Tell HN: Fake websites are gaming Google's system

We know Google search has been going downhill for some time. While LLMs may or may not ultimately be the cause of Google's demise, I was quite surprised to see how easy it is for a fake website to be ranked well on Google.

Recently I Googled "chatgpt" and the second link[1] caught my attention. It points to a website named "chat-gpt[.]org" containing some generic SEO fluff and a button button to try the faux ChatGPT. Ironically, said filler also appears to be written by ChatGPT itself, given the excessive moralizing about "as an AI language model..."

Given that websites masquerading as the real ChatGPT only to deliver malware are common[2][3], I did not explore the website further. However, I was curious about how they managed to get ranked as the 2nd result on Google, and I looked at Ahrefs backlink database and they spammed a bunch of websites and forums[4][5] with links.

So there you have it. While Google claims they've moved on from PageRank and that they penalize spamming rings and inorganic backlinks, I'm seeing an easily game-able system so long as you can spam links on many websites and piggyback off of a popular term. In fact, there are tools that help you spam tons of websites (I'm not sure if I can mention them here so I'll just leave them out) and maybe that strategy has always worked.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/JpOSrjU.png

[2] https://therecord.media/chatgpt-phishing-fake-websites-hackers-malware

[3] https://blog.cyble.com/2023/02/22/the-growing-threat-of-chatgpt-based-phishing-attacks/

[4] https://i.imgur.com/TRZmSpj.png

[5] https://i.imgur.com/aSVnop6.png