How Google is killing independent sites like ours
…. “And why you shouldn’t trust product recommendations from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google”. This is an eye-opener — I didn’t realise how organised the affiliate marketing ecosystem was, in terms of gaming SEO. Google are now biasing towards this approach:
Google has a clear bias towards big media publishers. Their Core and Helpful Content updates are heavily focused on something they call E-E-A-T, which is an acronym that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. The SEO world has been obsessed with E-E-A-T for a few years now, to the point where there is always someone on X (formerly Twitter) discussing how to show experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Many of the examples come from dissecting big media publishers like the ones we’ve been discussing in this article. The reason why SEOs look up to these sites is that Google rewards those sites.
(tags: enshittification internet google reviews seo eeat content publishing bias search-engines)