Comment by airstrike
9 months ago
> But I can assure everyone with almost absolute certainty
FWIW I read this level of certainty as "I am privy to specific information pertaining to it and in fact I'm one of the people in charge of making sure it happens"
To be clear, I have never nor will I ever likely work at Google or any of its competitors. I have spent an ungodly amount of time building (and breaking) affiliate sites / information sites / et al as side projects.
Haven't done it in a few years (having kids has sucked my energy for side projects pretty dry), but at one point had like ~15 sites in my portfolio that I used to experiment with.
Death, taxes, and an algo update fucking with a site's traffic at Google's whim.
Google has always preferred top domains for a very long time, allowing them to abuse the rankings for years.
One relevant example I can remember, OVH is the top result for servers in Japan yet they don't have any in Japan.
https://www.google.com/search?q=dedicated+server+in+japan
https://web.archive.org/web/20240219200935/https://www.googl...
This has been going on for many years now. And they never get punished unless there's a huge uproar about it on ycombinator like with expertsexchange.
Certainty can also come from experience of previous actions when such exploits become commonplace.