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by xnx 789 days ago
First: Google doesn't owe any site any traffic regardless of how much traffic it might have received in the past.

Second: If you want https://mail.tutanota.com/login to rank for "tutanota login" you should put the word "Tutanota" somewhere in the title tag of that page.

Additionally, Google has no cached version of that page so there's probably some technical problem (if past experience is any guide, the problem is not on Google's side). https://mail.tutanota.com/ also has no sitemap.xml or robots.txt file. It is extremely unlikely this is some conspiracy and more likely some failure of the most basic SEO measures.
2 comments
kelnos 789 days ago
> Google doesn't owe any site any traffic regardless of how much traffic it might have received in the past.

If they're going to hold a near-monopoly on search, then I don't think that's true. Or, rather, they don't specifically owe anyone traffic, but drastic changes in search results -- especially when it relates to a competitor of Google's other properties -- should be subject to scrutiny.

Agree, though, that it's unreasonable to expect to come up in searches for "tutanota" when that term isn't even on the page, regardless of what the company used to be called. Before rushing to accuse Google of violating the DMA, they should have at least done a basic SEO checkup.

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shadowgovt 788 days ago
What is the value of the scrutiny if the underlying story is "You get the search results you get and if you don't like them you are free to use another search engine?"

It'd be one thing if there were a cartel of search engines keeping Tuta off results, but "It doesn't show up in Google" sounds more like a reason to stop using Google than an attack on Tuta.

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lxgr 789 days ago
Or really anywhere on that page! Looking at the source, I can't see it anywhere other than as part of image URLs and one comment. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to rely on Google's crawlers to locally render a PWA for indexing purposes.

> It is extremely unlikely this is some conspiracy and more likely some failure of the most basic SEO measures.

I wouldn't call myself a Google fan, but this seems like the most likely explanation. The company seems to have an axe to grind with big tech in general and Google in particular [1], so I wonder how much effort they really spent on checking their own systems before crying "DMA violation".

[1] https://tuta.com/blog/google-search-monopoly

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