The creator of NanoClaw, an open supply AI agent platform with over 18,000 GitHub stars, says Google is ranking a fake website above his project’s real site.
In checks performed on March 5, an impostor website ranked at the high of Google for the undertaking’s personal title. The actual web site, nanoclaw.dev, did not seem in the first a number of pages of outcomes.
What’s Occurring
Gavriel Cohen, a software program engineer and former Wix developer, posted a thread on X describing the downside.
Cohen launched NanoClaw in early February as a security-focused different to OpenClaw, the viral open supply AI agent platform. The undertaking grew rapidly. VentureBeat covered it, The Register profiled Cohen, and AI researcher Andrej Karpathy publicly praised the undertaking’s structure.
Round February 8, somebody registered nanoclaw.internet and created an auto-generated website scraped from the undertaking’s GitHub README. Cohen mentioned he didn’t have an internet site at the time as a result of the GitHub repo was the undertaking.
As the undertaking gained press protection, individuals stored contacting him about issues with “his” web site. It wasn’t his.
He constructed the actual website at nanoclaw.dev after which took a number of customary search engine optimisation and remediation steps. He linked it from the GitHub repo. He added structured knowledge. He submitted to Google Search Console. He filed takedown notices with Google, Cloudflare, and the area registrar. Publications protecting the undertaking linked to nanoclaw.dev.
As of March 5, the impostor website nonetheless ranked above the actual one.
In his thread, Cohen wrote that the pretend website is “exhibiting factually incorrect information about the undertaking and falsifying its publication dates.” He referred to as the state of affairs “a dwell, energetic safety threat” as a result of the particular person working nanoclaw.internet might exchange the web page content material with malicious obtain hyperlinks or a phishing web page at any time.
The Hacker News thread about Cohen’s criticism reached 315 factors and over 150 feedback inside hours.
Identical Drawback Throughout Search Engines
Hacker Information commenters examined the similar search on different engines and located the downside extends past Google.
One commenter reported that the pretend website ranked #1 on DuckDuckGo and #3 on Kagi, whereas the actual website didn’t seem on DuckDuckGo in any respect. Another found that Bing, Courageous, Ecosia, and Qwant all confirmed the pretend website in high positions. Mojeek was the solely engine examined that ranked the actual website and excluded the pretend one.
Why This Issues
In the previous, Google’s John Mueller said that copied content material constantly rating above the authentic could level to a website high quality downside. Mueller instructed website homeowners reassess their total high quality if this retains occurring.
Cohen’s case checks that logic. His undertaking has 18,000 GitHub stars, protection from CNBC, VentureBeat, and The Register, a Karpathy endorsement, and a weblog put up that hit #1 on Hacker Information. Each social profile and the GitHub repo itself level to nanoclaw.dev. On its face, lots of the seen indicators seem to favor the actual website.
The truth that Hacker Information commenters reported comparable outcomes throughout a number of engines like google suggests one thing deeper than a Google-specific bug. One doable issue is timing, as the pretend website seems to have been listed before the actual website launched.
For anybody constructing a brand new product, the key takeaway right here is to rethink the proper time to register a website. Cohen targeted on transport code before constructing an internet site. That’s customary open supply apply, however engines like google listed the impostor first, and correcting that after the truth proved tougher than any of the really useful steps recommend it must be.
Trying Forward
Cohen has not indicated whether or not Google responded to his takedown requests. One search engine optimisation practitioner in the Hacker Information thread offered concrete advice, together with mapping the pretend website’s backlinks and contacting publications that unintentionally linked to the incorrect area.
The state of affairs stays unresolved. Google had not commented at the time of publishing.
Featured Picture: Elnur/Shutterstock
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