🥸 The Long Con We Didn't See

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It’s not often that we get investigative-style reporting in the SEO industry.

And certainly not from someone in the industry.

But I read the most interesting story the other day that I think you should know about so that we can all pay attention to what Google does now that this is exposed.

More on that in a moment.

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We All Hate Forbes

It seems like SEOs and site owners have been complaining about the favoritism that Forbes gets from Google for a long time.

I remember where there was a guy on Twitter all the time defending them and all the weird buying guides they rank for (cause, of course, he worked for them). I don’t remember his exact argument but it was along the lines of ‘they’re legit’.

🤡🤡🤡

People seemed to like him though, so it never really went further than that.

Then, this week, someone does some really deep digging and uncovers the reality that it’s a fucking parasite SEO play.

And, I won’t spoil it for you, but the twist at the end is fucking bananas.

I highly recommend you read the whole story (it’s a long one).

Once you do, consider this - what will Google’s response be? Cause they’re essentially exposed, yet again, for being clowns.

When I, and several other people, were publically saying that they’re clowns that can’t stop AI content from ranking, we got manual penalties on every site of ours they could find. Even Niche Site Lady got hit with manual penalties after talking about using AI content.

But we already know they won’t do the same to Forbes.

Those manual penalties all said the same bullshit about being punished for scaled content, so I regularly do a reconsideration request for one of my 19 sites that got this penalty….because it was an old site before chatGPT existed.

Just to see if anything changes.

Here’s the most recent response….

Google doesn’t like it when small site owners expose them as clowns. But I suspect they’ll continue to bend over and take it from Forbes.

Coming up…

Upcoming topics: more tips and ideas on Etsy and KDP, how it’s going with my chatGPT fiction ebook and the AI music thingie, and growing an ecomm site.

If you have a topic you want covered just reply and let me know.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

P.S. If you’re looking for high level discussions or tips on things like local SEO and Rank & Rent, I highly recommend Jacky Chou’s Advise community. I’ve been in it for several months and there’s tons of value in it, including a SOP for local SEO.

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