FWIW
https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/tech/google-creators-event.html
I recently attended a funeral. It was called the Google Web Creator Conversation Event and took place on October 29, 2024, at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Google invited some of the most vocal independent site owners who’ve been shadowbanned by their brutal updates of the last two years, and 20 of them came to pay their respects. We had no idea what the purpose of our visit was going in, but we knew by the time we left.
Google has never done anything like it before. After this account, they likely never will again.
Danny Sullivan hosted the event. He may be the most knowledgeable and helpful person still left at Google, though he has no real power to effect change.
The day before, he led the group on a tour of Google’s biggest office during the busiest part of weekday work hours and seemed slightly embarrassed that at no point during the tour was anyone there. The building was empty, a shell designed as a hub of activity, drained of people willing to engage in being active.
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The idea that this might be a funeral, was put forward as a half-joke by one of the shadowbanned attendees during our first Q&A session, in which we asked questions and got no answers. Her funeral joke should have been funny. Only the Googlers laughed.
Most of these site owners seemed certain the funeral they were attending, was their own.
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Google Sucks Us Dry And Throws Away The Husk
We spent the morning politely answering questions from Google, questions designed to help Google improve its search engine, questions that in no way benefited any of the shadowbanned attendees. After, we were given a chance (we thought) to get something useful out of the trip. We split into small breakout groups divided up by category.
We few Entertainment site owners rearranged ourselves into a corner semi-circle, and sat drinking mint lemon water from cups made of recycled Kale. We were joined by four Googlers, who began pumping us for information.
During this small group discussion, I and others tried to get our Googlers to address the biggest problem facing our industry: Google giving big brands special treatment. Each time a site owner brought up the topic, we were quickly steered in another direction.
Undeterred, we then asked the only question that mattered: Why has Google shadowbanned our sites? Google’s Chief Search Scientist answered this question using a strategy based around gaslighting and said they hadn’t. Google doesn’t ever derank an entire site, only individual pages, he said. There is no site-wide classifier. He insisted it is only done at the page level.
Many of the shadowbanned site owners attempted to politely push back and point out that the reason all 20 of us were there was specifically because our entire site was deranked from Google in a single night.
He continued insisting this didn’t happen and then looked confused that anyone would disagree with him.
When asked what was wrong with our sites, as if we were jilted lovers in an abusive relationship being kicked to the curb, one Googler actually said “it’s not you it’s me”.
Finally, someone bluntly asked, since nothing is wrong with our sites, how do we recover?
Google’s elderly Chief Search Scientist answered, without an ounce of pity or concern, that there would be updates but he didn’t know when they’d happen or what they’d do. Further questions on the subject were met with indifference as if he didn’t understand why we cared.
He’d gotten the information he wanted. The conference was over. I don’t think he even said thanks.
Instead, Google’s wise wizard of search science wrapped things up with a self-congratulatory speech about what a great job we were doing at helping Google deliver better search results to his users.
Search results without any of us in them.
It was then I realized this wasn’t our funeral, it was Google’s.
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