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“Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

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Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#131

Post by Donzo »

vbezhenar wrote: post #115
vilius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh and w3schools.com needs to go below MDN because it's less informative. Even today I wanted to read about transform-origin and landed on w3schools [0], where MDN article [1] is clearly superior. [0] https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_transform-origin.as... [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/transform-o...

Does Google manually adjust weights? While I agree with you, I always supposed that Google weights websites according to their own algorithms, not because some moderator thinks that it's less informative. If w3schools is higher, probably there are technical reasons, for example more users prefer it (may be content is easier to understand).

Sure, so they need to improve the algorithms in this way so they produce the desired results. In other words, algorithmically driven manual actions.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#132

Post by lostlogin »

manigandham wrote: post #123
shiado wrote: post #39

While they are at it please remove LinkedIn. You can't actually view anything on any page without logging in. Why is it listed at all? Seems pretty deceptive to me.

LinkedIn is one of the top sites for dark UX patterns. It is 100% purposeful, just like Pinterest, and designed to increase the all important "engagement" metric.

Does anyone actually ‘engage’ in way other than trying to block their spam? Every 6 months or so they seem to break through and the crap piles up. I was just fighting them off this morning.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#133

Post by adventured »

vbezhenar wrote: post #116

I always thought that presenting different content for Google Search Bot and users is bannable offence. Not so much for big businesses, it seems.

That's correct, it is for normal sites. At a minimum it will get you a dramatic downranking that will practically remove all of your content from Google. LinkedIn and Quora are both protected from those rules for example, as with Pinterest. It's Silicon Valley back scratching.

It's also a very clear abuse of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, in my opinion. As anti-trust moves in on Google in the coming years, this should be held up as one of many examples of persistent market abuse and consumer harm (anti-competitive behavior, using the monopoly to restrict consumer choice).

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#134

Post by SeanBoocock »

A complicating factor in all of this is the unfolding anti-trust cases against Google and other large digital platforms (see: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against...). Choices that Google might have once made to improve search results for users are now under extra regulatory scrutiny. I imagine Google executives would be very careful about making any moves that could be cast as freezing out competition, even if that competition is abusing Google's platform.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#135

Post by stordoff »

adventured wrote: post #122
shiado wrote: post #39

While they are at it please remove LinkedIn. You can't actually view anything on any page without logging in. Why is it listed at all? Seems pretty deceptive to me.

And how about Google finally do something about Quora's aggressive abuse of their quality guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en Quora presents a very different site to Google than it does to the reader ultimately. Google intentionally, knowingly ignores this fact and has for years. They could manually penalize Quora for breaking Google's search quality guidelines in numerous ways and th…

AFAIK, you always get the same page that was shown when coming from Google results. That IMO is enough - what is shown in the search results is an accurate reflection of the page you reach. Requiring that subsequent navigations within the site are also the same seems excessive (as you don't have the context of a results page that would make it seem misleading) and would be an overreach on Google's part IMO.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#136

Post by stagbeetle »

vilius wrote: post #108
shiado wrote: post #39

While they are at it please remove LinkedIn. You can't actually view anything on any page without logging in. Why is it listed at all? Seems pretty deceptive to me.

Oh and w3schools.com needs to go below MDN because it's less informative. Even today I wanted to read about transform-origin and landed on w3schools [0], where MDN article [1] is clearly superior. [0] https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_transform-origin.as... [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/transform-o...

While we're in the same vein, Google should remove the dumbed-down content altogether for anyone flagged as a "developer" by their algos, and replace it with man pages and source docs. MDN is a step up, but I usually skip past it, because the actual specification papers are most always better (except for ATOM and OpenLayers!).

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#137

Post by lostlogin »

coatmatter wrote: post #74
delinka wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...search on that site directly." Not for an unbelievable number of people (according to my own anecdata.) There exist large numbers (extrapolating from aforementioned anecdata) of people who don't know you can just visit a website - they think it must first be "googled." I've witnessed on a single occasion an individual who accidentally went directly to facebook.com, didn't trust that they'd gotten facebook.com, pr…

There's definitely a large number of people who only visit sites through Google's homepage. Not the address bar or anything else (clicking links being the exception). I worked this out by hearing about customer support calls for a new URL we had which hadn't yet been indexed by Google. All the callers having problems couldn't find the address bar. They thought the Google search box was it.

Not helped by it being the same thing in some browsers. I have the opposite problem - I regularly hit the ‘.’ rather than the space bar on iOS, and then the browser thinks I’m trying to go to that site rather than search for my string (words separated by a period). It’s annoying.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#138

Post by celdon25 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #66
twblalock wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rules is Pinterest breaking? And what would it mean for Google to treat "all sites equally"?

Pintrest is projecting Facebook attitude with an AOL product. They give the googlebot one answer and the user a different one. My understanding is that is a no-no. Pintrest and Quora fit in this weird category like Expertsexchange; they get high search ranking because of the questions, but don’t deliver the answers.

Call me crazy, but AOL in its prime was a bigger deal than Facebook. Facebook was capturing an existing market, while AOL was creating one. It took the social aspect of the web to the mainstream, while Facebook merely streamlined an existing paradigm. Be kind to thy elders.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#139

Post by adventured »

stordoff wrote: post #135
adventured wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how about Google finally do something about Quora's aggressive abuse of their quality guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en Quora presents a very different site to Google than it does to the reader ultimately. Google intentionally, knowingly ignores this fact and has for years. They could manually penalize Quora for breaking Google's search quality guidelines in numerous ways and th…

AFAIK, you always get the same page that was shown when coming from Google results. That IMO is enough - what is shown in the search results is an accurate reflection of the page you reach. Requiring that subsequent navigations within the site are also the same seems excessive (as you don't have the context of a results page that would make it seem misleading) and would be an overreach on Google's part IMO.

The Google spider has an entirely different experience, when going from page to page on Quora, than what the user does (someone not signed in).

Google hammers any normal site that gets caught presenting a fundamentally different experience to the user than they do the spider. Google is not unaware that Quora, Pinterest and LinkedIn present different experiences to the bot vs the user, they knowingly allow it for giant services. That's the hypocrisy and double standard.

Re: “Pinterest needs to be removed from Google IMO”

#140

Post by fwgwgwgch »

lostlogin wrote: post #132
manigandham wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LinkedIn is one of the top sites for dark UX patterns. It is 100% purposeful, just like Pinterest, and designed to increase the all important "engagement" metric.

Does anyone actually ‘engage’ in way other than trying to block their spam? Every 6 months or so they seem to break through and the crap piles up. I was just fighting them off this morning.

The most important rule to use LinkedIn is to never ever log in. Or if you do, do it on a computer and shhh stop pressing those buttons. Just do the minimal and leave.
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