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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]

#81

Post by tda »

stevesimmons wrote: post #59
heeen2 wrote: post #50

The solution for consumers are product/price comparison sites like gh.de and idealo.de (german). I don't know the US equivalents of those, but here they get the prices from many sellers and you can compare including shipping, filter by many spec criteria and even find the cheapest solution for a basket of items, split by seller and including shipping which I believe is a NP hard problem (knapsack or traveling salesma…

The Dutch version is https://tweakers.net/

specifically https://tweakers.net/pricewatch

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

#82

Post by cjg »

thatguyagain wrote: post #78
jliptzin wrote: post #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 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?

Google know a lot about a logged in user - especially ones that have had an account for a long time. They could lean on that.

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

#83

Post by trumpablehump »

sokoloff wrote: post #75
mcv wrote: 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/

That site is nothing but a ad-ridden, affiliate link stuffing, spam site with zero quality. A good search engine would not list useless garbage like that.

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

#84

Post by wildrhythms »

jliptzin wrote: post #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 th…

If I was a motivated SEO booster, I would just pay a room full of people somewhere in the world to "downvote" all of my competitors search engine results. The problem still exists. As long as there is an incentive to be gained from SEO spammers, they will find a way to influence search results. This transcends Google or DDG or any specific search engine susceptible to SEO abuse.

There's a great talk by Anil Dash that I like titled "The Web We Lost" that centers around on this topic - https://anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

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

#85

Post by spaniard89277 »

dmos62 wrote: post #76
spaniard89277 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For that maybe, for laptop chargers and batteries, cables, electronic components etc I've got better luck at that store. Keep in mind that they are not a general public storem you don't buy consumer electronics there, but for professionals. Technicians of all kinds go there to buy, so they are not just salespeople.

Their website is absolutely awful though: https://www.cetronic.es/

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

#87

Post by sokoloff »

trumpablehump wrote: post #83
sokoloff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

That site is nothing but a ad-ridden, affiliate link stuffing, spam site with zero quality. A good search engine would not list useless garbage like that.

That is an accurate criticism and I agree. “This list of laser printers contains only inkjet printers” is not.

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

#89

Post by dazc »

I got a result for 'best laser printer' which was actually a retailer of laser printers. It was #8 but better than I expected.

I am far from being a Google fan boy - quite the opposite - but I can also be pragmatic and understand that this may be an unfixable problem.

The lesson here is that retailers of such products should be optimising for these kind of search terms. Of course there is going to be some bias but they will have at least some understanding of what they are talking about.

And, people using such terms also ought to expect a lot of SEO junk. I mean, when has anyone ever gotten a result that is anything other?

Seriously though, who is going to take the time and trouble to curate a list of the best laser printers who doesn't have a financial interest in doing so?

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

#90

Post by simonbackx »

This is not only with printers, but with everything you search for, it makes me so sad! Everything is just full of SEO optimised nonsense. In the past it was so easy to search for something and actually find it. Now you only find crappy sites, full of ads, pop ups and brain-dead content optimised for SEO. It looks like Google has stepped away from reputation based scoring to a score that is too much focused on the textual content of sites. I hope this creates opportunities for new players in the market that are able to solve this and can outperform Google. That would be good for the internet.
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