BrianKrebs

In May, I published a deep dive on a Pakistani firm that had just been charged w/ shipping fentanyl analogs to the US and was behind a sprawling empire of scam ghostwriting, app and logo design companies that were spending millions on Google ads to promote their scam businesses.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/05/pakistani-firm-shipped-fentanyl-analogs-scams-to-us/

The story received a decent amount of attention, but it almost immediately dropped off Google search entirely. Searching for the headline brought only links to other sites covering my report. This persisted for almost two weeks and I never got a satisfactory answer from Google about why the story dropped from search.

Just read a story at Ars Technica about how a tech CEO who was trying to quash reporting about his alleged misdeeds used a feature in Google known as Refresh Outdated Content to trick Google into deindexing the unflattering stories about him. The method he reportedly used was working until last month. Makes me wonder how widely known this bug was.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/google-tool-misused-to-scrub-tech-ceos-shady-past-from-search

https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs/114512527951494345

Pakistani Firm Shipped Fentanyl Analogs, Scams to US – Krebs on Security

Aug 7, 2025 at 2:35amWeb
Show threadHarlemSquirrelAug 7, 2025
@briankrebs bug or feature? 🤨
Show threadNicholas SteinAug 7, 2025
@briankrebs It was top of the list for me. Did you just catfish us?
Show threadZdeněk DoležalAug 7, 2025
@briankrebs tuhle "selekci" někomu nepohodlných zpráv tuším už dlouho. Pokud se ale Googlu nedá věřit, jaké jsou alternativy?
Show threadnixCraft 🐧Aug 7, 2025

@briankrebs Google search for news publisher, journalist, and every other sites are declining very fast as Google is turning itself into AI. It casued 70% drops in overall traffic from Google

Google execs believe Search will lose traffic to Gemini or ChatGPT, and urged urgent Gemini monetization, according to an internal document
https://searchengineland.com/google-search-traffic-decline-inevitable-455345

Google AI Overviews has devastating impact on website traffic, study says https://mashable.com/article/google-ai-overviews-impacting-link-clicks-pew-study

Show threadJon PENNYCOOKAug 7, 2025

@nixCraft @briankrebs #UniverseToday @fraser found their visits and thus advertising revenue had crashed due to both search engines not being search engines plus AI slop websites, so they rebuilt their site without ads or tracking scripts and are now funded by optional donations

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/welcome-to-the-new-ad-free-universe-today-brought-to-you-by-3000-space-fans

Welcome to the New, Ad-Free Universe Today, Brought to You By 3,000 Space Fans

If you're a regular visitor to Universe Today, you've probably noticed that the website looks dramatically different. Simpler, cleaner, without all those pesky intrusive ads. We're in a new era, now. Here's what happened, why I decided to remove the ads from the site, and what you can expect going forward.

Universe Today
Show threadSystem AdminihaterAug 7, 2025
@briankrebs Google is the worst company on Earth. Their cloud sucks, the network for their cloud sucks, search sucks, youtube sucks.
Show threadRaven667Aug 8, 2025

@briankrebs If you have access to an archive of server access logs for the timeframe you should see the requests from googles crawler bot with the wrong case for the URL getting a 404, right? For a public site it might be hard to spot in the deluge of 404s from bots scanning for vulns, but use of this bug should leave a distinct trail, right?

Actually searching the logs for `/[pP][aA][kK].../` the specific article title in mixed case should greatly narrow down the possibilities.

You may have already done this, or not have access to the relevant logs anymore, but I comment anyway on the off-chance this is helpful in some way and not wasting your time. HTH and have a wonderful Friday :-)

Show threadThe Crypto Ponzi Scheme AvengerAug 10, 2025
@briankrebs I contacted “Danny Sullivan” to ask why my articles weren’t appearing — seemingly suppressed — in Google search results. He assured me this wasn’t the case but offered no guidance on how to make my content more prominent. I’m left wondering why other, far less relevant material outranks such an important message!
Show threadWulfy—Speaker to the machinesAug 13, 2025

@briankrebs

I don't think it's a bug...

"Perception management" firms have a pretty solid income de-Streisendifying bad stories from the internet.

If you look for specific Pedo Republicans stories, they are often harder to find, or downranked on Google, comparing with #duckduckgo