shutter an outlet entirely.
Really need to start using DuckDcukGo exclusively
Duck Duck Go is also complete trash these days, just in different ways.
Another alternatives
Kagi Searx Startpage
Wha?? Duckduckgo is great. I love it. Get to know their bangs. https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
yeah I tried it and it was incredibly lacking. Any advice on alternatives?
I sadly have none. I suffer with DDG and Google and my life is hell.
Same bro, same, for simple shit I usually end up using Perplexity to avoid the garbage articles.
I’ve been using kagi for a couple months and it’s great. The AI shit is pretty prominent, but optional, so your experience will vary depending on your tolerance for that stuff. Also it’s not free lol.
For my purposes I find it worth the money
I’ve been using Qwant and been loving it.
looks interesting, thanks
Seems like a combination of building a proper webring and then setting YaCY loose on it is probably the path forward.
Make a search on Bing, then make a search on DuckDcukGo. Compare the results. You’ll find out that DuckDcukGo is just a front end for another site that provides links to business affiliates.
Well damn what engine search CAN I use then?
I’ve been using Kagi for a few months and I’m liking it so far.
A search engine that specifically requires an account is pretty sus
How else are you supposed to pay for it?
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