Curtis Weigel

An open letter to the folks in Google Search: Listen, I know you recieve a lot of criticism. No matter who you rank on top, folks are likely to complain. I also know you're fighting an army of spammers and over-optimized content that threaten the quality of search results. I get it But let's also recognize that consistently ranking a site #1 will lead to commercial spam on that site and worsening results. Whether it's Reddit or Forbes, folks will see easy money, and now you're fighting another moving target. Do we think Forbes should rank #1 for "best crypto exchange" alongside "best cbd gummies" along with "best headphones" and 100s of thousands of other "best" keywords? 🤔 Does the "brand" of Forbes equate to product expertise? When we look at these pages, we don't see the evidence of personal experience and expertise that you demand of smaller publishers. There's very little evidence that they've actually used many of these products. If we're being honest, these results seem worse than the "unhelpful" content you fought to reduce. What gives? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When we see Forbes and Reddit over and over again, it doesn't feel like Google is "searching" anymore, but instead, you gave up to serve the McDonalds of search results with 2-3 items on the menu. Here's what we'd love to see instead: 1) Increase site diversity, so we see different sites with more focused expertise 2) Apply the same content standards of "Helpful Content" to big and small sites alike (you know the standards I'm talking about) 3) Reduce any punishment of sites with small brand footprints. I understand your intentions here, but not every well-researched site has a real-world presence. (and turn down this signal for big brands, as it encourages bad behavior) I've seen what you are doing with Helpful Content and applaud much of it. You could improve Google search if you applied these principles more broadly while relying less on the brand, which has become less reliable over time. Thank you for listening.