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It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

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Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#111

Post by reaperducer »

specialist wrote: post #89
reaperducer wrote: post #15

I maintain two web sites that date back to 2003. They are still very active (thousands to tens of thousands of uniques per day), but I and my users have noticed that only the more recent content (2012+) shows up in Google. In a way I’m had to hear that Google is delisting the older content because I thought I was doing something wrong. But it’s still frustrating for my visitors because every few months I get a messag…

Is it possible to check your access logs, see if google how much google, others are spidering? I know very little about google's SOP, but had the impression they periodically rescan stuff.

I've built new sitemaps, submitted them to Webmaster Tools (or whatever they're calling it this week), requested a re-spider, everything.

Duck Duck Go finds it and shows it. According to the logs, Google spiders it, but chooses not to show it.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#112

Post by digikazi »

Liquix wrote: post #104
founderling wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an example: http://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/metallica__5.html No matter how you search for the content on Google, nothing comes up: https://www.google.com/search?q="Metallica+only+played+2+son... DuckDuckGo has it: https://duckduckgo.com/?q="Metallica+only+played+2+songs+fro... I checked the wayback machine and the content has constantly been on that url for over 10 years. This is the first example of an ol…

Anecdotally and perhaps unrelated - has anyone else noticed a decrease in the accuracy and general quality of Google search over the past 2-4 months? They've had to have been utilizing ML to 'improve' searches for some time now, but the quality of the results has decreased suddenly and inexplicably (for me).

Yep, I've noticed a lot more commercial results than before. To find something relevant I often have to dig deep, especially if what I'm looking for is a little bit obscure. I'm glad you mentioned it.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#114

Post by earthscienceman »

kickscondor wrote: post #17

While it's become impossible to browse the wider Web with Google, it's getting a bit easier elsewhere. A few helpful search engines: * https://millionshort.com/ * https://wiby.me/ * https://pinboard.in/search/ A recent movement to build personal Yahoo!-style directories: * https://href.cool/ (my own project) * https://indieseek.xyz/ * https://districts.neocities.org/ * https://the.dailywebthing.com/ The above resourc…

Wow. These are absolutely wonderful resources. Thanks for posting them

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#115

Post by avian »

Here’s a blog post I wrote recently on a similar topic:

https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2019/02/google_i...

On my website, the Google index coverage is clearly falling with age of the content. According to the Search Console only about 60% of my posts from 2006 are indexed.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#116

Post by ashelmire »

kickscondor wrote: post #25
degenerate wrote: post #13

This author is in his own little bubble and doesn't understand the vast amount of blog-repost spam that google has to deal with. The way their algorithm most likely deals with this is a mixture of domain rank + tenure... how long has this copy of this article existed on this domain, and can we be sure this is the original copy? The author says the article was removed in 2006 (" [...] posts, were not accessible anymor…

Part of the problem is that their algorithm has become weighted against blogs and personal websites. > Rumors spread that large link pages (for surfing) might be considered “link farms” (and yes on SEO sites they were but these things eventually trickle down to little personal site webmasters too) so these started to be phased out. Then the worry was Blogrolls might be considered link farms so they slowly started to…

> SEO seems to have become a huge obstacle course that smaller websites can't play.

Absolutely right. I recently started a blog, and was disheartened to learn that I have sign up for accounts with several search engines, conform to their standards and rules, give them a bunch of data... and still sometimes have mysterious issues with indexing with no real recourse. How much time and effort do I really want to spend to play the seo game? I have a job, projects, and hobbies, I don't have the time or patience to play their game of "let's fuck with things randomly until you get indexed and ranked higher". That was fun for a few hours, but I'm done with it.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#117

Post by gwern »

typon wrote: post #57
kickscondor wrote: post #17

While it's become impossible to browse the wider Web with Google, it's getting a bit easier elsewhere. A few helpful search engines: * https://millionshort.com/ * https://wiby.me/ * https://pinboard.in/search/ A recent movement to build personal Yahoo!-style directories: * https://href.cool/ (my own project) * https://indieseek.xyz/ * https://districts.neocities.org/ * https://the.dailywebthing.com/ The above resourc…

holy crap, thanks for sharing Wiby! For the past two weeks I have been trying to find an old website by searching for "old mysterious site search engines" and "how to search deep parts of web" and "search engine tricks old site" and Google has not returned anything, even when I limited the time span to 2005-2006. I made the same search on Wilby and it returned search lores (maintained by the hacker Fravia) as the fir…

I'm surprised you had trouble finding Fravia. When I was writing my own Internet search guide ( https://www.gwern.net/Search ) recently, I had no trouble finding Fravia. Unfortunately, his guide is obsolete at this point and I didn't get much out of it.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#118

Post by Crinus »

kickscondor wrote: post #17

While it's become impossible to browse the wider Web with Google, it's getting a bit easier elsewhere. A few helpful search engines: * https://millionshort.com/ * https://wiby.me/ * https://pinboard.in/search/ A recent movement to build personal Yahoo!-style directories: * https://href.cool/ (my own project) * https://indieseek.xyz/ * https://districts.neocities.org/ * https://the.dailywebthing.com/ The above resourc…

Isn't http://curlie.org/ (ex-DMOZ) the most Yahoo!-style-like directory?

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#119

Post by typon »

gwern wrote: post #117
typon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

holy crap, thanks for sharing Wiby! For the past two weeks I have been trying to find an old website by searching for "old mysterious site search engines" and "how to search deep parts of web" and "search engine tricks old site" and Google has not returned anything, even when I limited the time span to 2005-2006. I made the same search on Wilby and it returned search lores (maintained by the hacker Fravia) as the fir…

I'm surprised you had trouble finding Fravia. When I was writing my own Internet search guide ( https://www.gwern.net/Search ) recently, I had no trouble finding Fravia. Unfortunately, his guide is obsolete at this point and I didn't get much out of it.

my favorite part about search lores wasn't the actual tips on how to google, but his writing style and the mysterious, almost occult feeling i got from visiting that website, with latin phrases and history strewn everywhere. Thanks for your guide though, ill chek it out :)

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#120

Post by quest88 »

kyrra wrote: post #90
founderling wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is an example: http://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/metallica__5.html No matter how you search for the content on Google, nothing comes up: https://www.google.com/search?q="Metallica+only+played+2+son... DuckDuckGo has it: https://duckduckgo.com/?q="Metallica+only+played+2+songs+fro... I checked the wayback machine and the content has constantly been on that url for over 10 years. This is the first example of an ol…

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.gnoosic.com+Metal... Looks like only page 6 is indexed for some reason. The site owner would be able to check the webmaster tools on Google to see why.

Probably because the site is not https, and Google rank includes https: https://www.sangfroidwebdesign.com/search-engine-optimizatio...
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