Comment by sharkweek
9 months ago
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.