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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#331

Post by mike10921 »

eloeffler wrote: post #60
softwarebeware wrote: post #6

Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me: - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust." This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretl…

About the "dead internet conspiracy" - I've worked in writing how-to articles for a fairly large "help" website. They paid very little attention to the quality of the articles. I was paid for each piece and thus had about 30 minutes to write an article and later integrate feedback from internal review. Otherwise the payment became too low. The most important factor was cramming SEO terms and links to keep people on t…

Lately, half the results I get are pages that I cant view without paying to some service or signing up for a free trial.. Google literally serves up results that are unreachable ..

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#332

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

legalcorrection wrote: post #151
softwarebeware wrote: post #6

Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me: - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust." This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretl…

Searching Reddit helps but the quality of comments has gotten lower since 2015 or so. It seems to coincide with the wave of subreddit bans and the nakedly politically-driven moderation on subreddits. And with the reflexive attitude—against anything countering the Reddit consensus—that developed during the Trump years. High quality posters seem to have withdrawn from the site (at least in how much they comment) and wh…

Quality on any non niche popular subreddits were already abysmal long before 2015. Reddit is useless for anything which is not highly specific but there are some diamonds in the rough: great subreddits exists about fashion, knives, gardening, coffee, shaving and plenty of other weird interests.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#333

Post by disease »

ankit219 wrote: post #77

Agree with the premise, but seems to me that the article does not justify this. I can understand ads, but ads do not affect search results. If you move past ads now (which most users do as they habitually ignore the space where ads would be) even then you should expect good results. SEO seems to be a big problem. Just saying Google is big and they should fix it ignores the nuance and the whole cat and mouse game that…

> If I were to predict, Google would start identifying trends and slowly start ranking reddit higher for user centric queries. In my limited dev experience, that is already happening for Stack overflow. I love how the results are clubbed together under the first result.

Weird, I'm having the opposite experience with stackoverflow pages. Often I get pages from random websites that copy and paste stackoverflow content with some jammed-in SEO ABOVE the actual stackoverflow results.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#334

Post by numpad0 »

monkeynotes wrote: post #196
eloeffler wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the "dead internet conspiracy" - I've worked in writing how-to articles for a fairly large "help" website. They paid very little attention to the quality of the articles. I was paid for each piece and thus had about 30 minutes to write an article and later integrate feedback from internal review. Otherwise the payment became too low. The most important factor was cramming SEO terms and links to keep people on t…

Speaking of bots, I'd be interested to know the percentage of articles on major traffic content sites are authored or co-authored by AI. My suspicion is this is rife given how many articles read poorly and are almost entirely fluff. If this is true it would appear we are doomed to algorithms shaping our online experiences, which is worrying given the existing shrinking diversity of opinion and content. It's like a en…

Apparently, using a machine translation as a basis and working through correcting it to read or write foreign languages is a growing trend and that’s a form of computer assisted literacy if I were to guess.

Bar that, it’s humans outrunning AI in the race to the bottom with a head start. Human people can be forced to be incredibly machine like.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#335

Post by eof »

There is a mode that google has which is basically the old mode; since I discovered it recently out of huge frustration with google search results.

After you search for something; select `Tools -> All Results -> Verbatim`

This will get google to actually search the way power users expect. I am surprised how little known this feature is. It should be default, but once known it completely removed my frustration with google search.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#336

Post by mrctte »

This is partially due to the proliferation of data-driven static site generation.

Two types of sites I see popping up are:

1) "shims", which generate the bare minimum static content required to get listed on Google, usually for obscure or long-tail queries

2) "skins", which make exact copies of sites with publicly available context (like Wikipedia or npmjs.org).

Both are enabled by tools like NextJS which allow you to take data and convert it to a static site which does well with SEO.

I wrote about this in depth here: https://zestyrx.com/blog/nextjs-ssg

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#338

Post by skilled »

I do this also, especially for problems/questions related to real-life situations. Someone on Reddit has either already asked that question or someone provided an answer. Google should learn from this.

Also, I think that author should have mentioned the new crop of AI writing tools that have been coming out in troves. And, honestly, some of them do a pretty convincing job of writing things like blog post intros or specific paragraphs.

And, best of all, all this "progress" is driven solely by monetary interest. Google has made millions of people rich, and for a while will continue to do so.

Lastly, I'm bit of a digital marketer myself. I have been in the game for a loooong time, too long. And, I can say from personal experience - a lot of the top 1 results on Google are still being gamed. You can, technically, report blackhat spam[0], but who knows how proactive Google is to listen to those reports.

[0]: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guideline...

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#339

Post by samstave »

softwarebeware wrote: post #6

Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me: - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust." This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretl…

Any idea what reddit's valuation is currently looking like?

I have long been surprised they havent been acquired .. I assume for sure they have had plenty of offerss in the past

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#340

Post by technothrasher »

ballenf wrote: post #165
eloeffler wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the "dead internet conspiracy" - I've worked in writing how-to articles for a fairly large "help" website. They paid very little attention to the quality of the articles. I was paid for each piece and thus had about 30 minutes to write an article and later integrate feedback from internal review. Otherwise the payment became too low. The most important factor was cramming SEO terms and links to keep people on t…

How can you be sure that you're not a bot?

Because I'm nervous my neighbors will realize my sheep is electric?
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