Mark Cuban Upset That Google Is Ranking Fake Shark Tank Endorsements

A few weeks ago, Mark Cuban (who needs no introduction), went to Twitter to complain about how Google is ranking fake Shark Tank endorsements. Mark was not too happy with Facebook either about it. But Danny Sullivan from Google responded saying he will escalate the complaints.

Here are Marc Cuban’s tweets with the complaints:

Where are @google and @facebook , these news sites and @BankofAmerica and @@wellsfargo fraud detection units ? The @Ftc ? This shit has been going on for years. We report them, the platforms do nothing and people get ripped off ! https://t.co/nFF1wWbO0Y

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) April 19, 2022

Content filtering that we hear so much. If a platform can’t detect fake Keto or CBD gummy ads, can they really detect anything ? Or do they not care that mostly seniors are getting ripped off !

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) April 19, 2022

This went unanswered for a bit until Loren Baker tagged Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison on this:

Missed this; have passed along. Not a lot of actual content out there, makes it challenging. We do show some fact checks, which is good, but clearly we need to improve. Would help if maybe Shark Tank itself had a debunking page. I’d expect would rank well. cc: @mcuban …

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) May 5, 2022

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Mark Cuban replied:

Again, we’ll look to see how we can improve. But what I read, this was about web pages on newspaper sites talking about this, not ads on Google. If you have your own web page warning about it, that’s more helpful content where there’s limited content now that might help…

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) May 6, 2022

We rank web pages. If there’s a web page from Shark Tank saying this isn’t real, it’s likely to rank well above these things. That said, again, we’ll look into why the existing fact checks out there aren’t ranking even higher (one is high up on the first page of results).

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) May 6, 2022

That is where it ended.

I wonder how much of an impact this will have on Google adapting some of its algorithms around ranking these types of fake stories? Google can’t play Whac-A-Mole with each one of these, but they can develop algorithms to help reduce this from showing up in both organic and paid search.

Forum discussion at Twitter.