Thank you for sharing the thought on this, I wonder if I had written all of the above without the 'fraud' part if people would still disagree with it all that as much.

I must admit that choice of words is partially to be inflammatory - but we are talking about a very inflammatory subject (google blacklists, shadowbans, and non transparency about censorship with users and web site publishers) -

If I could edit it, remove the word fraud and change it to 'intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain' - would that take the sting out of it?

I mean it could be said that big G telling people to make a good site and it will rank high if the content is good - and if you make a mistake do a disavow list.. and don't try to do seo - but the other people in the top obviously are - I mean, you could call it a hoax instead of fraud, but (according to wikipedia); 'A hoax is a distinct concept that involves deliberate deception without the intention of gain or of materially damaging or depriving a victim.'

and I am suggesting that I think it's obvious that some teams at google have indeed tried to damage and deprive victims of time and money by telling them to do this or that - and knowing that it's not going to work to bring their sites back to the top - so it's worse and does not qualify for the hoax definition in some situations

I don't mean fraud like some AG is going to put google in jail for criminal fraud.

I do mean that it is obvious that big G and some people there have been purposefully deceitful, and that google has profited from telling people and companies to keep publishing - keep doing things google will like, (schema data!) - and they use that data to profit from it - and they purposefully do not rank and send traffic to many different sites for different reasons.

So no, I don't expect the whole model number switcharoo defense to be made - and even though at least one state's AG has looked into fraud with google, I don't think they know enough about these issues to bring a case, and google has enough money to pay off all 50 states and the EU and sorry not sorry, not putting the algo on trial kind of go away money.

So I'm not suggesting that's going down. What I am saying that is that some there have been intentionally hurtful, both taking people's time and money and it's publicly shown they are / have been deceitful on purpose.

If you don't see that, perhaps you are not familiar with the timeline of all these events as I described in the downvoted comment above. I am sure there are plenty of webmasters and seo people that have witnessed this timeline - and many people have scratched their heads wondering wtf google (and many people pulling their hair out!) over the years - there are plenty of public posts on non-shady forums showing this.

This has been done on purpose.

Lots of people have lost their jobs, their money and time, in some cases their homes. Partially because google changed things with the algo; but they have not been transparent about that and actually have suggested things to do that they knew would not work - giving people false hope and getting them to spend excess time and money, all the while knowing there was no way out of the downrank hole for most and it would all be spent in vain.

funny thing, it's not their money, their life - so they care? I bet the spam team and algo team celebrated some of these changes, laughed at seeing people try to change things - and watched as ad sales increased and their stock did - not caring about the little people out there - and not even notifying the users that they were censoring the shit out of the results now - which funnily, makes the sites in the ads more appealing.

there are plenty of synonyms; con, scam, shell game, double dealing - they could be used in place of fraud in my original statement. I am sorry (truly), and not sorry, that it is inflammatory in this context, as I think the issue of censorship by itself is a serious subject, yet this story goes well beyond that.

I agree it can seem non-nonsensical, but if you look at the events I describe over the time line - I can't actually think of a more sensible term to give it. I guess from the other side of the glass it could be called a funny and profitable business move, as I would guess some did.