When they say design for Trust what does that mean, the website design it has to look professional? So does the Algorithm just a website off looks?

@Broaster Good question - I think when Danny Sullivan says “design for trust,” he doesn’t mean just making the site look professional (though that helps). It’s more about clearly showing who you are, why your site exists, and why users should trust the content. That can include:

- Clear About/Contact pages
- Author bios and credentials
- Real reviews/testimonials
- HTTPS, clean UX, no spammy ads
- Consistent branding and tone

.... so things like that, that support reputation and brand.

So while the visual design matters, it’s more about credibility signals and transparency that make users and by extension, Google feel your site is trustworthy imo.

Nice to read, but this is just the opposite of what google is showing in serps right now.

@Martin Ice Web

Yep, they're full of it. Literally.

Posts like these are just giving false hope to others. The reality is not good for anyone. Google do not care about its publishers or its users. I was going to ignore this post when I first saw it but, considering it has other replies. I felt obligated.

Google are simply in it for profit at this point. Blinded by greed. With no cares about anyone. Not even their own platform. They are ran by the same incompetent team that took Yahoo Search down, not by competition. They literally owned it and destroyed the platform. Destroyed their own business. Its baffling how they managed to take over Google.

There is no cure for smaller sites. Ignore these kind of statements. The only thing we can hope for is equal marketshare. Which was rumoured to be happening this year. Alas, Google still have around 90% of this said share. Which, if rumours where to be correct, should be falling to 50%. If it is then its painfully slow.

Google's current main objective is to stick garbage on the SERP is hopes that its puts users off from looking at anything organic. Thus, are then, forced to use their AIO. Which is NOT messages from Google. Which, some lesser experienced users still believe is the case. In fact anything and all things from AIO is just stolen from websites that are, now, most likely dead because of this and the fact they no longer get traffic any more. How any of this is allowed is also quite baffling. Google want a world where organics are dead and taken over by AIO.

This is also why Google have stopped indexing some articles. This also cuts down on expenses for themselves.. Once every website is dead we are then left with social media. Where Google are most likely wanting their AIO content to come from. So I guess you could also say that organic sites by smaller publishers will not only be replaced by AIO but also social media too.

By going down this route, they are essentially killing millions of sites and livelihoods just to achieve this. They want something that has been on-going for 25+yrs to simply be replaced. Just shows what kind of company we are dealing with here. So these type of messages, before anyone tries to believe them, is simply what you call 'trying to cover their own backs from the nightmare truth we all now face'

Those who listen to what a Googler says have still not recognized reality. Do your thing, stick to the basics and otherwise ignore Google's nonsense and think about your readers/customers. Google doesn't give a damn about us small players and everyone should be aware of that.

Ive seen several websites who dont even have a writers list, I think those are the old rules, I remember when you first had to get into Google news over 15 years ago, you had to have multiple writers, and bios, but now I see sites who are getting massive traffic without multiple authors, and they have ad heavy sites.


Google has hit small publishers and wiped them out, they shadow ban them in google news where new articles only appear on the last page or sort by date, they dont remove them but demote them and they can never get traffic again

its a black list I believe. Ive read so may sad stories of people who were blogging for over 15 years making money off adsense and losing all organic traffic the last two years and having to find other jobs. Google doesnt care about them they are likely eliminating them and using the small publishers content to feed AI and steal their hard earned content without paying them via traffic and adsense anymore.

They been giving us the run around for years.

I think it’s worth reflecting on the perspectives offered by Mordy Oberstein on branding following Danny Sullivan’s comments. It appears in the early stages of the panel YT podcast with @rustybrick.

[youtu.be...]

What stands out to me is having a trust footprint for a website. It’s worth a reflective listen imo

I do think it provides added protection to offset small business website vulnerabilities even though there’s been a lot of pain among webmasters in the last year.

anyone who's been in this game longer than five years has given up listening to google. what danny sullivan and john mueller say, and what the algo actually does, are two completely different things

Re Google News: For a while now, I've seen seeing government propaganda (White House press releases from Baghdad Bobbi, for example) at the top of my Google News feed. "Content marketing" articles also appear regularly in Google News. So yes, Google News is definitely going dcownhill.

Just to follow up on this discussion around Danny Sullivan’s comments at the Google NYC Live event – Barry Schwartz has now published a useful clarification piece (April 2, 2025) titled Google: We Don’t Have a Brand-Ranking System But...

[seroundtable.com...]

In it, Danny Sullivan reinforces that Google does not have a dedicated “brand ranking” system, but instead that strong brands often correlate with signals Google does reward — things like trust, authority, user engagement, direct searches, and repeat visits.

He makes the point that recognizability and trust — whether you’re a global brand or a local pizza shop — tend to align with quality signals. This helps explain why “brands” often appear to do well in search, without there being an explicit “brand boost” in the algorithm.

Sullivan's key line is:

“It’s not the same as ‘Google calculates your brand and gave you X% brand boost.’”

Takeaway: Focus on building a recognizable, trusted presence that users *deliberately* seek out — because those behaviours send the kinds of signals Google does use.

I think it's worth reflecting on what others in the brand building game are doing and sharing positively on how it is impacting their SEO, to provide perspectives. I definitely do get that there's there's a world of pain out there, and mis trust by some with Google statements over the last year, but I do help this information helps some to strengthen and invite feedback to build a stronger brand presence.