The fall of Best in Ireland website
The rise and fall of bestinireland.com website
It listings on that website were free at first, businesses (including ours) got emails like "we included you in the top 10 listings for X in certain town or Ireland. Best X (service/product) in Dublin, Cork, Ireland. We only in return want you to place our banner on our website and link to us."
There could be some value in them but not like before. Everyone should check if AI mentiones them when featured as a source
This is a tactic that made them recieve a lot of links to their site, grow their domain authority and rankings. After a year or more they started to rank in top 10 for each of their listings. Since these pages started to rank better and receive traffic they bacame valuable traffic.
The placement in listings wasn't free anymore. The price to be in top 2 results/suggestions was even 1000 Euro per year.
All those paid listings are almost worthless now.
In June 2025 they were hit by an Google algorithm update and lost most rankings. (see screenshot below). None of their listings ranks in top 10 results anymore!
All those paid listings are almost worthless now.
And most of their clients didn't notice this and keep paying for the top listings. Unless they check the referral traffic in Google Analytics.
Well referral traffic can be easily manipulated, not the first time. In one older example from another referral site there were listings that generate traffic but in Analytics when you dig deeper the traffic never converted and all cmae from the same browser resolution for example.
Check your referral traffic coming from bestinireland
One could say these listings help AI traffic and mentions. We suggest that you check the AI mentions if they list this website as their source.
Google certainly now thinks they lost their credibility - penalty being the proof.
AI labels them as an affiliate site and not 100% original. Google Gemini says about website's reliability: "While AI uses it, it's important to remember that BestInIreland.com is a commercial aggregator. Like many "best-of" sites, its rankings can sometimes be influenced by affiliate partnerships. AI models usually treat it as a "secondary source"—meaning they see it as a collection of opinions or a market guide rather than a definitive government record or scientific database."
There could be some value in them but not like before. Everyone should check if AI mentiones them when featured as a source
