The Google Files, Part VI
As I said in my About Us page, while I’d probably consider myself a right-leaning centrist, I’m building this site and providing my education and services to anyone whose voice is being silenced by those in power.
And so in the interest of completeness, let’s look at what happened to a few left-leaning and far left Web sites from 2016 to 2020 to today.
Motherjones.com
October 2016: 702,725 keywords, 4.6% branded, 95.4% non-branded
October 2020: 916,958 keywords, 16.7% branded, 83.3% non-branded
October 2023: 385,887 keywords, 27.5% branded, 72.5% non-branded
Dailykos.com
October 2016: 638,189 keywords, 41.8% branded, 58.2% non-branded
October 2020: 263,213 keywords, 88.1% branded, 11.9% non-branded
October 2023: 216,321 keywords, 92% branded, 8% non-branded
Thedailybeast.com
October 2016: 2,259,508 keywords, 9% branded, 91% non-branded
October 2020: 2,447,352 keywords, 12.4% branded, 87.6% non-branded
October 2023: 3,168,329 keywords, 18.2% branded, 81.8% non-branded
Thinkprogress.org
October 2016: 500,287 keywords, 7.9% branded, 92.1% non-branded
October 2020: 176,037 keywords, 12.9% branded, 87.1% non-branded
October 2023: 27.732 keywords, 23.2% branded, 76.8% non-branded
Once again, I could go on.
It’s clear that left-leaning sites found themselves in a similar predicament as right-leaning sites as far as a collapse in SEO visibility, with a few notable differences.
- Left-leaning sites for the most part continued to rank on non-branded terms, while Right-leaning sites lost complete visibility for all but their brand terms.
- As we saw in the search results for the “Trump Hoaxes” prior to the 2020 Election, the perspectives of sites like these were often covered by reporters in the mainstream media.
- This phenomenon does, however, further explain why it’s impossible for campaigns like Bernie Sanders to get traction with their messaging. The same “deep state” that pressures Google to silence voices on the right also do the same on the left in order to maintain monolithic unanimity among Democrats.
Bottom line, these sites on the left were likely affected by similar tactics used to reduce the visibility of sites on the right due to a supposed “lack of authority”.
They’re Google’s sacrificial lambs: by reducing visibility of leftist sites, they can claim that they treat both sides equally (even if their actions happen to result in only one, single-minded narrative being told for any given issue).
I won’t go so far as to say I’m a free speech absolutist, but I do believe that these sites have just as much a right to be seen in the free market of ideas as any other site.
A question you might have is…why didn’t anyone see this coming. The reality is—they did.
