Many websites do have "hacked" (blackhat/shady) SEO, but these websites do not last long, and are entirely wiped out (see: de-ranked) every major algorithm update.
The major players you see on the top rankings today do utilize some blackhat SEO, but it's not at a level that significantly impacts their rankings. Blackhat SEO is inherently dangerous, because Google's algorithm will penalize you at best when it finds out -- and it always does -- and at worst completely unlist your domain from search results, giving it a scarlet letter until it cools off.
However, the bulk of all major websites primary utilize whitehat SEO, i.e "non-hacked," i.e "Google-approved" SEO to maintain their rankings. They have to, else their entire brand and business would collapse, either from being out-ranked or by being blacklisted for shady practices.
Additionally, Google's algorithim hasn't changed much at all from pagerank, in the grand scheme of things. If you can read between their lines, the biggest SEO factor is: how many backlinks from reputable domains do you have pointing at your website? Everything else, including blackhat SEO, are small optimizations for breaking ties. Sort of like PED usage in competitive sports; when you're at the elite level, every little bit extra can make a difference.
Google's algorithm works for its intended purposes, which is to serve pages that will benefit the highest amount of people searching for a specific term. If you are more than 1 SD from the "norm" searching for a specific term, it will likely not return a page that suits you best.
Google's search engine based on virality and pre-approval. "Is this page ranked highly by other highly ranked pages, and does this page serve the most amount of people?" It is not based on accuracy, or informational-integrity -- as many would believe by the latest Medic update -- but simply "does this conform to normal human biases the most?"
If you have a problem with Google's results, then you need to point the finger at yourself or at Google. SEO experts, website operators, etc. are all playing a game that's set on Google's terms. They would not serve such shit content if Google did not: allow it, encourage it, and greatly reward it.
Google will never change the algorithm to suit outliers, the return profile is too poor. So, the next person to point a finger at is you: the user. Let me reiterate, Google's search engine is not designed for you; it is designed for the masses. So there is no logical reason for you to continue using it the way you do.
If you wish to find "deep enough" sources, that task is on you, because it cannot be readily or easily monetized; thus, the task will not be fulfilled for free by any business. So, you must look at where "deep enough" sources lay: books, journals, and experts.
Books are available from libraries, and a large assortment of them are cataloged online for free at Library Genesis. For any topic you can think of, there is likely to be a book that goes into excruciating detail that satisfies your thirst for "deep enough."
Journals, similarly. Library Genesis or any other online publisher, e.g NIH, will do.
Experts are even better. You can pick their brains and get even more leads to go down. Simply, find an author on the subject -- Google makes this very easy -- and contact them.
I'm out of steam, but I really felt the need to debunk this myth that Google is a poor, abused victim, and not an uncaring tyrant that approves of the status quo.
> Google's algorithm works for its intended purposes, which is to serve pages that will benefit the highest amount of people searching for a specific term.
Does it? So for any product search, thrown-together comparison sites without actual substance but lots of affiliate links are really among the best results? Or maybe they are the most profitable result, and thus the one most able to invest in optimizing for ranking? Similarly, do we really expect results on (to a human) clearly hacked domains to be the best for anything, but Google will still put them in the top 20 for some queries? "Normal people want this crap" is a questionable starting point in many cases.
Over the long-term, Google's algorithm will connect the average person to the page most likely to benefit them, more than it won't.
There is no "best result."
Any page falling under "thrown-together comparison sites without actual substance but lots of affiliate links" are temporal inefficiencies that get removed after each major update.
Will more pop up? Yes, and they will take advantage of any ineffeciency or edge-cases in the algorithim to boost their rankings to #1.
Will they stay there for more than a few months? No. They will be squashed out, and legitimate players will over time win out.
This is the dichotomy between "churn and burn" businesses and "long term" businesses. You will make a very lucrative, and quick, buck going full blackhat, but your business won't last and you will be consistently need to adapt to each successive algo update. While long-standing "legit" businesses will only need to maintain market dominance -- something much easier to do than break into the market from ground zero, which churn and burners will have to do in perpetuity until they burn out themselves.
If you want to test this, go and find 10 websites you think are shady, but have top 5 rankings for a certain search phrase. Mark down the sites, keyword, and exact pages linked. Now, wait a few months. Search again using that exact phrase. More likely than not, i.e more than 5 out of 10, will no longer be in the top 5 for their respective phrases, and a couple domains will have been shuttered. I should note that "not deep info" is not "shady," because the results are for the average person. Ex. WebMD is not deep, but it's not shady either.
I implore people to try and get a site ranked with blackhat tricks and lots of starting capital, and see just how hard it is to keep ranked consistantly using said tricks. It's easy to speculate and make logical statements, but they don't hold much weight without first-hand experience and observation.
>Will they stay there for more than a few months? No. They will be squashed out, and legitimate players will over time win out.
This isn't true at all in my experience. As a quick test I tried searching for "best cordless iron", on the first page there is an article from 2018 that leads to a very broken page with filler content and affiliate links. [1] There are a couple of other articles with basically the exact same content rewritten in various ways also on the first page.
A quick SERP history check confirms that this page has returned in the top 10 results for various keywords since late 2018.
>It's easy to speculate and make logical statements, but they don't hold much weight without first-hand experience and observation.
This statement is a bit ironic given that it took me 1 keyword and 5 seconds of digging to find this one example.
Many websites do have "hacked" (blackhat/shady) SEO, but these websites do not last long, and are entirely wiped out (see: de-ranked) every major algorithm update.
The major players you see on the top rankings today do utilize some blackhat SEO, but it's not at a level that significantly impacts their rankings. Blackhat SEO is inherently dangerous, because Google's algorithm will penalize you at best when it finds out -- and it always does -- and at worst completely unlist your domain from search results, giving it a scarlet letter until it cools off.
However, the bulk of all major websites primary utilize whitehat SEO, i.e "non-hacked," i.e "Google-approved" SEO to maintain their rankings. They have to, else their entire brand and business would collapse, either from being out-ranked or by being blacklisted for shady practices.
Additionally, Google's algorithim hasn't changed much at all from pagerank, in the grand scheme of things. If you can read between their lines, the biggest SEO factor is: how many backlinks from reputable domains do you have pointing at your website? Everything else, including blackhat SEO, are small optimizations for breaking ties. Sort of like PED usage in competitive sports; when you're at the elite level, every little bit extra can make a difference.
Google's algorithm works for its intended purposes, which is to serve pages that will benefit the highest amount of people searching for a specific term. If you are more than 1 SD from the "norm" searching for a specific term, it will likely not return a page that suits you best.
Google's search engine based on virality and pre-approval. "Is this page ranked highly by other highly ranked pages, and does this page serve the most amount of people?" It is not based on accuracy, or informational-integrity -- as many would believe by the latest Medic update -- but simply "does this conform to normal human biases the most?"
If you have a problem with Google's results, then you need to point the finger at yourself or at Google. SEO experts, website operators, etc. are all playing a game that's set on Google's terms. They would not serve such shit content if Google did not: allow it, encourage it, and greatly reward it.
Google will never change the algorithm to suit outliers, the return profile is too poor. So, the next person to point a finger at is you: the user. Let me reiterate, Google's search engine is not designed for you; it is designed for the masses. So there is no logical reason for you to continue using it the way you do.
If you wish to find "deep enough" sources, that task is on you, because it cannot be readily or easily monetized; thus, the task will not be fulfilled for free by any business. So, you must look at where "deep enough" sources lay: books, journals, and experts.
Books are available from libraries, and a large assortment of them are cataloged online for free at Library Genesis. For any topic you can think of, there is likely to be a book that goes into excruciating detail that satisfies your thirst for "deep enough."
Journals, similarly. Library Genesis or any other online publisher, e.g NIH, will do.
Experts are even better. You can pick their brains and get even more leads to go down. Simply, find an author on the subject -- Google makes this very easy -- and contact them.
I'm out of steam, but I really felt the need to debunk this myth that Google is a poor, abused victim, and not an uncaring tyrant that approves of the status quo.