<story><title>Big media publishers are inundating the web with subpar product recommendations</title><url>https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codexon</author><text>Google has been killing all but the most widely known domains for a very long time. I&amp;#x27;ve mentioned this repeatedly on ycombinator multiple times, but only people who have made their own website 15 years ago and tried to grow it know what I mean.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38923627#38933675&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38923627#38933675&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to start moving to some other closed platform that is not part of Google search like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube (yes I know Google owns it but its still not part of the search ecosystem).&lt;p&gt;Tying your entire business to how high you rank on Google search is always going to eventually end up in disaster like this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>granzymes</author><text>Read past the provocative title, and Google actually seems to be doing the right things here. They cracked down on product reviews that aren’t actually testing the product in 2021, and the article says big media companies (presumably with lower quality review content) suffered as a result.&lt;p&gt;But then those media companies found a loophole with &amp;quot;The Best X&amp;quot; lists that weren&amp;#x27;t subject to the 2021 Products Review Update changes, which lets them continue spamming affiliate links while avoiding the new requirements.&lt;p&gt;So now independent sites with actual reviews are in a holding pattern for these search terms, waiting for Google to bring the hammer down again on sites that are evading its quality metrics. This article is pretty clearly an open letter trying to bring attention to this issue.&lt;p&gt;If the team at Google working on ranking for product reviews is reading this, I hope you have another update in the works to close this loophole. H1 planning just wrapped up!&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;Edit: The title on HN has changed to be less click-baity. The original title was &amp;quot;How Google is killing independent sites like ours&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Title aside, the article is quite excellent and does a great job of explaining the product review niche of SEO. Kudos to the authors.</text></comment>
<story><title>Big media publishers are inundating the web with subpar product recommendations</title><url>https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codexon</author><text>Google has been killing all but the most widely known domains for a very long time. I&amp;#x27;ve mentioned this repeatedly on ycombinator multiple times, but only people who have made their own website 15 years ago and tried to grow it know what I mean.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38923627#38933675&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38923627#38933675&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;My recommendation is to start moving to some other closed platform that is not part of Google search like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube (yes I know Google owns it but its still not part of the search ecosystem).&lt;p&gt;Tying your entire business to how high you rank on Google search is always going to eventually end up in disaster like this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cogman10</author><text>Google search has become worthless for me.  I use bing instead because of how horrible google results are.&lt;p&gt;On most searches, especially with my phone, the results are almost all sponsored and rarely what I&amp;#x27;m actually looking for.&lt;p&gt;Google search has gone from being one of the best to being ask jeeves at it&amp;#x27;s worst.</text></comment>