The creator of NanoClaw, an open supply AI agent platform with over 18,000 GitHub stars, says Google is rating a faux web site above his undertaking’s actual website.
In checks performed on March 5, an impostor website ranked on the prime of Google for the undertaking’s personal identify. The actual web site, nanoclaw.dev, didn’t seem within 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 issue.
Cohen launched NanoClaw in early February as a security-focused different to OpenClaw, the viral open supply AI agent platform. The undertaking grew shortly. VentureBeat coated it, The Register profiled Cohen, and AI researcher Andrej Karpathy publicly praised the undertaking’s structure.
Round February 8, somebody registered nanoclaw.web and created an auto-generated website scraped from the undertaking’s GitHub README. Cohen stated he didn’t have a web site on the time as a result of the GitHub repo was the undertaking.
Because the undertaking gained press protection, folks 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 commonplace website positioning and remediation steps. He linked it from the GitHub repo. He added structured information. 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 faux website is “displaying factually unsuitable details about the undertaking and falsifying its publication dates.” He referred to as the scenario “a reside, energetic safety danger” as a result of the particular person working nanoclaw.web may exchange the web page content material with malicious obtain hyperlinks or a phishing web page at any time.
The Hacker Information thread about Cohen’s grievance reached 315 factors and over 150 feedback inside hours.
Similar Drawback Throughout Search Engines
Hacker Information commenters examined the identical search on different engines and located the issue extends past Google.
One commenter reported that the faux website ranked #1 on DuckDuckGo and #3 on Kagi, whereas the actual website didn’t seem on DuckDuckGo in any respect. One other discovered that Bing, Courageous, Ecosia, and Qwant all confirmed the faux website in prime positions. Mojeek was the one engine examined that ranked the actual website and excluded the faux one.
Why This Issues
Prior to now, Google’s John Mueller stated that copied content material constantly rating above the unique might level to a website high quality drawback. Mueller advised website homeowners reassess their general 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 related outcomes throughout a number of search engines like google and yahoo suggests one thing deeper than a Google-specific bug. One attainable issue is timing, because the faux website seems to have been listed earlier than the actual website launched.
For anybody constructing a brand new product, the important thing takeaway right here is to rethink the appropriate time to register a website. Cohen targeted on delivery code earlier than constructing a web site. That’s commonplace open supply observe, however search engines like google and yahoo listed the impostor first, and correcting that after the very fact proved tougher than any of the really helpful steps counsel it needs to be.
Wanting Forward
Cohen has not indicated whether or not Google responded to his takedown requests. One website positioning practitioner within the Hacker Information thread provided concrete recommendation, together with mapping the faux website’s backlinks and contacting publications that by accident linked to the unsuitable area.
The scenario stays unresolved. Google had not commented on the time of publishing.
Featured Picture: Elnur/Shutterstock
