There are now 5+ writeups from different attendees. They all agree on the larger points: Google has no solution to the problem. Google asked attendees if they have ideas for a solution. Google told people their content is good and they deserve to rank.
This is one of the few instances where Google is actually trying to do better but cannot figure out how.
Hence this event where owners of affected websites were put in direct contact with the product managers and software developers working on the topic.
But yeah, in general Google is often not incentivized to play fair. See the demotion of price comparison websites after Google Shopping ads were placed on top of search results.
> Google is literally NOT the gateway to internet.
Many business models rely on people finding you via Google. Lawmakers and courts in both the US, EU, Russia, Turkey, and other jurisdictions came to the conclusion that Google is in fact a gatekeeper.
If that means everyone deserves to rank with their website, is of course an entirely different question.
> > Google is literally not THE gateway to internet. At most, it's A gateway.
> Lawmakers and courts in both the US, EU, Russia, Turkey, and other jurisdictions came to the conclusion that Google is in fact A gatekeeper.
[Emphasis added and capitalisation changed in both quotes -- CRC]
Yeah, the GP acknowledged that Google is a gateway to internet; they just denied that they're the gateway. See the difference? That is, according to the quote from you, also what the courts said.
They very loudly complained on X/Twitter and cried about losing all their revenue, business, etc.
> Probably nobody even knows how all of it works.
That is exactly what Google admitted at the event. They do not understand how to demote all the spam blogs without also demoting legitimate niche websites.
In September last year, Google released an update called "Helpful Content Update" (HCU) that was supposed to demote made-for-Google spam websites. Usually, a blog with dozens of articles from cheap authors that are optimized to rank well in Google.
Unfortunately, many legitimate niche websites were demoted by this update. Google's Webmaster outreach team (primarily Danny Sullivan, also known as "SearchLiason") has been in contact with people running such legitimate websites. There was a lot of public discourse on X/Twitter on this topic for months.
This event was supposed to bring such people together with Product Managers and Engineers at Google.
In September last year, Google released an update called "Helpful Content Update" (HCU) that was supposed to demote made-for-Google spam websites. Usually, a blog with dozens of articles from cheap authors that are optimized to rank well in Google.
Unfortunately, many legitimate niche websites were demoted by this update. Google's Webmaster outreach team (primarily Danny Sullivan, also known as "SearchLiason") has been in contact with people running such legitimate websites.
This event was supposed to bring such people together with Product Managers and Engineers at Google.
Someone from the data science side at Google, who is probably very far removed from the actual ranking algorithm, said that there was no shadowbanning of domains. That is, of course, total crap and probably just the result of some misunderstanding of what banning, demoting, penalizing, etc., means to different people.
The people at Google who actually work on communicating to webmaster never said there was no shadowbanning.
The submission itself is such a link. Did you even read it, or just dive straight into the comments?
> Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since we’re planning to hire fewer people next year. We’re also restructuring our business teams more substantially.
Add to that thousands of smaller companies laying of 10 people here, 100 people there. We will not hear about it, but it quickly adds up.
In addition, we go from a phase where people new in the job market (students etc) were being hired quickly to no one hiring them. So there are both laid off people and new entrants added to the pool.
> In addition, we go from a phase where people new in the job market (students etc) were being hired quickly to no one hiring them. So there are both laid off people and new entrants added to the pool.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Hiring students is much cheaper so companies may still hire them whilst letting go of other expensive employees at a cost of quality.
Permira is not that kind of VC. They normal for for growth opportunities. I guess they will try to expand the range of offerings from Zendesk and try to cross-sell these solutions to existing customers. Not necessarily bad for employees.
There are now 5+ writeups from different attendees. They all agree on the larger points: Google has no solution to the problem. Google asked attendees if they have ideas for a solution. Google told people their content is good and they deserve to rank.
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