It seems the pervasiveness of deplorable news sources in Google News is never ending. One that has appeared quite often for me of late is Parentherald.com. They consistently top the “News” for any celebrity gossip despite presenting as a site about “parenting”.
Here is an amazing and recent story on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie that showed up at the top of my results….
I especially love that Jolie is suffering from “severed headaches” and “husband-and-wife bonding which is needed to keep the fire burning”. Hahaha!
Can you just imagine what ParentHerald serves up as parenting advice?
Obviously the writers have used some sort of translate software to translate the copy which means these writers are not in the US so why would they get top priority for info about US pop culture?
By the way this is not an anomaly. It’s standard for all of their articles.
Again. Why is this acceptable?
Another interesting thing Parentherald does that other deplorable yet highly ranked Google sites like Christian Times do is aggressively promote Advertorials for IPads.
Seems the quality of the content is irrelevant to Google. The question is why? Google continues to vehemently deny any wrong doing or any “pay for play”, but why are their still so many SEO sites that can “guarantee” you top placement with Google?
Why does ParentHerald show up at the to of Google News consistently? Surely I am not the first to complain to them about this content.
Recently SFX Entertainment Inc. the owner of numerous entertainment companies including Viggle filed for bankruptcy protection. Viggle was sold in a fire sale for a reported $4.7 million dollars in stock to Austin-based Perk.com. Perk purchased the Viggle mobile app and tablet application, patents and intellectual property, brand and advertiser relationships, and a direct sales force.
This was supposed to be great news for Viggle users, but guess what? It was not.
This is a mere two days worth of a few reviews from March 10th to March 11th, 2016 from mixrank.com.
“Fraud! Deserves a Class Action Suit
Years of using this App for what I was lead (by Viggle) to believe were obtainable item (iPhone, Kitchen Aid Blender etc.) I accumulated over 550,000 points by checking in daily for over 4 years. Now with this laughable switch by Viggle, my approximately 550,000 Viggle points are now worth a measly $25.00 in a gift card if I transfer them over to the new perk point system. This seems so devious and misleading and quite possibly fraud by the Viggle folks. With so many users in the same situation, it may be time to bring this to a class action stage. Dear Viggle, do rit by your persistent and loyal users and please make this right. Karma is a wicked b$&ch, trust me I know.”
“Moot bug ridden app ever
App crashes many times per hour. Worst app I have ever used in history since the Viggle takeover by Perk. Not even close.”
“Epic Fail
I upgraded my viggle to perk and sweet baby Jesus it was the worst decision ever!! I lost all my points which I probably wasn’t gonna use but still they were mine!!😡😡”
“Going, going….GONE!
What the “bleep” happened? Like other reviewers here have stated the last update and recent changes makes the app useless; most of the options (along with your history) no longer work, can’t see my music, my shows, bonus shows, or even your old viggle points. Touching a link just gives you a white, blank screen. And the whole perk points transfer neither works or is well explained. The Viggle points saved don’t appear or transfer to perk points. Very little instruction and NO customer support! Previous emails, questions, problems were at least answered and addressed. Now when support and help is needed the most it feels as if they downgraded the app, sent all the staff away, closed up shop and took your long earned points with them. With all these complaints and issues you would think something could be done. Very disappointing.”
“Run….
I have used this app since it the start. I had millions of points and kept them as a rainy day fund. But, Perk took them all and did convert them. I started Perk with 50 points. I lost all of the points and now they have lost hundreds of thousands of customers. I have to ask – was it worth it?”
“This app is no more than thievery
I “earned” over 850,000 Viggle points. To wake up one day and they were ALL gone. 0 balance. This app robbed me of my time, of my good word(for some reason I use to praise this app in its beginnings), and of hopes of grandeur that they promoted. There is zero reason to use this app. You get no rewards, you just get jerked around….”
“Horrible App/Update
Rather than pay out the value of the millions of previously accumulated Viggle points, we now have to continue to use this worthless app just to be able to convert points to the slightly more useful Perk points. Which, by most attempts, is a futile effort as the app continuously crashes when playing ads. As soon as I can convert my accrued points and get at least something of value for my hundreds of hours of use, I will be deleting my account and removing all traces of this waste of space from my device.”
_______________________________________________
I agree that it does deserve a lawsuit—several lawsuits for fraud. So how did the fraud work? Well the Viggle execs coerced users into watching TONS of advertisements with the promise that they would receive points worth money. Then Viggle slowly started reducing what users could purchase with said points until the value became nearly negligible.
So Viggle made millions in advertising dollars thanks to users watching the ads and then reneged on their promise to deliver something of value in return. That is called “bad faith” and it’s called “fraud”. And users and investors who were robbed by Viggle after the recent bankruptcy should look to Google.
So why should investors look to Google for answers? Because Viggle operates Wetpaint. Viggle bought Wetpaint in 2013 for 30 million dollars. Wetpaint.com was one of the big entertainment websites that Viggle was making money off of on advertising with their app. Google was constantly giving Wetpaint priority over the primary sources in search ranks as well as in their answer box.
The analytics data provided by Google would certainly make the company look great to investors and advertisers and look like it had objectively created real value.
Imagine the glee of advertisers when they saw the statistics showing how often users clicked on ads and how long they watched said advertisements? Of course without the knowledge that it was done with coercion and fraud.
In short Google has single-handedly created a giant illusion of value around a site where none really existed. If investors were able to show that Google was showing favoritism to the website based on advertising dollars and not based on objective signals of quality then they could show that Google knowingly helped deceive investors into thinking this company had real value.
And if Google was inflating their analytics data like “bounce rate”, page views, time on page, etc then that is fraud and that data was used to defraud investors and advertisers into thinking the company had more value than it did.
Viggle is not an anomaly. There are countless examples of sites that offer little intrinsic value to readers, yet somehow dominate search results. If those sites are blindsiding investors by collecting millions in investment revenue showcasing their impressive Google stats and then declaring bankruptcy then Google is very likely participating in fraud.
So I am guessing The Inquisitr saw the article that we just wrote about them propagating the hoax of the Dexter Reboot as fact because they have come out in damage control today with a new piece titled…
‘DEXTER’ RETURNS TO THE TABLE AGAIN: HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE SERIES REBOOT SO FAR
And with a brand new disclaimer,
So here is the latest doublespeak that will have you scratching your head,
“It’s been three years since Dexter said goodbye to his fans. Ever since the finale, the Dexter fans have been patiently awaiting the news that Michael C. Hall would agree to come back and play the dark character again. For the past year, social media has been buzzing about a possible comeback and anticipated an announcement from Showtime in the next few months.
The one fact that we do know is that Dexter will return at some point. That much Showtime has confirmed.”
Really??? It’s a fact that “Dexter will return”??? …. based on….??? “Showtime confirmed”? Where? Why can’t you seem to show the specific evidence that shows Showtime “confirmed” this?
Clip from Inquisitr story
FYI Christian Times is owned by Christian Media Corporation Company which also owns Christianity Today and you know how reliable that news has been!
So they link to an article in ChristianTimes as a source of this “factual information” but click on the link and it says,
“According to reports, a continuation of “Dexter” is currently on the table. However, Showtime has not yet confirmed if it is indeed happening, or if a release date is on the horizon.”
So their “confirmation” is a story that says it has “not been confirmed”….not only a release date, but if it’s happening at all.
And notice they utilize the ambiguous “reports” excuse. “According to reports”….”reports” that we do not have and have never seen, but take our word for it there are “reports” out there….somewhere!
Then the Inquisitr addresses the previous article that we just spoke about,
“The Inquisitr previously reported that Showtime confirmed they are planning to release a Dexter miniseries followed by a movie. Dexter is rumored to be slated to return in 2018, although, Showtime hasn’t confirmed anything just yet.”
Ha! So we reported that Showtime confirmed, but Showtime hasn’t confirmed anything just yet. So in other words ‘we lied to you’.
“All that we know for sure about Dexter’s return is that it will return, but Showtime hasn’t agreed when just yet.”
No Showtime hasn’t agreed that it will return at all!
They just said its a possibility. But I guess so long as Inquisitr can say it’s happening just sometime in the future (who knows maybe not even in your lifetime, but sometime in the future) they think they can get away with that blatantly false statement.
Again the Dexter Reboot hoax was first reported by Snopes. We discuss that in the below article.
And really how can both true? “Showtime hasn’t confirmed anything” AND “we know for certain Dexter will return?” They can not both be true.
Bottom line is this article is an admission that they falsely reported that Showtime “confirmed” a reboot cloaked in obfuscation.
The only thing that is true here is the statement “Showtime hasn’t confirmed anything just yet”.
So settle down fans. Dexter may return. It’s possible and I’m sure if it happens Inquisitr will take full credit for “reporting” it to us, but as of now there is nothing “confirmed”.
The Inquisitr is quite a piece of work. It appeared online in Google news out of nowhere a few years ago with no trace of ownership, yet it consistently topped Googles search results.
Since then, the publication has been accused of publishing hoaxes on numerous occasions as news…. most recently a false claim of a Dexter reboot was traced back to them.
Rumors of a Dexter reunion have been circulating for several months on the internet. Multiple publications claim that “Showtime confirmed” a revival of the popular sitcom for 2017. But oddly Showtime never made an official announcement about the big news.
It turned out the erroneous claim was traced back to a January Inquisitr article titled,
‘DEXTER’ RETURNS TO SHOWTIME — GARY LEVINE CONFIRMS THE SERIES REBOOT — AXES ‘DEXTER’ SPINOFF?
Here is the clincher,
“The hold up on reviving Dexter, according to the social media rumors, was Michael C. Hall. He was not on board with returning to the Showtime series to reprise the role of Dexter and wasn’t sure he’d ever want to become Dexter again. Recently, Hall stated he was open to the idea of reprising the role again — social media released reports that Michael C. Hall agreed to resume the role of Dexter Morgan for two more seasons.”
That last line is the best because nothing in their story supports that “Michael C. Hall agreed to resume the role of Dexter Morgan for two more seasons.” In fact nothing ANYWHERE said that.
Not to mention “social media reports”??? What does that even mean!? What exactly is a “social media report”?
Is the “social media report” that random tweet about how attractive Michael C. Hall is? or is it this tweet? “Happy Thanksgiving from #Dexter”.
If you click on the link that promises to show you these “social media reports”, it’s a link to fellow click-baiter Hollywoodlife.com. They offer zero evidence to support the claim.
David Nevins, the head of Showtime, simply said he would “consider” a reboot in the future at a TCA conference. That’s it. So Inquisitr thinks the word “consider” and the word “confirm” are interchangeable.
“Dexter is the one show that I would think about [continuing]. It’s a question of when the timing is right. If there’s a willingness to do it, I would certainly listen. Certainly I’d look at Dexter,” he said.
So the author takes this tweet from Michael C. Hall combined with Nevins comment to mean a reboot has been “confirmed”. No official announcement from Showtime anywhere, just a tweet that says “Happy Thanksgiving #Dexter”.
It’s not like Dexter might still be promoting their show given that you can still watch it on Netflix, or still promoting all the merch they sell!…like in this tweet.
And per usual the Inquisitr sends you on a wild goose chase clicking links that all claim to be the source of some evidence to back this claim and none of the sites they link to are the source of ANYTHING.
But it’s no surprise that the Inquisitr would obfuscate truth and confuse the reader by sending them to all sorts of erroneous sources since they make money off of phony links.
Check out the Inquisitr blatantly advertising that they will sell you a “do follow” link for $250. The ad may as well say, “Give us $250 and we will link to your site and trick the public in to thinking that you are the source of something that you have nothing to do with because we have superior credibility online…look at our Page Rank of 6”.
So you will see countless links on this article to sites that are not the source of anything at all.
In fact check out the links on other articles. You will notice none of the links are actually the source of anything.
To make this situation even worse countless sites regurgitate this false claim about the Dexter reboot as news.
Snopes was the first to spot the hoax, but they refer to an earlier article with the definitive title “Dexter Returns”.
“ORIGINS: On 27 November 2015, the Inquisitr published an article about the possibility that Dexter, the hit Showtime series about a Miami-based blood splatter expert who is also a serial killer, might be returning for another season. While the article did not definitively state that Showtime was planning on bringing Dexter Morgan back to the small screen, the article’s sensational and misleading title, “Dexter Returns!”, led many fans to believe that a firm decision has been made to revive the show:”
Just wait until their next article Snopes titled,
“‘DEXTER’ RETURNS TO SHOWTIME — GARY LEVINE CONFIRMS THE SERIES REBOOT”
Snopes says that the Inquisitr is getting their info from a Screen Crush article.
“a Dexter reboot is a possibility due to the current state of television programming (where reboots, revivals, and rehashes are abundant), but the web site also acknowledged that questions about reviving old shows are common during the TCA press tour, and that Showtime has not announced any official plans to continue the show:
The abundance of TV revivals in the current climate, between The X-Files, Prison Break, or even Twin Peaks makes a Dexter return seem frighteningly more plausible, at the least. For now, everybody be cool!
So while a November 2015 news article splattered the title “Dexter Returns!” around the Internet, rumor analysis indicates that Showtime has made no specific announcements regarding actual plans to revive Dexter Morgan.”
Again the problem is not that sites like the Inquisitr exist. Crappy click bait will always exist. The problem is that Google rewards this behavior by keeping the Inquisitr at the top of their news results despite countless complaints.
This example is the perfect illustration of why aggregate websites are destroying the internet. They create their content based on what people are searching for so if no story exists they will simply make one up. The Inquisitr knew they would get millions of clicks if the title of the article claimed that a reboot had been “confirmed” so they flat out lied.
This certainly is not the first example of this from The Inquisitr. They regularly publish articles like this promising you some factual information like the “final four contestants on Survivor revealed!” only to click and see they have nothing.
I hope the public will realize this is standard operating procedure for Inquisitr and other click bait sites and will simply stop clicking. If a Dexter reboot had really been “confirmed” there would be an official announcement from Showtime not a “report on social media”.
I love the last sentence in the article….
“‘Don’t forget to come back to Inquistr for all your Dexter spoilers, news, and updates.”
Hahahahaha!!! “Yes, come to the Inquisitr for more false claims about reboots, sequels, spin-offs et al. You can always count on us to give you erroneous information.”
The reason I became interested in Google’s Knowledge Graph is because they kept taking information from our website that we had acquired through insiders that was not in the public record and I wanted it to stop.
The funny thing is every other website knew when they took this biographical information that did not exist anywhere else online they needed to source us, but not Google. Google took the info and never even offered us so much as an attribution link.
“Let’s start with the core aspect of the mission: to organise the world’s information. In this respect Google sees itself as a librarian tending to an unimaginably vast and ever-expanding collection of works. Starting with the web (but by no means limited by it), Google’s core activity is to find every bit of information it can, and use its machine learning capabilities to make it accessible and useful. Whether ‘useful’ equates to ‘profitable for Google’ is a debate for another time.
I reckon Google’s engineers embrace the librarian analogy, seeing themselves as the quiet, knowledgeable guardians of human knowledge, providing access to any and all through its carefully managed index card system – i.e. the search engine.”
EXACTLY!!! As if “all the world’s information” belongs to them and they are benevolently delivering it to us to make our lives better. It’s Google’s world and we are just living in it.
Anyhow Google is getting bolder and bolder with their “Knowledge Graph” which is often totally WRONG!
So I started archiving complaints from people to illustrate how careless Google is in grabbing info for their Knowledge Graph. Seems accuracy does not matter. All that matters is having “billions” of facts even if most are wrong.
This is a tiny sampling of some of the complaints. Read these and tell me if you think Google’s Knowledge Graph is making our world better.
Incidentally there are multiple complaints of Google listing the wrong numbers for Elementary schools. This is dangerous.
Of course everyone says the same thing…that they have filled out the feedback form multiple times to no avail. And that’s the same experience that I have had.
Some of the benevolent “unpaid” “volunteers” on the forum who have “nothing to do with Google” despite their constant support for the Big G offered the same advice…that the people need to make a “legal removal request”.
If you have seen the legal removal request, it’s pretty intimidating. Not to mention does anyone really want to get on Google’s bad side with something as serious as a “legal threat”? We are simply urging Google to fix the information and would prefer to not have to hire the assistance of a legal team to deal with it.
When is Google going to get it? The world is waking up! And we hate you Google! Yes we use you because all the other search engines are exactly the same. Not to mention the employees flow from one search engine to the next aka they are all the same!
This needs to stop. Clearly you do not have the time or resources to personally verify this information before you print it. So you need to ditch the knowledge graph completely. You are not “making the world better”, you are making millions of users and publishers furious!
What will it take for you to stop? What happens when you list a pedophile’s phone number for an Elementary school and parents leave sensitive information about their children’s whereabouts on said phone?
Google always plays the algorithm card–that they just need to “tweak” their algorithm, but the thing is at some point flesh and blood humans need to be held accountable for these egregious and potentially dangerous errors.
I hope some big greedy attorneys will jump all over this reckless behavior and file a giant multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit against Google so they will permanently drop the Knowledge Graph.
Oh and by the way, it looks all but certain that Google never bothers to read the “feedback”. Look at how many people claim they filled out the feedback button to alert them to the errors countless times to no avail. Looks like Google is too busy reading people’s emails to read “feedback” on direct answers or their Knowledge Graph.
So I would say their failure to even read the feedback comments is a reckless disregard for the truth and the public welfare. And these are the folks who want us to drive around in their driverless cars! Good God! If they can not even get phone numbers right do you really want to put your life in their hands?
Google rigs question about whether being an Adwords customer helps your organic search rank
Google vehemently denies that organic search rank is rigged to favor the big players…as in the companies who are either paying Google via Adwords or can do favors for Google, but the evidence is pretty clear that the search game is in fact rigged to shut out the little guy.
And as such is oppressing any real competition by keeping the same monied interests at the top of organic search rank —- which is exactly why anti-trust laws were created. But Google knows anti-trust laws will not be enforced against them since Google runs the FTC.
Personally I am sick of Google lying about “organic” rank not being manipulated because it is so obvious. Not to mention Google has patents allowing advertiser info to connect to search rank! Why does Google encourage people to link their Google Analytics to their Google Adwords?
This is amazing. The “Important Adwords customer” claims,
“I have seen a drop in ranking for my site. Why can’t I get advice on optimizing my site for Googles search result through my Adwords point of contact”.
Here is the screenshot from their video in case they try and edit it in the future which I think they have done with some of these incriminating videos.
Problem is the person asking the question is Christoffel Hiltermann who works for Google in Webmaster Support and Education. The commentors are furious and call out Matt Cutts on lying about the fact that the “questions” are coming from random people when they are actually Google employees.
“Hey Barry how about asking Matt why he is answering questions from his employees masquerading as adwords publishers? Read the first comment and then do a search on ”
“Christoffel Hiltermann””
“Pretty lame if you ask me. So does he answer any questions from real people? What a waste of time it must be submitting questions! There is a bigger story in this but I doubt anyone will bother.
Had another look at Matts Videos first one I looked at was this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v… and guess what There is an Ihar in prague who works for google! https://plus.google.com/+mahan… Does this guy actually take questions from real webmasters?”
Why would Google do this? Because they want it to look like “Important Adwords customers” have actually seen a “drop” in their organic rank (aka no favoritism) AND that Google will provide no advice on organic search rank to even the biggest Adwords customers because they are dripping with integrity. Nothing to see here. Move along.
And yes there sure is in “Ihar in Prague who works for Google”, not only for Google but he works for Google ranking! Check out Ihar’s resume from Linkedin.
Here are some more comments from publishers,
“Google favors brands by an extremely wide margin, brands just happened to almost certainly advertise on Adwords. Panda also can be averted by buying adwords to improve user stats, those that buy top keywords get better Time on Site, lower bounce rate etc. So Mr Google shill, what say you? Adwords help you gain ranking on Google because that’s what Google wants. Separate Google Search from Adwords and see the SERPs.”
“I have every reason not to trust Matt.
Regardless of what Matt Cutts says, our independent tests have shown a direct correlation between AdWords expenditure and Google organic search results positioning.
We’re going to be publishing a whitepaper on this shortly.”
Exactly, anyone with half a brain can see the biased-ness in Google’s search results. It’s amazing how fast these Venture companies skyrocket in page rank like going from 0 to 6 in a matter of months while the rest of us have been working our tails off for YEARS and our still below a PR of 4.
Remember Google claims:
“We believe it is very important that the results users get from Google are produced with only their interests in mind. We do not accept money for search result ranking or inclusion. We do accept fees for advertising, but it does not influence how we generate our search results. The advertising is clearly marked and separated.”
This is key because you will often see the Google defenders claiming Google is a private business and can do whatever it wants. That is not true. Google’s actions are unarguably illegal because it is not clearly marking these results as “paid”.
There are multiple lawsuits against Google accusing the company of not “acting in good faith”.
I’d say that having Google employees pose as “Important Adwords customers” is the very definition of “bad faith”.
Here are a few more comments from that video of Cutts denying Google is doing this and about Cutts lying about the Publisher asking it.
“Christoffel Hiltermann work at “webmaster outreach” or Google’s Propaganda Ministry. So he asked Minister Cutts a setup question, where’s the harm?
Barry is a shill and didn’t want to point that out, in fact he editorialized, agreeing with Cutts & Co.”
Notice the commenters figured out that Barry Schwartz is a shill for Google as a ton of these websites are which all claim this notion of Adwords being connected to organic rank is a crazy conspiracy theory.
If you have a 66 billion dollar business model built on doing something very illegal how much of that money would you be willing to spend to have “bloggers” write articles about how Google is acting within the law? Millions and you would hire 1000s of “SEO experts” or at least what would appear to be 1000s of SEO experts to defend Google.
Incidentally looks like Matt learned his lesson from this because he started only using first names shortly after the first incriminating video. But not before another question came from Webmaster “Warren Redlich” criminal defense attorney/Web developer (interesting combo) from Boca Raton.
“Redlich has been accused of cybersquatting. He purchases domain names related to his political opponents and others and posts websites about them such as http://www.christineodonnell08.com/, primarily as a means of revenue (the O’Donnell site nets him approximately US$85 per day in advertising revenue from Google AdSense). He has heavily advertised on the Internet during his gubernatorial campaign.”
Interesting considering advertisers sued Google for putting their ads on shady parked domains JUST like this and $85 a day is a hell of a lot of revenue from Adsense for a site that only has one page and no content. Why was Redlich compensated so generously by Adsense?
Thankfully a court recently ruled that the lawsuit can go through. So perhaps the plaintiffs should do a bit of research on the relationship between Redlich and Google.
“The names may have changed, but traditional power structures were soon reasserted. The old gatekeepers were replaced with the new gatekeepers. The new gatekeepers, like Google, grew fat, rich and powerful. They controlled the game and the game was, once again, rigged in favor of those with the most power.”
Yep, and Google plays the long game. They start out appearing legit for years to gain your trust and to accrue power and most importantly accrue a monopoly. Google insists there is plenty of competition, but it’s puzzling that no one can come up with an algorithm than can compete with Google.
In the beginning I know that Bing was buying their search results from Google because I knew an insider (I don’t know if they still do, but they did a few years ago). So if Bing is buying their search results from Google how is that competition?
Then you have the strange case of Yahoo. Yahoo’s CEO is Marissa Mayer a former executive from wait for it…..Google.
Mayer was the Vice President of Google Product Search until the end of 2010. In 2012 she became CEO of Yahoo. How does that make sense considering the very elaborate NDA’s these Google execs sign?
So is the rivalry between Yahoo and Google really just theater to convince us that Yahoo and Google are not the same?
The SeoBook article goes on to claim,
“My point is that if you’re not getting the same business benefits from search as you used to, and the game seems that much harder, then it’s not because you’re not clever. It’s because the game is rigged.”
Exactly, the game is rigged to shut out the little guy. I have witnessed this first hand having a website that I have worked extremely hard on for years naively believing the meme that “content is king”. Yet every time we seemed to be doing really well and establishing credibility a new website would emerge and outrank us with our own content. Most recently Bustle and their demon child Romper.
Incidentally Bustle was a wait for it…..Google Venture company. So this GV company which relies exclusively on how well it ranks with the search engines monopolized the top results for all things reality Television when they were very very late to join the game and had zero original content.
Eventually the company was owned exclusively by Time Warner venture money but is it so crazy to suggest that the search engines have made agreements about how they will treat one anothers venture companies especially considering the millions that Time Warner gives Google for Adwords?
And if you start looking at the Linkedin profiles of Google employees an interesting pattern emerges. The software engineers that control the algorithms flow back and forth from one giant like Google to another like Facebook to Yahoo etc, seamlessly. In fact Ihar from Prague now works for Facebook.
So isn’t logical that these companies agree that if you are in this internet mafia you will ALWAYS get precedence over a small publisher, especially a small publisher that does not pay Google to advertise. See whenever a company is big enough to potentially pose a threat to Google, Google lets them in on the game and shares the profits. This ensures no one with any power will ever expose the game.
Here is a funny article on SEO where the author Shaun Anderson is stating that if you want to be #1 for high traffic terms you will have to pay Google. And no one knows better than the SEO experts!!
“In competitive niches, you will need to pay Google to be number 1 using Google Adwords, and this will continue to be the case as Google becomes more an more, a local search engine (IMO). Google Adwords is typically the fast way to get to number one for valuable and competitive keywords and key phrases.”
By the way Google recommends that you use their recommended “partners” to manage your Adwords accounts. (Again notice how Google outsources the gray area to their “partners” separate companies).
Here it is in case Shaun changes it. Before you say he must have meant your ad would place at the top, Nope. Read this. He clearly means you will have to pay VIA Adwords to place #1 in organic rank which goes along perfectly with Google’s patent connecting advertiser “data” aka amount bid on search terms to organic rank.
And the SEO experts know an organic rank is way more powerful than an ad because it appears authentic because Shaun also says,
“Organic listings as a whole get more (perhaps double) the clicks a sponsored ad listing attracts according to musings in the SEO industry at the moment but it suits Google to balance that out in the future (because Google makes more money from advertising).”
Hmmmmm, so if only Google could combine the two allowing people to place bids on terms and getting a bump in rank.
I guess Shaun did not get the memo. You are not supposed to say that out loud. I’m sure all professional SEO folks know that you have to “pay” Google for top search rank, but you don’t blast that on your website. You tell your customer over the phone, not in writing. But it’s interesting that he is so nonchalant like this is just a fact that every SEO professional knows.
The problem is things are only getting worse as Google “tweaks” their algorithm more and more to favor sites that are paying them. In fact I would even argue that sites paying Adwords millions of dollars are not really paying for ads, they are paying for organic search rank. And how would anyone be the wiser?
This is how Google works their “magic” by obfuscating their criminal actions and creating layers of plausible deniability. Thus there is a glass ceiling of sorts ensuring that real small publishers will NEVER get to the top. They can at best be bought out by one of the oligarchs, but they will NEVER rise to the top no matter how hard they work and how quality their content is because this game is RIGGED!
Additionally smaller Adwords customers will continue to get ripped off as Google will overcharge them to advertise on low quality sites owned by large Adwords customers or insiders. The big guys paying Google get overpaid, the little guys not paying Google get way under-compensated for their work and the power paradigm continues to shift in favor of the insiders.
By the way if you look you will find countless claims by confused publishers who see their traffic and other stats fall off of a cliff the minute they either suspend an Adwords campaign or the minute they are overdue paying for an Adwords campaign. So how is that acting in “good faith”?
I have also talked extensively about The Inquisitr and how the site was started by someone from a TechCrunch which is owned by AOL. These big search engines like AOL and Google are pumping billions in to companies many of which rely exclusively on how well they rank in organic search results.
A site like Bustle which was originally a Google Venture and now a Venture of Time Warner and Facebook is a site that relies exclusively on how well it ranks period. It makes all its money on advertising. So is it really so absurd to suggest that Google is using their power to help these Venture companies rank at the top to ensure they are profitable?
I should clarify when I say “Google” I am actually referring to the oligarch cabal running Silicon Valley…Google, Facebook, Time Warner, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, etc since they are notorious for making agreements with one another that will benefit each other’s companies and prevent any real competition from emerging, and since the employees, especially executives and software engineers seem to flow in and out seamlessly from giant to giant and Venture capital overlaps.
They have all entered the Venture Capital biz and are funneling huge amounts of capital into companies which rely on how well they rank. So with millions of websites out there all competing for the same eyeballs do you think these executives may have struck some deals to protect one another at the expense of the rest? Of course.
“……money is actually the second most valuable thing that Google brings to the company. Websites owned by Google Ventures have direct access to Google. Quoting from an archived version of their own site “We provide unparalleled (and real) access to Google’s massive network of employees and alumni.” If that includes access to people that know how the algorithm works and how to optimize for it, that knowledge is virtually priceless.”
Right? And why in the world would we assume that Google is not using this massive power of the almighty algorithm to help the sites they are pouring millions in to?
Check out this guy’s profile. Ihar Mahaniok used to work at Google doing among other things “Data analysis, ranking”. You think this guy knows something about Google’s “secret sauce” and getting a site to rank? Well now Ihar is working for a Venture capital firm Empire Angels. He also works as a Software Engineer at Facebook which is pretty interesting considering all of the NDA’s these guys sign especially a guy who would have the inside scoop on Google’s ranking algorithm.
Do you think he may be able to help the Venture capital sites owned by Facebook like Bustle and Romper rank well with Google? And don’t you think Google knows this?
These Silicon Valley Giants are all using their monopolistic power to extort money from people. After all Amazon was just found allegedly extorting money from people to increase their IMDB rankings.
People wonder why Google search results are declining in quality and why people can’t rely on any information they find online even from ‘reputable’ places like IMDB. This is why. Google is constantly “tweaking” their algorithm, tweaking it in a way that ensures they make more money with out any regard for the quality of the information they are delivering and the rest of the Silicon Valley Oligarchs are following their example and figuring out ways that they can use their credibility and power to extort money from the public.
What scares me most is the sheer volume of content being produced by content sweatshops on a daily basis. Bustle.com claims to have over 100 full-time staff on salary and over 27 million dollars to “aggregate” aka copy and paste content for years to come –content that will continue to clog the search engines at an exponential rate and prevent us from finding the meaningful information we are searching for.
Time to demand the Google monopoly and the Silicon Valley oligarchy that controls the gateway to all information be broken up so that internet search results can truly be “organic”.
The only reason I started noticing Bustle.com is because they kept showing up at the top of the organic search results out of nowhere a few years ago when they first started.
I looked them up and saw that they were brand new. I was perplexed at why Google was giving this site with no track record whatsoever so much precedence over better more relevant search results.
Then I saw that they were funded with a combination of Google Venture capital and Time Warner capital…so two search engines funding a D list celebrity tabloid site in the name of empowering women.
“To fund its expansion, he’s raised $5 million more in venture funding from Social+Capital and Time Warner, existing investors, along with R&R Ventures, a fund run by Dick Parsons and Ron Lauder.”
Eventually Google dropped out, but only because they were angry that Goldberg got Time Warner involved behind their back. So now the primary money is from Time Warner and Facebook. Social Capital is a venture capital company owned by Chamath Palihapitiya from Facebook.
Do you think this tiny women’s website may have some pull in terms of their search rank? After all the behemoths of Silicon Valley have been caught making agreements with one another on multiple occasions.
In other words if you or I had the brilliant idea to start a website targeted at women’s issues do you think people would be throwing millions of dollars at us?
Why would these companies invest in an idea that is far from original and actually completely saturated since theoretically if you start a website you have to prove yourself to Google and other search engines and work your way up which takes years—unless you have a way to control your search rank.
If you have ever started a website you know no matter how great your content is you will be lucky to make $3 a day your first year and by year 4 or 5 you will be very lucky to make 5 figures a year.
But hey in July of 2014 this brand new site crossed 11 million monthly unique visitors after hitting 10 million in June and as of October 2015 was on target to bring in over $10 million in revenue after their 2nd full year in operation. Bustle is now pulling in 31.6 million unique views a month. Again if you have ever started a website you know how absurd and impossible these figures are, particularly in light of the very low quality of their content.
In fact in this BusinessInsider article in the comments section someone calls them out on lying about these statistics pointing readers to this site where you can see Bustle only has 10-15 million visitors a month with a 73% Bounce rate and only 1.05 seconds on the site and a very Slow load time: (2.478 Seconds), 73% of sites are faster.
“Looks like they are buying shady traffic according to Similiar Web. 45mm uniques is great, but not if it’s all paid for…” the reader claims.
I’m guessing this is why Bustle decided to disable any comments. They can’t have anyone calling them out on their lies publicly.
And have you noticed the obscene political bias of the site? Their love for Hillary Clinton is cringeworthy. Im no fan of Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, but the Hillary love from Bustle coupled with their pervasiveness atop any Google search result is disconcerting for sure.
So Bustle is so amped up over their explosive growth they are now launching a demon spawn child called Romper.com (God help us!!)
Margaret Wheeler Johnson, Bustle’s managing editor claims, “We were reaching a huge number of millennial women at Bustle, and we realized that although the average age of first birth is twenty-six years old, there is no millennial-focussed parenting site.”
And yet strangely Romper appears to primarily cover D list tabloid reality show gossip just like its mom Bustle. Just what the world desperately needed–ANOTHER site to aggregate tabloid celebrity news. And the fact that the New Yorker has written an article gushing about this brilliant idea to start a website to aggregate news is also indicative of the inside connections the owners possess.
Check out some of the reviews from Bustle employees on Glassdoor.com,
“Low pay (started at $10/hr), emphasis on quantity over quality (article quota becomes overwhelming), no benefits, creatively draining
Advice to Management
Pay your writers better and allow your writers more time to produce quality articles rather than just pushing them to write clickbait.”
And another…
“Pay could be much better. Also article quotas could be a bit much; I would have appreciated more time to really perfect my articles instead of just churning out content as fast as possible.”
Both reviews from writers complain that Bustle is obsessed with quotas and pumping out content with little regard to quality.
My issue with these websites is not that they are horrible. Horrible websites will come and go constantly. My issue is how they are being subsidized and helped by serious inside connections.
How did Bustle go from a PageRank of 0 to 6 in 2 years? — especially since Google claims they no longer change PageRank. (No they no longer change PageRank for sites without inside connections. That way the riff raf aka public can never really compete).
Why are the content curators and internet providers allowed to also be content creators since they determine who lives and who dies in the website biz.
And when will we hear more of an outcry from the public about these so-called “venture” companies rising to the top of the organic search results with such low quality content while the small publishers busting their tails to bring the public the valuable content they are actually searching for are pushed farther and farther down in the ranks? We already know from the leaked FTC documents that Google created a special algorithm to promote it’s own interests. These interests must include Venture Companies.
The pattern I continue to notice again and again with sites like Bustle and The Inquisitr is that they were started by Venture Capital money by big very connected owners and investors, usually the search engines themselves all under the guise of some big social justice meme. Yet ALL end up just being tabloid content farms copying and pasting their content from other places.
There are a lot of issues here and laws that are being broken with regard to disclosures and I hope the public will start raising some hell and demanding this VC insider shell game stop.
If you still think Google is not using their God-like powers to help companies they invest in check out this story on Thumbtack–the site was caught buying spammy backlinks and penalized but the penalty was removed by their biggest investor, Google a mere 3 days later and yet spammy back links still pervade the site.
So I was introduced to Viggle when they bought out Wetpaint — the world’s worst celebrity news site. Wetpaint had a very long history of dominating organic search results using very shady Black Hat tactics to promote low quality articles.
So in December 2013 Viggle owned by Billionaire sleaze-ball Bob Sillerman –acquired Wetpaint for $30 million.
Now Wetpaint is part of the Viggle app which allegedly allows people to make money while watching television.
“The standard rewards structure breaks down to getting a penny for matching a song, and 2 cents for watching an hour of TV. A song download is 3,500 points and a Redbox 1-day DVD rental is 4,000 points. This means 25 points is worth a little less than a 1 cent. Even if you watch tons of TV you still have to keep checking in on your phone (exposing yourself to even more ads) so they know you didn’t just leave your phone by the TV all day. The rewards won’t even be cash as the only gift cards offered are to Redbox, Windows Store, and 1-800-Flowers.com.”
The writer goes on to say…
“Here’s my lightning review: Don’t bother. I try to keep an open mind about some of these programs, but this one just sounds awful. From reading various reviews, even the loyal users say the rewards have gotten steadily worse over time. Make money while sitting on the couch and watching TV? Honestly, how did you think it would turn out?!”
If you Google the app you will find countless complaints from users about how the app does not work and how Viggle slashed what users can get for their rewards points.
Here are a few comments, but don’t worry, there are 1000s of comments out there that say essentially the same thing…Viggle sucks.
“Awful. About a month ago a $10 coupon for Buffalo Wild Wings was 30,000 points, but now it’s 60,000 points! Those investors in Viggle will be very disappointed because my friends, and me too, are deleting the Viggle app.
Waste of time!!”
“Don’t waste your time, they took away all the products and gift cards, over 700,000 points gone to waste!!!”
“Viggle sux.you can only buy TV or movies down loads.You can get the same thing from show box for free.”
And as of today January 8th the stock price is 24 cents!!! — a 5 year all time low. Remember in May the stock price was “soaring” as much as 60% to over $2, but even then the fundamentals were not there to support such explosive growth.
If you have ever read their articles they are cringe-worthy. I say cringe-worthy because they do not even get the most basic facts right, like someone’s name, occupation, or Hometown. And they are nothing but clickbait. They are a content sweat shop and they absolutely dominate the SERPS with garbage.
Their SERP domination suggests to me that they are “buying” this favoritism from Google and if you read the article below you will see Google has a patent that would allow for such activity.
Wetpaint and Viggle are sleazy. They have a long history of theft. And now they are not only stealing from small publishers and advertisers they are stealing from investors. Investors should be angry with Google which propped up this shell game for years—constantly giving them priority in rank while the site offered zero intrinsic value to anyone (just like the Inquisitr) despite countless claims being filed by publishers.
I saw some people insisting Viggle is a giant ponzi scheme and I’m sure they are right. Let’s hope this house of cards collapses sooner rather than later.
Google makes 96% of their profits from Adwords and Adsense — selling advertising to publishers. Yes despite all of the fanfare around Google shopping, Google Play and Google travel, etc, their billions don’t come from those ventures.
Their revenue comes from selling advertising period.
Remember that in 2014 Google’s full year revenue was an astounding $66 billion, up 19% year to year….so Google made over 60 BILLION dollars from selling ads. (As a side note, interesting considering pay outs to publishers as in CPCs and CTRs have been crashing while Googles profits explode year after year–that’s what happens when you allow monopolies to emerge).
So is it really so far fetched to suggest that Google is abusing their enormous power and showing favoritism to the publishers paying them the most money?
As a small publisher that pays Google zero dollars to advertise I can tell you first hand that I have witnessed the big publishers out rank us again and again with our own content–both when they scrape their content directly from us and publish it weeks later and give us no credit and when they scrape the info from us and source us.
In fact I am writing this because yet AGAIN Wetpaint has outranked us with an article that we were ranked #1 with for some time (during which it received little search volume). Yes this certain term received enormous volume last night when “The Bachelor” premiered and suddenly despite being the primary source of the info Wetpaint was pushed to the #1 spot with an article that did a poor job of scraping all of the info we previously reported.
I have witnessed this phenomena again and again and again over the last 2 years. It’s like neither Wetpaint nor Google cares so long as the search term is not receiving that much volume, but as soon as the volume blows up Wetpaint or another top Google advertiser mysteriously becomes #1.
It’s almost as if it’s written in to the Google algorithm.
If a search term is getting low volume then Google allows the best source to be at the top (makes Google look legit, right?), but if a search term suddenly receives a surge in volume Google shuffles organic search results around to allow their top advertisers to enjoy that surge. After the surge ends everything shifts back to normal.
Well it might sound crazy if Google did not have a patent to facilitate such action.
Google denies that they base organic search results on who is paying them, but as usual their patents tell a different story.
“A patent was granted at the USPTO today that points to a different story.
As Matt Cutts noted in the not too distant past, just because Google has a patent on something doesn’t mean that they are currently using it. A patent was granted to Google today that seems to contradict that statement about site rankings and Google ads.
What if Google used information about the terms that a site was advertising on in search results to learn more about the site and what terms were important for it?
What if Google looked at the ads displayed on a site to better determine what it was about for purposes of search rankings?”
Yes what if Google looked at the advertising dollars plus the search terms a site wanted to rank for?
Intuitively this is what I have felt for some time because the quality of the content from sites like Wetpaint has been so poor—they get their facts wrong constantly and spend no time verifying anything. NTM they are not the first to publish stuff yet they outrank the sites who are.
From the Abstract of the patent:
“Systems and methods for improving search rankings using advertising data are disclosed.
In one embodiment, a search engine implements a method comprising receiving a search query, identifying a plurality of articles relevant the search query, determining advertising data associated with the search query, and ranking the articles based at least in part on the advertising data.”
“Advertising data” like advertising dollars and search terms.
The comments are great. Here is one..
“As I noted on G+, um, whoa. If Google is using (has used) paid search data to influence organic rankings, they may have finally opened search up to anti-trust claims. Not speaking as a lawyer, just someone who recognizes some major problems with this.
And of course, they’d also probably be violating all sorts of FTC disclosure regulations.
I simply can’t bring myself to believing that this is the case…”
And this one,
“Just having the patent registered, to my mind, is possible intent to use in future. Playing the constantly fluxing search engine guideline game is bad enough, without having cash influence a competitors result. I can’t say I blame a friend for leaving the SEO game – too many variables and it makes my head hurt.”
It sure is! Google would not spend time and money getting this patent unless they intended to use it.
Remember Google claims:
“Objectivity. We believe it is very important that the results users get from Google are produced with only their interests in mind. We do not accept money for search result ranking or inclusion. We do accept fees for advertising, but it does not influence how we generate our search results. The advertising is clearly marked and separated. This is similar to a newspaper, where the articles are independent of the advertising. Some of our competitors charge web sites for inclusion in their indices or for more frequent updating of pages. Inclusion and frequent updating in our index are open to all sites free of charge. We apply these principles to each of our products and services. We believe it is important for users to have access to the best available information and research, not just the information that someone pays for them to see.”
I can’t help but hear the phrase…”thou doth protest too much”.
What this statement means is ‘just because we can show favoritism to big advertisers don’t worry we won’t’. The question is why does Google get to hide behind this veil of secrecy in the first place?
Then there are countless claims like this from Adwords customers who claim Google reps hassle them to constantly to raise their bids, promising “more exposure”. (keep in mind the article is from Google shill Barry Schwartz, but the comments are telling.
There are plenty of blogs out there that insist the Google pay to play theory is totally bogus, but you may want to take a closer look at who is writing those blog like this one by attorney Lee Rosen.
Rosen says,
“Cutting to the chase: buying ads from Google doesn’t improve organic ranking. It has no impact.”
Interestingly Lee’s son runs a “Google advertising business”.
From his website,
“Since becoming a PPC manager and focusing on online advertising, I’ve not only gained professional ad certifications from Bing and become a Google Ads Certified Partner, but I’ve worked on developing a personalized PPC marketing system that we can quickly and easily implement to help quick start your business.”
So the son is even “certified” by Google!!! That appears to be how Google deals with the grey area of linking PPC to organic rank via “certified partners”…wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You need to hire a “certified partner” because they know the tricks.
You will find tons of blogs just like this by folks insisting Google is way above board–nothing to see here, move along, but again take a closer look at the writers and their vested interest in big G.
Google has crossed the line, but the FTC has shown their alliance with Google again and again. And before anyone can call for more regulation as the answer, I would point to how the FTC buried extensive evidence that Google was in fact a monopoly–discovered in Spring of 2015.
In fact regulation IS the problem. I would say this is an example of why we need to get rid of the FTC and other regulation agencies because they ALWAYS protect the monopolies and ignore the law.
Instead Google needs to be broken up in accordance with the law that already prohibits this behavior. I can only hope that some big guns out there with some big attorneys will find a creative way to force Google to stop this illegal and unethical behavior.
PS, don’t forget the Google whistleblower from 2014 and his/her claims about how Google was grossly abusing their monopoly power and was playing favorites with publishers even creating a “VIP list”. Google does not exactly have a rep for not being “evil”.
BTW: Here is a good article on the BIG problem with Google being the arbiter and disseminator of ALL the worlds information.
UPDATE 4/19/2016
Check out this guy selling do follow links on some of Googles biggest advertisers. He is doing it to this very day. This is allegedly highly unethical in Google’s eyes yet these big sites do it blatantly out in the open with no consequences.
See the rules only apply if you are not paying Google big bucks via Adwords.
seocheaters4344 