MIKE Hardaker

While Vail Resorts (MTN) stock has cratered 55%, the corporate strategy hasn't shifted toward safety—it’s shifted toward financial engineering. 📉⛷️ As stock buybacks soar, skiers are paying the price on "white concrete" man-made snow. Our 2025/26 audit reveals a systemic safety crisis the industry is desperate to keep in the "Black Box." 30 in-bounds deaths across 40 resorts. It’s time to stop treating the mountain like a theme park. Read the full investigation: mtnweekly.com/sports/ski-res… #VailResorts #MTN #Skiing #EpicPass #SkiSafety #Snowboarding #Investing

Hey @GoDaddy—I’m a long-term customer with a domain portfolio, currently being featured on national media. Your 'automated' SSL failed today, scaring away HNW investors with a 'Not Secure' warning. Your phone manager spent an hour blaming me for a documented platform glitch and refused a Case ID. Is this how you treat high-visibility CEOs during a media spike? I need a Service Recovery and a reason not to migrate my entire portfolio tonight. #GoDaddy #CyberSecurity #CustomerService

Amex Lounge Seattle Airport Recap. "work hard, and reward yourself. Platinum AMEX Cards are the the jam!!! If you travel ya need Amex Platinum and Capital One Venture X in your wallet. Any questions PM me. Good credit gets ya a LOT of stuff. youtube.com/shorts/0G7OUxW…

Classic smoke and mirrors. Did I tell you Google asked for an 8-page drive doc of my findings only to ghost me? It was a pacification tactic to shut me up publicly. Gary, John, and Danny have spent years peddling bad advice on podcasts while independent sites burn. Ironically, Barry, you haven’t interviewed the people actually involved. You get paid regardless, but what do you want your legacy to be? The guy who helped Google peddle a broken system, or the guy who stood up for small business owners? It’s been 3 years of this bullshit. Toss us a bone for once.Did I show you the 8 page+ internal drive document Google asked me to update with my findings? They didn't even LOOK AT IT, it was to pacify me and shut me up publicly. John doesn't look too healthy these days retirement age? And Danny is 60 so hopefully he retires, steps down or gets fired. John is worse as is Gary Illes but nobody talks about him. Go listen to their podcast, listen to old espidodes they GAVE BAD ADVISE, perhaps puporusly? Or unkowing which is doubtful. Pretty sure @TheRealRutledge did the same numerous page document for for Google? Ironically Barry you haven't bother to ask or interview any of the people involved. You get paid regardless Barry, toss us a bone for f*cks sake. You want you legacy to be the guy that helped Google peddle smut, or the guy who stood up for small business owners? It’s been 3 years of this bullshit. Toss us a bone for once.

Google News support team tells publishers to look for updates from the closed Google Search Liaison account seroundtable.com/google-news-su…

Zero experience here? @JohnMu @dannysullivan or is Forbes, People, Better Home and Garden a better representation of the snowsports world? @searchliaison can you tell me why I am still considered UNHELPFUL or why you won't reply. @NETLFIX hows the Google documentary coming long.,

For advanced snowboarders this board rips. Check it out in action here: mtnweekly.com/reviews/snowbo…

TETON Tested: Never Summer Proto FR T3 Snowboard Review from here in Jackson Hole, WY youtube.com/shorts/pvwmFlN… via @YouTube

@ichbinGisele @RobWaugh74 @pressgazette Yep, pbs.org/newshour/econo…

"A network of prominent gaming sites has fired multiple human staff in recent days and misleadingly replaced them with AI writers, complete with fake pics and biogs." ~ @RobWaugh74 🔗 pressgazette.co.uk/news/staff-jou…

@alex_buraks The Google Zero click era, I talked about my experiences here and effects on small business owners that relied on organic Google search traffic. linkedin.com/posts/mhardake…

We're cooked

Fun data, past 28 days on my site from Google: 17.6K Clicks / 1.28M Impressions = 1.37% Click-Through Rate. The Difference vs Pre-2023: These same 1.28M impressions in 2022 at a 3.5% CTR, would have given me 44,800 clicks instead of 17,600. That's a LOT of lost revenue in affiliate and ad dollars. A lot of lost opportunity to speak to the outdoor community. Pre-2023 Benchmark: For an authoritative niche site like Mountain Weekly (technical reviews, gear guides), a healthy average CTR was typically 3% to 5%. And ours saw almost 8-9% our readers are in the buying funnel, not kicking tires

The trend you’re most likely seeing (Impressions up, Clicks down) is the hallmark of the "Zero-Click" era. Here is exactly what is happening to your data right now: 1. AI Overviews (SGE) are "Stealing" the Click This is the biggest culprit. Google is now generating an AI summary at the very top of the search results using your content (and others). The Math: Google bots crawl your page and display your info in the AI box. This counts as an Impression because your link is cited in the "sources" toggle. The Reality: The user gets their answer from the AI paragraph and never clicks your link. Your impressions stay high (or go up), but your clicks drop. This is mathematically impossible unless the AI overview is in place. In past more impressions = more clicks, again it’s simple math. continue reading below... linkedin.com/posts/mhardake…

Check out my latest article: Is Google Shopping a “Pay-to-Play” Star Factory? 🛑 linkedin.com/pulse/google-s… via @LinkedIn

@gregfinn @MarketingOClock @GoogleAds Any reason your not toucing this story? piunikaweb.com/2026/02/23/use… would you like to see the emails now saying my account is back? I thought you covered Ad News????

'Zip' on over to this week's @MarketingOClock: - New Ad Scheduling changes on @GoogleAds - Ads in the wild in ChatGPT - Google "takes" on 'Hot Takes' + all the #digitalmarketing news from the week!

@PiunikaWeb Thanks for the share, the ad "news" people are scared to touch this story. Sort if like Google

Mike Hardaker (@mountainweekly) , who has maintained a Reddit account for 20 years, has been shadow-banned on Reddit. He has posted an update on X, stating that Reddit requires an ad spend to restore organic posting. This demand was given to him in writing.

@jphebdon @Reddit 1000% real

If this is real it's pretty stunning. Anyone else had any experience like this with @Reddit ?

Need some office coffee? I got a few of these for sale brand new!! ebay.com/itm/2777496777…

@Gil_RunDMG @MetaforBusiness Are they apart of Reddit. Check what the ads team is trying to do to me, I need to pay or they will shut down my organic account 20 years running... linkedin.com/posts/mhardake…

you cannot be serious @MetaforBusiness

@iambrandonsalt @retro_dodo same here brother! Won't bother to look at Google Webmaster slop again. Took us all down some wormholes, perhaps on purpose.

I used to look at Search Console every single day while building @retro_dodo, the last time I logged in was over three months ago. And I feel soooo much better for it. Plus, our content is better because of it. More focused on our community and real trends.

My LinkedIn piece on this: linkedin.com/posts/mhardake…

Reddits add team is trying to strong arm me, @gregfinn ever seen this before. For context they removed my sub snd shadow banned my account. None of the mods in forums Im active were able to reverse the ban.

@YoungbloodJoe @gregfinn Said the algorithm thought I was spamming when I cross posted or too many post to quickly. Im active in 3-4 subs regularly contributing, I got to the point the system blocked me from emailing mods

@mountainweekly @gregfinn This is shitty but why did they take down your sub and shadowban you?