putty.org's page ranking used to be higher.
* https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/115027646348662282
I suspect that the recent kerfuffle motivated people to finally clean out bogus hyperlinks that casually listed putty.org as the download site, which would have been contributing to inflated page rank up to that point. I found one on a wiki and fixed it, myself, and I'm sure that I was not the only person who went looking.
It's not inconceivable that some Googlers reads here or otherwise and took note to punish that site.
Re:PuTTY has a new website
by reader9274 on Saturday August 16, 2025 @10:36AM
(#44923831)
Hmm why punish that site?
Because it's affiliated with _another_ ssh client and there seems to have been various levels of shadyness over time, see previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44558328
Re:PuTTY has a new website
by pandemic_region on Saturday August 16, 2025 @06:18AM
(#44921943)
Assuming he owns the green end.org.uk domain, why not letting people land on putty.greenend.org.uk ?
Your assumption is false, so the question is without proper foundation. GreenEnd's Chiark is owned by Ian Jackson. Simon Tatham is a user on the system, with a home directory. One of a list of such users, including Rachel Coleman and Matthew Garrett.
> I can't consider relying on probabilistic algorithms controlled by 3rd parties to be a wise strategy.
That's pretty much all of the AI industry and clients.
Pretty much how the whole world works and why ads are multi-trillion dollar business.
Re:PuTTY has a new website
by 1970-01-01 on Saturday August 16, 2025 @11:19AM
(#44924210)
Google.com > putty > I'm feeling lucky > https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
Google right now lists the title of putty.org as "PuTTY", even though right now this text is only in the footer. Up until August I guess it provided a download link, but the title was not "PuTTY".
Nevertheless, I can't consider relying on probabilistic algorithms controlled by 3rd parties to be a wise strategy.
Also, these days, after decades of habit building and a rise in awareness about scam-related stuff, I think people expect to see the name of the project early on in the URL, not in 7th position as it is currently.