It might not just be Google--I tried searching "encrypted email" in DDG and found nothing for pages and pages. Even saw AOL come up before any mention of Tuta. My guess is the name change, combined with prior bad reputation on the tuta.com domain (see http://web.archive.org/web/20190107213809/http://tuta.com/), is causing the issue across search engines.
A few years ago, under their other domain, they accused Microsoft of suppressing them in a ranty blog post.
How?
Because their users couldn't sign up for Microsoft accounts using the tutanuta domain.
But why?
It wasn't Microsoft suppressing them. The fucking morons created an azure tenant validated against the domain. The default setting is to then validate all users with said email against the azure tenant. You can always turn it off but ill advised for security purposes.
I even validated that their tenant exists on azure using that domain.
The devil in the details mean the morons were using the same domain used by public users, for internal corporate usage which is absolutely fucking insecure to the moon.
Nobody should trust these wankers whose first response is to "blame big tech company" instead of understanding basic cybersecurity and internet. Who knows how they even store your emails. There are plenty of other services that I'll trust before the one that runs around for attention like a toddler.
It's possible Tuta caught a stray here because they recently changed their name from Tutanota[0], including the domain name. This update has the SEO world up in arms, in fact - the update is still rolling out, nearly two months after it was announced.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Google Search team's offices to learn just how much machine learning is messing with the ability to properly understand intent -> rank content.
E: Semrush shows that they took a nosedive, but not a complete decimation[1].
E2: I take the initial edit back, looks like they got a classifier applied to their site, also known as the "Helpful Content Update":
> It's possible Tuta caught a stray here because they recently changed their name from Tutanota[0], including the domain name.
I was wondering about the similarity when I saw the headline; I can't imagine why would they do it. Why would they voluntarily destroy their own brand recognition?
> I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Google Search team's offices to learn just how much machine learning is messing with the ability to properly understand intent -> rank content.
I'm not normally the fan of ML (ab)use, but I think it's unavoidable here: ML worsening result is an unfortunate consequence of them operating in strongly adversarial environment. After all, SEO is just a polite way of calling actively poisoning the search engine rankings.
(Yes, SEO is also making your website legible to crawlers - in the same way advertising is about informing the customers about your offering. That's part of it, but not the part sought by customers of such services, or that makes most money.)
Changing the domain name should not affect ranking, as long as a 301 redirect is applied server-side to all pages. This way, pages indexed in Google won't 404. That is what could damage the ranking.
Off-topic:
I am immensely happy with latest google update, because now if I search for something that is too obscure, google simply shows me an empty page with no results found, which tells me that I need to refine my search query. Previously, if such thing happened, I'd get a list of spam sites which does not include the query at all, or simply uses the query somewhere not visible on the page.
I feel the opposite. Often I'm searching some obscure error message or function name from an open source project; I'd expect Google to at the very least provide a result linking to the Github page where the thing is defined, but nope, nothing. Bing on the other hand gives me exactly what I'm looking for in the first few results.
I'd be with you here, if not that I've long learned to associate an empty results page with the search engine timeouting or otherwise breaking. Refreshing the page would usually fix it.
My understanding is that DMA prevents tech companies considered to be too big from sharing data internally in certain ways without opt-in (among other things). When this comes into effect, a website stops ranking as well.
Is one explanation of this just that search was using a data source for relevance that benefitted this website, and now they are not using that? That seems possible, and doesn't require an assumption of malicious intent.
Disclaimer, I work at Google, but not on anything related to this. This is just armchair speculation of an explanation that might fit.
The post from Tuta did speculate that given the timing, the issue may be related to DMA changes. The issue is that they can't even reach a human at Google with authority in the associated systems to understand the issue.
They’ve been de-ranked because their website hits all the “SEO optimized” red flags that Google are now downranking for.
Pages like “Outlook vs Tuta Mail” “Gmail vs Tuta mail”, “Yahoo vs Tuta Mail”. All with the same rephrased taking points about their product. Then each of those talking points has its own dedicated page, just saying the same thing over and over again.
Want a better rank? Remove all this SEO crap, leave up the parts customers actually want.
Zapier, LucidChart and about a million other SaaS companies do this as well, because it's something people would search for. There's nothing in the Google blog that suggests they're turning the screws of SEO-optimized content.
These pages, and more on the Tuta website, are a blatant example of SEO spam. Thousands of words long, all rephrasing the same talking points and SEO keywords. No real customer is going to read thousands of words of rephrased crap.
They even admit as much in the blogpost: “We have no idea why Google is no longer showing our website for thousands of keywords that we used to rank for in the past.” Juicing your ranking with SEO spam littered with “keywords” is now penalized in Google ranking. They would rank better by removing 90% of “content” on their website.
Holy cow the blatant SEO on that page. Trying to get all the versus searches that users might try while also stuffing all the other email providers names in as many times as possible.
bennettnate5|1 year ago
delfinom|1 year ago
A few years ago, under their other domain, they accused Microsoft of suppressing them in a ranty blog post.
How?
Because their users couldn't sign up for Microsoft accounts using the tutanuta domain.
But why?
It wasn't Microsoft suppressing them. The fucking morons created an azure tenant validated against the domain. The default setting is to then validate all users with said email against the azure tenant. You can always turn it off but ill advised for security purposes.
I even validated that their tenant exists on azure using that domain.
The devil in the details mean the morons were using the same domain used by public users, for internal corporate usage which is absolutely fucking insecure to the moon.
Nobody should trust these wankers whose first response is to "blame big tech company" instead of understanding basic cybersecurity and internet. Who knows how they even store your emails. There are plenty of other services that I'll trust before the one that runs around for attention like a toddler.
eipi10_hn|1 year ago
skilled|1 year ago
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-updat...
It's possible Tuta caught a stray here because they recently changed their name from Tutanota[0], including the domain name. This update has the SEO world up in arms, in fact - the update is still rolling out, nearly two months after it was announced.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Google Search team's offices to learn just how much machine learning is messing with the ability to properly understand intent -> rank content.
E: Semrush shows that they took a nosedive, but not a complete decimation[1].
E2: I take the initial edit back, looks like they got a classifier applied to their site, also known as the "Helpful Content Update":
https://tuta.com/blog/google-search-problem
It's a nasty classifier and not a single site has been reinstated from it[2] since Google began to apply it in Sep 2023.
[0]: https://tuta.com/blog/tutanota-is-now-tuta
[1]: https://i.imgur.com/E9ybteL.png
[2]: https://twitter.com/glenngabe/status/1781679769735545280
TeMPOraL|1 year ago
I was wondering about the similarity when I saw the headline; I can't imagine why would they do it. Why would they voluntarily destroy their own brand recognition?
> I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Google Search team's offices to learn just how much machine learning is messing with the ability to properly understand intent -> rank content.
I'm not normally the fan of ML (ab)use, but I think it's unavoidable here: ML worsening result is an unfortunate consequence of them operating in strongly adversarial environment. After all, SEO is just a polite way of calling actively poisoning the search engine rankings.
(Yes, SEO is also making your website legible to crawlers - in the same way advertising is about informing the customers about your offering. That's part of it, but not the part sought by customers of such services, or that makes most money.)
dotnet00|1 year ago
This article goes into much more detail about the issue.
rchaud|1 year ago
n_ary|1 year ago
michaeljhg|1 year ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30130535
logicchains|1 year ago
TeMPOraL|1 year ago
danpalmer|1 year ago
Is one explanation of this just that search was using a data source for relevance that benefitted this website, and now they are not using that? That seems possible, and doesn't require an assumption of malicious intent.
Disclaimer, I work at Google, but not on anything related to this. This is just armchair speculation of an explanation that might fit.
dotnet00|1 year ago
kingspact|1 year ago
ChrisGranger|1 year ago
ur-whale|1 year ago
thrawn0r|1 year ago
initplus|1 year ago
Pages like “Outlook vs Tuta Mail” “Gmail vs Tuta mail”, “Yahoo vs Tuta Mail”. All with the same rephrased taking points about their product. Then each of those talking points has its own dedicated page, just saying the same thing over and over again.
Want a better rank? Remove all this SEO crap, leave up the parts customers actually want.
rchaud|1 year ago
https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-mar...
amelius|1 year ago
peter_d_sherman|1 year ago
https://tuta.com/email-comparison
Whereupon we find the following comparisons:
>"Protonmail vs Tuta Mail
Fastmail vs Tuta Mail
Mailbox.org vs Tuta Mail
Posteo vs Tuta Mail
Hushmail vs Tuta Mail
Startmail vs Tuta Mail
Riseup vs Tuta Mail"
...in other words, there's no shortage of email providers...
initplus|1 year ago
They even admit as much in the blogpost: “We have no idea why Google is no longer showing our website for thousands of keywords that we used to rank for in the past.” Juicing your ranking with SEO spam littered with “keywords” is now penalized in Google ranking. They would rank better by removing 90% of “content” on their website.
danpalmer|1 year ago
ziml77|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]