Poisoned Google SERPs

nozzle.io

20 points·armcat··8 comments

Is it poisoned or are they simply taking more drastic steps to maximize their earnings per mille given that user behavior for many of their most lucrative terms is likely shifting towards LLM conversations? With less search diversity, there may be higher ad CTRs, plus higher organic search traffic/visibility will typically lead brands to spend more on paid clicks as the free clicks are correlated/subsidize the paid spend.

When I search "white label local seo" the first result is

https://localrank.so/white-label-seo/

AFAICT this doesn't change, it will be the same next week

I'm not using Javascript or "AI"

This is about what Google shows to rank tracking services, so unless you're doing the same sort of mass monitoring of Google search results pages that they do, it seems unlikely you'd see the effect being discussed.

In case it's unclear, the two points of the comment are

1. The results I get are different from theirs and this should be expected

2. it's stil possible to obtain consistent SERPs within a context (or whatever terminology one wants to use), e.g., geolocation, HTTP headers sent, etc., by not using Javascript or "AI"

I'm not suggesting these SEO people would care about this but an end user might

Is this the first time Google has engaged in this kind poisoning activity?

Been out of the SEO game for a while, but the industry has always been pretty hysterical and has been seeing broad patterns in what often are only minor fluctuations or tests.

Claudeslopped site design and information layout makes me dubious of the information conveyed.

It's not clear to me if this is actually poisoning, or just some kind of A/B test. Especially since all the "normal" results are SEO slop.

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