I believe the theory that Google is optimizing for ad revenue. Sites without ads get ranked lower. The biggest example I can think of is Wikipedia. When I search a proper noun with a Wikipedia article, I almost want to go look at that article. Recently, I feel like I really have to dig for it.
Anecdotal evidence - but I feel like this could be completely valid.
One of my biggest side projects for many years was a student tool centered around test scores. It was a niche use case with a huge amount of students using the tool on one day per year (1m+). There was exactly one competitor. I had a better domain but a much worse site in terms of design, speed etc. We were nearly the same in traffic, until I decided to monetize the site with a lot of Google ads. Immediately, Google shot my site up in the rankings, and actually seemed to penalize the competitive site. My traffic went up 10x and the competitive site remained flat. This happened for 3 years, then the niche use of both of our tools was “patched”.
This seems accurate to me too. And it also seems the most likely - a profit maximizing corporation doing profit maximizing things? Not really a huge surprise.
Yup. I've noticed recently that when I search for a public figure (whether it be a politican or businessperson or celebrity), their Wikipedia is now at the bottom of page 1, or not at all anymore. Never used to be the case 5 years ago.
Do you have an adblocker that's accidentally blocking the side-bar? I find it difficult to find a proper-noun search that doesn't include a side-bar link to Wikipedia.
