[max-m]

The bsnes emulator has a similar problem. The official "website" is the Github repository at https://github.com/bsnes-emu/bsnes/ but some unknown entity has snagged bsnes.org and is now also publicly linking to SNES ROMs they host on Github (Github doesn't care, you can report those repositories as much as you want. If you're not a rights holder they won't do anything).

[cbozeman]

Another part of this is the rise of search, period.

Back in the Ancient Times, when "search" sites were in fact, directories of sites, not unlike the Yellow Pages, you had a categories and listings.

I've been using The Emulator Zone since 1997. Long before Google, and found them under Yahoo's "Games" category. Since they've been around for over 25 years, I trust them. The often do grab the software from repositories and make it easily available. The site does have ads, but I haven't encountered a malicious one. It's all for stuff I actually use (Microsoft Azure, fragrances from House of Creed, and Hertz Car Rental right now), so I have a little leeway with these people, but TEZ has never actively attempted to obfuscate or confuse the reader unlike this site and others like it.

[max-m]

Pages like TEZ or the "Awesome XYZ" list repositories that have become rather popular on Github are perfectly fine. Those are great hubs to get a grasp of what's available. Sometimes they are a little out of date, but if you're interested enough you'll find the up-to-date information by yourself :)

But these parasitic pages that pretend to be official (project) pages should be purged. :/ For now they might link to original releases, but they could very well switch to malicious downloads from one second to the next after having gained enough "trust" and traffic.

And that *unofficial* bsnes site reflects poorly on the emulation community because they actively promote downloads of game ROMs hosted (practically) on their website because they control the Github repository the games are uploaded to.