201–210 of 320 posts
Flash back to 1998 when Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page when they said an ad-supported model will never be able to rank quality content. Seems like they almost realize it > "Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of th…
>Better ranking of original, quality content Hah. Just another day, someone sent me this link[1] which took images and text from my page[2] for the Google query "linux check disk space". Here is the thing my page doesn't even appear on Google. The ripped page points to the source[2] and has a link back to the original images. These scammers know how to game Google with their AI-driven sites, and they adopt it faster…
I write novels as a hobby and I publish them on my website. I recently noticed that there are websites that blatantly copy and sell my novels without my permission and are ranked higher than mine. I think it is because Google identifies their pages as the source. If anyone knows how to deal with issues like this, please let me know.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet I could make it to the front page of HN if I blogged about my notes on taking notes. Everyone loves that sort of thing.
HN is more of a notes of writing software for taking notes, but hey I'm sure people here would be happy to branch out.
I write novels as a hobby and I publish them on my website. I recently noticed that there are websites that blatantly copy and sell my novels without my permission and are ranked higher than mine. I think it is because Google identifies their pages as the source. If anyone knows how to deal with issues like this, please let me know.
I am so sick and tired of sites that have a bunch of filler content in them just to appear higher in search results. You search for something, say "How to change a light bulb" and you get all this front loading with sections on "what is a light bulb?" "Why do light bulbs need changing?" "Picking a light bulb" and then finally the answer. Maybe a search engine that could prioritize getting to the point would be good.
I was looking up some niche stuff in JavaScript space, and the article started out with a sentence:
"An increasing number of developers are looking to get started with web development. And because of this, they are searching to get started with ."
Sooo.... developers are looking to get started with development...
And like you say, the same goes for all the "What is a " - feels like a fundamental error on Google's part for parsing language intent.
I'm not sure this whole drive towards 'original content' makes sense. It encourages people to make long rambling pages that don't get to the point In fact it seems like Google worked better when wikipedia was almost always the first result on various topics What I mean by rambling is if you type something like "types of oranges" and suddenly land on a page where some dude is clearly just filling up paragraphs for goo…
The dissonance is between Google's native perception and external reality: reality 1 : The www exists. Google indexes it, analyzes it and delivers it to users. Users like certain things, like original content. reality 2 : Google's ranking policies/algorithms influence the web. The "original content" that exists in a world without Google is different to the content that exists in a world where Google ranks such web pa…
I don't think Google will ever be able to distinguish texts that are written for people from texts that are written for Google. It's effectively the Turing test, and Google won't pass it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The dissonance is between Google's native perception and external reality: reality 1 : The www exists. Google indexes it, analyzes it and delivers it to users. Users like certain things, like original content. reality 2 : Google's ranking policies/algorithms influence the web. The "original content" that exists in a world without Google is different to the content that exists in a world where Google ranks such web pa…
>Google refuse to see or present themselves in the role that they actually occupy. They avoid thinking of the search algorithm as encouraging or discouraging anything. It's just analyzing. Can you clarify what you mean by this? As an outside observer, it seems that Google recognizes that their search engine does have a "Heisenberg" effect akin to "measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the s…
In a sense, I am overstating. Having an anti-spam team is obviously a recognition that SEO/Spam exists and that Google is trying to discourage or mitigate.
But Google is well beyond just attracting spam. Success in Google search rankings is, for many sites, the better part of online success. If Google ranks needlessly wordy recipes more highly than concise & useful recipes... then wordy recipes get written. It's not about ranking recipes anymore... it's about the effects google has on recipes. The recipes get written in a wordy fashion, because of the ranking system... not just ranked because of the writing style. Google is dictating the nature of online recipes with their rankings.
A few years back, Google made changes to youtube's recommendation engine in a way that really "encourages" frequent, regular videos. Viral hits became much less common. The result has been to send many professional youtubers into a frantic grind. There's no point in taking time with a video, or trying weird ideas. It won't go viral anyway. A week off or a couple of flops is harshly punished. There are tens of thousands of these youtubers, basically small businesses.
There's never any reckoning with 2nd order effects. It's always communicated as it is here. I believe this is how Google execs actually think about the issues. As a quasi-spam problem to be mitigated with the next “helpful content update.”