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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]

#151

Google has excellent AI and these is no application of it to their search to remove spam. Google needs competition or it'll never be fixed. Search is important

Less spam might equal less ad sales so it isn't in Google's best short term interest to actually fix it.

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

#152

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

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

I think a regular, non-adblocked google search may result in almost the entire first page being ads. At this point, the ads are probably more relevant to the average user than whatever seo-spam "top x of y" would have been there on the first page.

At least ads lead you to the product directly rather than make you visit another shady ad-infested site in the interim.

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

#153

Huawei's petalsearch.com finds some "large format laser printer" results.

Wow, even if you put "large format laser printer" in quotes, and put Google in verbatim mode, that smallbiztrends crap comes up first, followed by useless results.

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

#155
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then spammers or unscrupulous competitors will flag legitimate sites as spam, pushing the signal-to-noise ratio to the point of uselessness. Plus, few users will actually flag correctly. Most will simply not notice, or not bother, others will flag perfectly legitimate results as spam just because Google wasn't psychic enough to know exactly what they want from their vague query. And Google already has a pretty go…

Google can easily afford to have people verify a link should be taken down before doing it. And yes spammers find ways around gaming bounce rates. If we forced spammers to make web pages attractive and informative to humans instead of crawlers we’d be in a much better place

> Google can easily afford to have people verify a link should be taken down before doing it.

Google is super rich, they probably can if they want to dedicate a huge amount of resources to that. It is hard for humans to win against bots in this game.

> If we forced spammers to make web pages attractive and informative to humans instead of crawlers we’d be in a much better place

It is something spammers do. They make the page attractive using psychological tricks (like typical clickbait). They make it informative by copying parts of Wikipedia or StackOverflow. It does not make the world a better place, and it is something Google fights against, with mixed success.

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

#156

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…

> Time to build a good bookmark collection, I guess. There are uBlock filter lists that help filter out generated content from search results, such as https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter

I subscribe to this filter, and while it's useful, it only covers a subset of the content farms out there. We really need a general purpose filter list for this sort of stuff. The sites I've been seeing more of lately are Q&A pages that have a few dozen questions with no rhyme or rhythm, and whose answers seem to be GPT-3 generated or scraped from other sites.

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searching for "large format laser printer" also yields lots of inkjet printer SEO driven results on you site.

Specific examples? What country/language settings did you use? I got (for UK/English settings) Google: 5 Ads followed by https://smallbiztrends.com https://www.printerland.co.uk DDG: 1 Ads followed by: https://plumbaroakland.com https://smallbiztrends.com Mojeek: https://foodisforfuel.com https://www.cadtutor.net

>searching for printers

>top result is for https://foodisforfuel.com

Just looking at the domain it already looks like a massive failure in results. Clicking into the site it looks like a content farm. The top articles are:

Do Justin Boots Run True to Size?

Air Duct Cleaning Services in San Antonio

Where to Find a Fireworks Store in Chicago

The Advantages of Being a Social Entrepreneur

Why You Should Choose a Cannabis SEO Agency

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

#158
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but most of the time reddit is completely unable to provide a decent answer to any non banal search. And whenever I tried to directly ask something specific in a dedicated subreddit it always ends up in one of the following: - I'm violating one of their moderator rules - wrong subreddit try this one, you try that one and they recommend the first - not enough upvotes for the question to be seen by anyone - short…

It’s been said the best way to get answers promptly online is to provide an incorrect one. Maybe a strategy to overcome the attention span issue would be to open a sockpuppet account to intentionally seed misinformation until someone catches it and feels compelled to respond?

But to aulin's fifth point, often you won't get answered with the correct information. Instead you will get "corrected" with the local mythos, as the most repeated answer to a question usually becomes the preferred knowledge of a group.

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

#160

He is not looking for a large format laser printer. True large format would be called a plotter and will print 36"x48" sheets faster than your home laser printer will pump out letter sized sheets but are almost all B&W. The most common ones are made by Oce who was bought out by Canon. Medium format color laser printers are usually called a digital press and are commonly 12"x18" and duplex so a booklet can be cut down…

As someone who has supported printers for decades, and has a friend who owns a print shop, almost nothing in this is true.

> True large format would be called a plotter

No, plotters are devices with pens. Layman may occasionally refer to a large format printer as a "plotter" because of its resemblance and it's faster to say, but nobody in the industry refers to them as plotters.

> will print 36"x48" sheets faster than your home laser printer will pump out letter sized sheets but are almost all B&W. The most common ones are made by Oce

You're describing large-format photocopiers. They operate exactly like an old-school optical-only photocopier which photographically exposes the drum (versus printers and digital copiers which image the drum via LEDs or a laser.) They are often called "plan copiers." Said friend's print shop has one and it is in fact made by Oce.

> Medium format color laser printers are usually called a digital press and are commonly 12"x18"

Many, many copiers can handle 12x18 paper. "Digital press" usually refers to enhanced paper storage, speed/volume, and finisher capabilities beyond what a typical office copier/MFC offers, often coupled with some sort of software and workstation for managing the print jobs. Often a "digital press" is indistinguishable from a heavy-duty copier with finisher units

> Now what's interesting is the building industry has the same problem that Adam Savage has, the prints (plan sets) must be able to get wet without the ink/toner bleeding.

Toner does not bleed.

> That has been solved with ink jet technology that uses a wax based ink. Cartridges full of wax balls in the standard process colors, an example would be a Canon colorwave.

Colorwave uses melted 'toner' and sprays it, like an inkjet, onto a page.

You're confusing Colorwave with the Phaser printers made by Xerox, which use dyed wax. Phaser prints used to be cutting edge back in the 90's for proofing work, but have long since been eclipsed by every other printing technology. The wax can be scraped off the page. If the page is bent too much, it crinkles. It's easily damaged by even slight heat. It's dye based not pigment based, so the prints fade and color shift very quickly. The technology is such garbage that Xerox has tried renmaing it - they now call it "colorcube" or something similarly stupid. They push per-page figures, while ignoring the machine's horrific TCO (they consume massive amounts of electricity and require a lot of service work; if disturbed too much while at operating temperature, molten wax gets into places it shouldn't be and requires an expensive service call. Etc.)

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