[Scoundreller]

I truly believe that Google de-ranked most blogs. Used to be they would put a mix of results (some blogs, even small time ones, some forums, some official sites) so that you’d probably get whatever you were looking for on pg1.

Now it’s far more corporate.

I probably shouldn’t have ranked as high as I did on my Joe Blow blog with better directions to my local passport office or phone numbers for my bank (because the bank’s website sucks and does anything but give you their phone number). But I could often make 1st, 2nd or 3rd result until I didn’t. My content was objectively more useful.

For a while, every Google update that people complained about just bumped me higher. Oh well.

[rurp]

I don't think it's even in question that Google de-ranked blogs and other independent sites. I remember Eric Schmidt talking about this publicly back when he was running things, saying that they were intentionally up-ranking larger corporate sites. Google had been the main way that blogs got new readers, then Google took that traffic away. It's no wonder that ecosystem has mostly died off, and Google deserve most of the blame for why the public internet has become such a bland corporate-controlled environment.