Illustration: The Verge

An article in HouseFresh, a site dedicated to air quality, hit a nerve in February: it outlined how independent publishers have been gradually bumped out of Google search results, with big media companies taking their place. Months later, the situation has only gotten more dire, according to a follow-up published by HouseFresh.

In February, HouseFresh managing editor Gisele Navarro called out publishers like BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone as some of the culprits that publish content about air purifiers despite a lack of expertise — but Google rewards these sites with high rankings all the same. The result is a search results page filled with SEO-first content, designed to do not much more than rank highly on Google.

In a piece published…

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