Google has, in the sense that quantitative finance people use the term, "burned" their data. That is, they're using statistical methods to extract signal from noise, and they've done this so much that they're nearing the noise threshold. When a data set is over-analyzed in this way, the impact of irrelevant data items becomes excessive. That's what's happening here.

Search spam detection has improved over the years, but it's fundamentally aimed at detecting sites that "look like spam". In response, search engine optimization has become more about making clickbait sites look less like spam, even to humans. It's now hard to tell a clickbait journalism site, one filled by low-paid article rewriters, from one that has actual reporters. (Business Insider is owned by the founder of DoubleClick.) Looking at the superficial properties of a site is no longer a reliable spam indicator.

The big search indicator used to be links. That's what "PageRank" was about. Links stopped working because most links to business sites now come from social media and blogs, and those are really easy to spam. Anyone who runs a blog now can watch the phony signups and posts come in. There's a whole industry selling phony Google and Facebook accounts for SEO purposes. Google has responded by disallowing many sources of links, with the result that the remaining link data is sparse for many sites.

Google isn't looking at the business behind the web site. Here, Auto Accessories Garage sells auto parts. Find the business behind their web site, and you can verify that they are in the auto parts business. Their site is full of auto parts. Therefore, not spam. Google doesn't do that. That's why they failed Auto Accessories Group.

At SiteTruth, we look at the business behind the web site. Here's what we're able to find out for Auto Accessories Garage.[1] This is the internal details page; users rarely look at this. We give them a good rating. We didn't, unfortunately, get a proper match to corporate records because their corporate name is Overstock Garage, Inc. (We don't have a full D/B/A business name database for dealing with such problems yet.) SiteTruth picked up the Better Business Bureau seal of approval on the site, cross-checked it with the BBB for validity, and noted the "A+" rating there. Not a spam site.

The process is completely transparent. The link below lets you see all the data SiteTruth looked at for Auto Accessories Garage. Because it's checking against hard data from external sources the site can't control, there's no need to be mysterious about how it works. There's a vast amount of data available on businesses. If you tap into Dun and Bradstreet (we can do this, but can't turn it on for public viewing by free users) you get in-depth financial data on companies. That allows real supplier evaluation, far beyond what Google can do.

The SiteTruth approach does a good job on real businesses that sell real stuff. There are objective measures for such businesses - revenue, years in business, BBB ratings, even credit data. Google doesn't use those, and Google fails real-world businesses because they don't.

If you want to try looking at SiteTruth ratings, try our browser add-on from "sitetruth.com". We put
those ratings on search results from Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. Now on Firefox for Android, too. End self-promotion.

[1] http://www.sitetruth.com/fcgi/ratingdetails.fcgi?url=www.aut...