What's up with spam site returning in tech question Google top results?

[matt_f]

Lately I've noticed a spam site showing up in the top 10 of most of my coding / tech issues Google searches.

It returns a "headline soup" of other sites which have been obviously scraped from other blogs and help sites.

It's annoyingly-convincing clickbait that's hooked me about 10-15 times now.

There are no ads, nor links to any of the articles nor external sites. Just a wall of text.

Example: https://www.xspdf.com/resolution/50948681.html

The question:

What possible financial or other benefits could you theorize that the creators/maintainers of this site gain from running a useless spam site with no ads to capture tech searches?

[simplecto]

Google has lost the battle against the legions of SEO pros (both white-hat and black-hat).

Everyone else just pays to play.

Here, just look at this: https://preview.redd.it/p4h7aspjnx761.png?width=960&crop=sma...

Search "learn django" in google and not one result above the fold is an organic link.

[dalmo3]

This thing has been going for months and Google just lets it. My only HN thread ever was a rant about that site just after it came up not only as first result, but also as a *featured* result.

It seems the way they trick Google is akin to the good (bad) old keyword stuffing. Except the atomic parts aren't the words but sentences and paragraphs. Very clever.

It sounds like one of those cases where manual action is needed, but unfortunately I have no idea no way to report it.

[hunter-2]

Is XSPDF the site you are referring to? That site is so full of ads, so ad spam appears to be the obvious gain.