Semrush, your users used your tool, then created misinformation. How did this even come about?

22.03.2024/10.14

It seemed right to quiz Semrush about the misinformation that is being posted out there, allegedly because of its program. I’ve yet to receive a reply, but I really need to understand why. How did my name even wind up in their system alongside Google and SEO? I emailed them, telling them what I could […]

A rejected PSA for the de-Googling community on Reddit

28.02.2024/01.24

Pity, this was just removed from the De-Google subreddit. Oh well, you try to do a public duty as a netizen … Here it is, as I’m not about to let it go to waste—I was hoping to share the love a bit more so legitimate websites had the full story. We all probably know […]

Semrush, LLMs (or “AIs”), and Google: a three-headed misinformation hydra?

21.02.2024/10.32

It turns out that Semrush is likely responsible for the misinformation regarding my name. When Shahid Jafar first encountered the fake topic of a new Google algorithm named for me—and apparently created by me—he mentioned he had seen 8,000 references to it. I couldn’t, but it turns out—thanks to another blog post that has incorporated […]

Read all about the SEO algorithm that I developed for Google

09.02.2024/09.55

P.P.PS., May 31, 2024: Since this post keeps getting linked by people posting disinformation, and seemingly by those using LLMs and are illiterate themselves, let me make things very clear to those who can read: there is no such thing as a Jackyan algorithm. The whole point of the title was to take the mickey […]

The curious case of Google’s SEO searchers

03.01.2024/11.16

They may no longer be relevant, but most (all?) of our sites still have meta keyword tags. When we redevelop a site, we tend to take the header tags in full from the previous incarnation, so unlike the old joke about George Washington’s axe (‘This is the original. I’ve only had the handle and blade […]

Google is warning us that they are pay-to-play

19.11.2023/09.44

I’m afraid this says it all, and I mean it. We know Facebook is pay-to-play and Google is definitely heading in that direction. For some searches (try looking for a career coach), it arrived there a long time ago. In case Mastodon embeds go awry in the future, here is what I wrote: […]

Google can’t deal with YouTube code; and a farewell to Smugmug after 13 years

04.10.2023/10.44

Once again, Google is full of bollocks. Its latest email to me says there’s a video on the Lucire website that’s ‘too tall’. Here’s a screenshot of the offending video on the page it identified. I checked the embed code, and the width is set to 300, the height to 169. […]

Google search is worse by design—internal memo

30.09.2023/12.54

You didn’t imagine it: Google’s search is worse, and that’s by design, according to a document produced in discovery. Dr Jonny L. Saunders of UCLA shared one on their Mastodon earlier today. The internal Google email, from Jerry Dischler to Anil Sabharwal, dated May 3, 2019, expresses a concern over the company missing […]

‘Google.com is blocked’—good riddance

29.09.2023/10.54

This error message began creeping up this week: google.com is blocked google.com refused to connect. ERR_BLOCKED_BY_RESPONSE And appears with increasing frequency. Maybe Google is too poor to be able to serve everyone? I’ve noticed the search results worsen, as this blog’s covered. Is this the reason I can’t use it any more? […]

Google News continues bias against independent media

23.09.2023/04.31

This is by no means a new complaint, but if you want to give a non-sinister explanation, then the idea that Google is too poor to build its search capability has to be one of them. And that it’s been poor for the good part of a decade. More sinister is the idea that all […]