It might not just be Google--I tried searching "encrypted email" in DDG and found nothing for pages and pages. Even saw AOL come up before any mention of Tuta. My guess is the name change, combined with prior bad reputation on the tuta.com domain (see <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20190107213809/http://tuta.com/" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20190107213809/http://tuta.com/</a>), is causing the issue across search engines.
The article says March, which coincidences with this:<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-updat...</a><p>It's possible Tuta caught a stray here because they recently changed their name from Tutanota[0], including the domain name. This update has the SEO world up in arms, in fact - the update is still rolling out, nearly two months after it was announced.<p>I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the Google Search team's offices to learn just how much machine learning is messing with the ability to properly understand intent -> rank content.<p>E: Semrush shows that they took a nosedive, but not a complete decimation[1].<p>E2: I take the initial edit back, looks like they got a classifier applied to their site, also known as the "Helpful Content Update":<p><a href="https://tuta.com/blog/google-search-problem" rel="nofollow">https://tuta.com/blog/google-search-problem</a><p>It's a nasty classifier and not a single site has been reinstated from it[2] since Google began to apply it in Sep 2023.<p>[0]: <a href="https://tuta.com/blog/tutanota-is-now-tuta" rel="nofollow">https://tuta.com/blog/tutanota-is-now-tuta</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/E9ybteL.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/E9ybteL.png</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://twitter.com/glenngabe/status/1781679769735545280" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/glenngabe/status/1781679769735545280</a>
Off-topic:
I am immensely happy with latest google update, because now if I search for something that is too obscure, google simply shows me an empty page with no results found, which tells me that I need to refine my search query. Previously, if such thing happened, I'd get a list of spam sites which does not include the query at all, or simply uses the query somewhere not visible on the page.
My understanding is that DMA prevents tech companies considered to be too big from sharing data internally in certain ways without opt-in (among other things). When this comes into effect, a website stops ranking as well.<p>Is one explanation of this just that search was using a data source for relevance that benefitted this website, and now they are not using that? That seems possible, and doesn't require an assumption of malicious intent.<p>Disclaimer, I work at Google, but not on anything related to this. This is just armchair speculation of an explanation that might fit.
They’ve been de-ranked because their website hits all the “SEO optimized” red flags that Google are now downranking for.<p>Pages like “Outlook vs Tuta Mail” “Gmail vs Tuta mail”, “Yahoo vs Tuta Mail”. All with the same rephrased taking points about their product. Then each of those talking points has its own dedicated page, just saying the same thing over and over again.<p>Want a better rank? Remove all this SEO crap, leave up the parts customers actually want.
This is an interesting page:<p><a href="https://tuta.com/email-comparison" rel="nofollow">https://tuta.com/email-comparison</a><p>Whereupon we find the following comparisons:<p>>"Protonmail vs Tuta Mail<p>Fastmail vs Tuta Mail<p>Mailbox.org vs Tuta Mail<p>Posteo vs Tuta Mail<p>Hushmail vs Tuta Mail<p>Startmail vs Tuta Mail<p>Riseup vs Tuta Mail"<p>...in other words, there's no shortage of email providers...