Google reacted to a publisher whose piece detailed a methodical guide on how major corporate publishers manipulate the Google Reviews System Algorithm with apparent impunity, revealing a bias favoring large brands that detrimentally affects small independent publishers.
Unveiling Google’s Algorithm Tactics: HouseFresh Exposé
The narrative unfolds with an article titled “How Google is killing independent sites like ours,” posted on the HouseFresh platform. It presented purported evidence indicating that numerous corporate review platforms exploit Google’s algorithm to fabricate the illusion of authentic reviews, according to HouseFresh’s assertion that these were not genuine reviews.
For instance, it pointed out that several publishers ranked an expensive air purifier unfavorably reviewed by HouseFresh (and Consumer Reports), which found it performed worse than more affordable alternatives, consumed more energy, and needed $199.98/year in replacement costs. Nevertheless, prominent brand sites bestowed glowing reviews upon the product, presumably due to the higher affiliate earnings associated with its steep price tag.
Notably, they revealed how product photos featured on various big brand publishers’ sites were sourced from the same photographer and seemingly captured in identical settings, strongly suggesting that individual publishers did not independently review the product.
HouseFresh meticulously dissected what they assert are instances of Google exhibiting a preference for counterfeit reviews.
Here is a partial roster of sites accused by HouseFresh of effectively endorsing low-quality reviews:
- Better Homes & Gardens
- Real Simple
- Dotdash Meredith
- BuzzFeed
- Reddit, with a spam link inserted by a user with a suspended account
- Popular Science
HouseFresh presented a clear and reasoned narrative illustrating how Google’s Reviews Systems algorithms purportedly favor big brands while small independent websites that publish genuine reviews suffer a steady decline in traffic with each successive update to Google’s algorithms.
Google’s SearchLiaison posted a reply on X (formerly Twitter), acknowledging the seriousness of the allegations.
Highlighted in the response are the following points:
- Google does not conduct manual checks on assertions made on webpages (except during reconsideration requests following a manual action).
- Google’s algorithms do not integrate phrases intended to suggest a hands-on review as a ranking factor.
SearchLiaison tweeted:
“Thank you. I appreciated the thoughtfulness of the post, and the concerns and the detail in it.
I’ve passed it along to our Search team along with my thoughts that I’d like to see us do more to ensure we’re showing a better diversity of results that does include both small and large publications.
One note to an otherwise excellent write-up. The article suggests we do some type of “manual check” on claims made by pages. We do not. That reference and link is about manual reviews we do if a page has a manual spam action against it, and files a reconsideration request. That’s entirely different from how our automated ranking systems look to reward content.
Somewhat related, just making a claim and talking about a “rigorous testing process” and following an “E-E-A-T checklist” doesn’t guarantee a top ranking or somehow automatically cause a page to do better.
We talk about E-E-A-T because it’s a concept that aligns with how we try to rank good content. But our automated systems don’t look at a page and see a claim like “I tested this!” and think it’s better just because of that. Rather, the things we talk about with E-E-A-T are related to what people find useful in content. Doing things generally for people is what our automated systems seek to reward, using different signals.
More here: developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content#eat
Thank you again for the post. I hope we’ll be doing better in the future for these types of issues.”
Does Google Show Bias Toward Major Brands?
Google has stopped the significance of PageRank scores, consequently reducing the prevalence of irrelevant big brand sites cluttering the search engine results pages (SERPs). This wasn’t a case of Google intentionally favoring big brands as trustworthy entities; rather, it reflected a flaw in their algorithms.
It’s plausible that certain signals within Google’s algorithm inadvertently benefit big brands. Testimony from the recent Google Navboost case in the antitrust lawsuit showed the importance of user interactions as a ranking-related signal.
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