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Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

reuters.com

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Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#41

Post by initplus »

rchaud wrote: post #39
initplus wrote: post #24

They’ve been de-ranked because their website hits all the “SEO optimized” red flags that Google are now downranking for. Pages like “Outlook vs Tuta Mail” “Gmail vs Tuta mail”, “Yahoo vs Tuta Mail”. All with the same rephrased taking points about their product. Then each of those talking points has its own dedicated page, just saying the same thing over and over again. Want a better rank? Remove all this SEO crap, le…

Zapier, LucidChart and about a million other SaaS companies do this as well, because it's something people would search for. There's nothing in the Google blog that suggests they're turning the screws of SEO-optimized content. https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-mar...

Explicitly mentioned on that blogpost:

“…or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. This could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries.”

The numerous “Tuta vs …” that all reword the same information clearly meet the “designed for search engines instead of people” standard imo.

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#42

Post by initplus »

amelius wrote: post #29
initplus wrote: post #24

They’ve been de-ranked because their website hits all the “SEO optimized” red flags that Google are now downranking for. Pages like “Outlook vs Tuta Mail” “Gmail vs Tuta mail”, “Yahoo vs Tuta Mail”. All with the same rephrased taking points about their product. Then each of those talking points has its own dedicated page, just saying the same thing over and over again. Want a better rank? Remove all this SEO crap, le…

So this means that anyone can now downrank pages by publishing "X vs Y" webpages?

You can downrank your own pages and website by hosting low quality SEO focused content. Spammy content written by others, on their own domain, doesn’t affect your ranking.

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#43

Post by initplus »

ziml77 wrote: post #34
peter_d_sherman wrote: post #11

This is an interesting page: https://tuta.com/email-comparison Whereupon we find the following comparisons: >"Protonmail vs Tuta Mail Fastmail vs Tuta Mail Mailbox.org vs Tuta Mail Posteo vs Tuta Mail Hushmail vs Tuta Mail Startmail vs Tuta Mail Riseup vs Tuta Mail" ...in other words, there's no shortage of email providers...

Holy cow the blatant SEO on that page. Trying to get all the versus searches that users might try while also stuffing all the other email providers names in as many times as possible.

Yeah I felt kinda hoodwinked. I read their blog post and felt quite outraged. Google stepping on the little guy, “they provided no explanation” etc.

Then I scroll to the bottom of the thread on hacker news, saw this comment, and “oh, that’s why”. They didn’t even take down the SEO spam before complaining about being caught.

I really don’t think I could trust any “privacy focused” email provider that relies on such deceptive tactics to promote their business.

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#44

Post by rchaud »

initplus wrote: post #41
rchaud wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zapier, LucidChart and about a million other SaaS companies do this as well, because it's something people would search for. There's nothing in the Google blog that suggests they're turning the screws of SEO-optimized content. https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-mar...

Explicitly mentioned on that blogpost: “…or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. This could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries.” The numerous “Tuta vs …” that all reword the same information clearly meet the “designed for search engines instead of people” standard imo.

How is that not designed for people? Don't you think people are searching for comparisons between two different products?

Here's Zapier for instance, comparing their tool to a Microsoft substitute:

https://zapier.com/l/microsoft-power-automate-vs-zapier

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#45

Post by initplus »

rchaud wrote: post #44
initplus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explicitly mentioned on that blogpost: “…or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. This could include sites created primarily to match very specific search queries.” The numerous “Tuta vs …” that all reword the same information clearly meet the “designed for search engines instead of people” standard imo.

How is that not designed for people? Don't you think people are searching for comparisons between two different products? Here's Zapier for instance, comparing their tool to a Microsoft substitute: https://zapier.com/l/microsoft-power-automate-vs-zapier

People are searching for comparisons, but these pages have been designed to seem highly relevant to the search engine. Not to be highly useful for readers. That page from Zapier is another example of the same issue. When Google rolls out their new ranking algorithm to zapier.com, I'd expect it will also be de-ranked.

The words "Power Automate" only appear 3x in the page. The title, subtitle, and a link to the same page. Nothing else on the page is relevant to "Power Automate", it's just the same marketing copy from the rest of their website. As a user looking for actual details on how the products capabilities compare to Power Automate this page is useless to me.

Google have been completely transparent about this. They have explained exactly what kinds of pages would be de-ranked under the latest changes.

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#46

Post by dotnet00 »

danpalmer wrote: post #21

My understanding is that DMA prevents tech companies considered to be too big from sharing data internally in certain ways without opt-in (among other things). When this comes into effect, a website stops ranking as well. Is one explanation of this just that search was using a data source for relevance that benefitted this website, and now they are not using that? That seems possible, and doesn't require an assumptio…

The post from Tuta did speculate that given the timing, the issue may be related to DMA changes. The issue is that they can't even reach a human at Google with authority in the associated systems to understand the issue.

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#47

Post by kingspact »

ChrisGranger wrote: post #36
kingspact wrote: post #27

Reuters literally can't bring itself to type out three extra characters and fully name the competitor to Google. Interesting.

Which competitor are they not fully naming?

Huh? I don't understand the question. Certainly!

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#48

Post by ChrisGranger »

kingspact wrote: post #47
ChrisGranger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which competitor are they not fully naming?

Huh? I don't understand the question. Certainly!

Oh, you said Reuters couldn't type out the full name of Google's competitor. Were you thinking of Tutanota? If so, they officially shortened their name to just Tuta and moved their site to tuta.com.

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#49

Post by gnabgib »

ChrisGranger wrote: post #48
kingspact wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I don't understand the question. Certainly!

Oh, you said Reuters couldn't type out the full name of Google's competitor. Were you thinking of Tutanota? If so, they officially shortened their name to just Tuta and moved their site to tuta.com.

kingspact seems to be a poorly behaving bot (look at it's word soup history). Interesting it replied though.. Eliza style.

Re: Google rival Tuta complains to EU tech regulators about de-ranking

#50

Post by danpalmer »

dotnet00 wrote: post #46
danpalmer wrote: post #21

My understanding is that DMA prevents tech companies considered to be too big from sharing data internally in certain ways without opt-in (among other things). When this comes into effect, a website stops ranking as well. Is one explanation of this just that search was using a data source for relevance that benefitted this website, and now they are not using that? That seems possible, and doesn't require an assumptio…

The post from Tuta did speculate that given the timing, the issue may be related to DMA changes. The issue is that they can't even reach a human at Google with authority in the associated systems to understand the issue.

Their speculation seems to be that there is some maliciousness or intent here, rather than a natural result of the DMA changes. My point is that it could be the latter.

As for reaching a human, my understanding is that Google does not discuss ranking reasons with companies on purpose, in order to prevent bias and gaming of the system.

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