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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]

#101

Post by perceptronas »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #70

In 2010-2012, google results were peak content farm stuff too. Then they fought it actively, in 2013 they announced that they changed a lot in their relevance calculations (did they call it “project Panda”? For some reason I remembered it being called that) and it really helped, and in 2013-2015 it was a golden age of search results. Content farms that worked by stuffing keywords and working in rings to boost their p…

My guess would be that they are working on it. At their scale, it is hard to imagine them having technical difficulties removing SEO garbage from results.

It also could be that search quality is no longer their sought after metric, but I find that hard to believe

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

#102

Post by miked85 »

rplnt wrote: post #67

Using google is so much more frustrating than say 10 years ago. And generated websites is just a small problem with that. In the past google didn't try to be that smart and gave you more control. Now it's optimized for users asking full sentences instead of search queries. Now it's incorporating your location and perceived language into the query. Age of the document plays a huge role. Popularity of words in differen…

I noticed recently how quoted queries seem to be a suggestion at best. Google search really has gone downhill, and quickly.

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

#103

Post by soco »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #72
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…

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…

Same here, the printers for my home, my office and wife's office come from the same printer shop. Yeah they won't have thousands of models but from the hundred they can provide I got things very usable - and the price difference was fully worth my economy of time.

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

#104

Post by soco »

scoutt wrote: post #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 wan…

As google changed their algorithms quite a few times in the last decade(s) I'd reckon they do use some metrics, other than simple clicks.

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

#105

Post by eql5 »

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…

Alternative search engine:

https://yandex.ru/

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

#106

Post by traceroute66 »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #72
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…

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…

> What I personally do is, when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them.

You are a little naïve if you think that will work with IT (or any electronics).

The IT industry is a box-shifting industry. It resolves solely and exclusively around the world of sales targets and sales promotions. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not telling the truth.

For example, an IT reseller is not "Microsoft Gold" (or similar for other brands) because they are awesome and always put the customer first. No, they are "Gold" because they've hit the sales targets (sure there are other "requirements" such as a minimum number of trained staff, but "requirement" number one is ALWAYS hitting the sales targets.)

So if you walk into your local shop, more likely the advice you get will be based on a combination of:

     1) If they keep stock, what they have in stock
     2) What the manufacturer promotion of the day is and/or if they need a push to get over the line with some manufacturer's targets

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

#107

Post by ArnoVW »

aulin wrote: post #60
xvector wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google won't end up like Altavista since any alternatives will be faced with the same issue. Google just needs to invest more in stopping SEO.

it's not just SEO, they removed essential features like verbatim search, they constantly autocorrect uncommon search terms and they keep trying to optimize searches to only look for results within your bubble

Put your search in quotes.

Putting just one term / word in quotes makes it an non-optional search term btw.

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

#108

Post by vintermann »

yason wrote: post #80
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…

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.

I use an extension for that. There used to be the collaborative "WoT", but that got issues after it got bought up by a venture capital firm. In general I think the individual use (blocking sites I will never want to see in search results) is more important than the social use, so I just use uBlocklist, which injects a "block this site" link after every Google search result.

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

#110

Post by thesaintlives »

15 years ago I bought a laser printer and it just worked. Printed on just about anything I put in it. No annoying pop-ups about running low on paper or toner and buying now. No driver issues or bloatware. It all just worked. What do we have now? Non of the above....
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