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A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

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Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#71

The SEO optimized site, smallbiztrends.com, lists six large format laser printers though! Their title is for eight of them though, and two of them are inkjets, and I'm assuming they didn't change their list in response to the video.

The site is full of Markov chain garble using random products as seeds to useless copy in order to sell ad space and affiliate links. There's no person who would even want to update the site.

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#72
post #62

The rant is not so much about laser printers, but about search engines and crappy SEO. I mean, it starts with a laser printer problem he has, but he doesn't blame his printer. He blames Google for not helping him find a better laser printer. And I checked: DuckDuckGo has a different top result, but the same problem: an article about top 10 laser printers that contains only ink jet printers. These are crap articles th…

It's the same everywhere. Amazon and Google are absolutely worhtless for anything that is slightly not mainstream.

What I personally do is, when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them. I am probably not getting the best deal, but it's better than no deal whatsoever or exhausting myself searching for a solution, or buying something in the internet that is not worth it.

I've done this succesfully for thousends of items. This is a lot of time and headaches I did not have to endure in front of my PC.

If I was him I would look for some distributor or just go where these laser printers are used and ask.

A phone call is more useful than a search engine.

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#73
post #47
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you manage to bypass the problems you mention (by bypassing the popular subreddits), Reddit has become a terrible source of information in general. The old "site:reddit.com" trick doesn't work that well anymore. Well, it returns old results, so there's that. Smaller Subreddits have not only become echo chambers, but they now seem to cater to people trying to get into the field rather than the previous mix of…

This pretty much sums up my experience too. It's been downhill since all the subreddit bans a couple years ago. I miss r/consumeproduct.

> It's been downhill since all the subreddit bans a couple years ago.

Out of the list on Wikipedia [1], the utter majority of banned popular subreddits were far-right, terrorist, violence-oriented or dealt with questionably or outright illegal sexual material (jailbait, fappening).

As for r/consumeproduct, there's a Google doc floating around detailing its links to the far-right and transphobes [2]. Doesn't sound surprising to me that they got banned.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...

[2] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IdBsrh8FS6k85XsrpqDjmqPe...

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#74
I don’t understand why this is so hard for google. Allow end users to flag links as SEO spam. It’s very easy for a human to figure out. I can tell in maybe 1/4 a second that a page is just SEO shit. The keyword stuffing, the irrelevant fluff before and after any relevant content (if it’s there at all), the annoying ads that take up the whole screen, etc. Let us flag it, remove it from the index. Take a snapshot of the page at the time it was removed so if the owner wants to appeal Google can say why it was removed.

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#75
post #62

The rant is not so much about laser printers, but about search engines and crappy SEO. I mean, it starts with a laser printer problem he has, but he doesn't blame his printer. He blames Google for not helping him find a better laser printer. And I checked: DuckDuckGo has a different top result, but the same problem: an article about top 10 laser printers that contains only ink jet printers. These are crap articles th…

> article about top 10 laser printers that contains only ink jet printers

The top non-ad article I get on DDG is a top-10 article that includes 5 lasers, 1 LED printer: Canon MF741Cdw, Brother HL-L8360CDWT, HP M182, HP M479fdn, Brother MFC-L3710CW (LED), HP M404dn.

https://plumbaroakland.com/best-large-format-laser-printer/

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#76
post #62

The rant is not so much about laser printers, but about search engines and crappy SEO. I mean, it starts with a laser printer problem he has, but he doesn't blame his printer. He blames Google for not helping him find a better laser printer. And I checked: DuckDuckGo has a different top result, but the same problem: an article about top 10 laser printers that contains only ink jet printers. These are crap articles th…

It's the same everywhere. Amazon and Google are absolutely worhtless for anything that is slightly not mainstream. What I personally do is, when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them. I am probably not getting the best deal, but it's better than no deal whatsoever or exhausting myself searching for a solution, or buying something in the internet that is not worth i…

> when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them

I don't think that I would get good buying advice that way. E.g. I was looking at eink Android tablets. The information I got from reddit, HN and youtube reviews was so niche that I'd have been suprised if a random electronics store salesman would have had it.

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#77
I think the problem is that there is no other way to provide feedback to Google other than clicking on links.

I used to search on Google without an account. Then I created a phony account at work to see if there is an improvement in my searches (because it should be "learning", right?). And after some months... nope, or at least it's not noticeable.

How does Google know what I like, what I search or the content I want to see? Some combination of clicks and time-spent in a page through Google Analytics?

I would rather add a couple of buttons after each search result to provide feedback and the feedback I provide is valid just for my user (so it cannot be gamed). Two buttons with "this is crap" / "this is fine". Then Google can learn from that feedback instead of guessing through AI.

That, plus a "I'm not joe-six-pack" mode toggle, where Tools->Verbatim is enabled and finds exactly what I am looking for, without assuming I'm misspelling or confused.

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#78

I don’t understand why this is so hard for google. Allow end users to flag links as SEO spam. It’s very easy for a human to figure out. I can tell in maybe 1/4 a second that a page is just SEO shit. The keyword stuffing, the irrelevant fluff before and after any relevant content (if it’s there at all), the annoying ads that take up the whole screen, etc. Let us flag it, remove it from the index. Take a snapshot of th…

I like this idea. So how would you prevent company X from flagging all their competitors as spam sites - and just in general how do you deal with the abuse of such a feature?

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#79

I don’t understand why this is so hard for google. Allow end users to flag links as SEO spam. It’s very easy for a human to figure out. I can tell in maybe 1/4 a second that a page is just SEO shit. The keyword stuffing, the irrelevant fluff before and after any relevant content (if it’s there at all), the annoying ads that take up the whole screen, etc. Let us flag it, remove it from the index. Take a snapshot of th…

Because SEO firms would LOVE to go though marking all real sites as spam. They are _much_ more motivated then end users so the vast bulk of report will be false.

Re: A rant about search engine results for large format laser printers [video]

#80

I don’t understand why this is so hard for google. Allow end users to flag links as SEO spam. It’s very easy for a human to figure out. I can tell in maybe 1/4 a second that a page is just SEO shit. The keyword stuffing, the irrelevant fluff before and after any relevant content (if it’s there at all), the annoying ads that take up the whole screen, etc. Let us flag it, remove it from the index. Take a snapshot of th…

Or at least allow the user to flag such links to be added in his own, individual corpus of unwanted spam. They do the exact same thing with email already, so why not extend it to web pages.

And, yes, allow the user to permanently filter out domains from their search results.

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