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Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

mdubakov.medium.com

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Re: Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

#11

Post by sli »

miguelazo wrote: post #9
more_corn wrote: post #4

Just switch search engines.

To what? I'm unaware of any decent alternatives, unfortunately. I have all my defaults set to DuckDuckGo, but as soon as I search anything remotely uncommon, I end up having to switch to Google (although at least you can block the ad results with Ublock Origin browser extension).

I still have to fall back to Google sometimes but DDG covers a good 80% of my search usage just fine. Any amount of switching is better than none at all, even if just to push back against Google's hegemony however we can.

Re: Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

#12

Post by UIUC_06 »

bluepoint wrote: post #7

I don’t know if everyone knows that SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is > the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.

Do you think there's anyone on HN who doesn't know "If you don't know what something is, just type its name into your search engine?"

this was on the first page of DuckDuckGo results for "SEO":

https://moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo

Re: Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

#13

Post by dylanowen »

bluepoint wrote: post #8
imagetic wrote: post #3

Can't say I'm ever surprised to see another "WTF Google" post. The search has degraded a lot over the years. With that said, I've tried to switch on more than one occasion and Bing might be the only alternative that worked for me. DuckDuckGo is always way off the mark, no matter how many chances I've given it over the years. Google still wins, even with the ads and spammy stuff.

Some people here a few days ago recommended kagi, a paid service with a limited free option. I have been trying it and so far the results seem great!

Kagi has been amazing: verbatim mode that actually works, blocking sites you don't want to see, boosting sites you always want to prioritize, and lists of sites you can customize for specific searches.

Re: Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

#15

Post by hienyimba »

Whenever articles like these are published, I wonder who the Author thinks does the work of writing free articles on the Internet just for their pleasure. Content is expensive and is created by writers who must be paid.

To demand quality articles from the Internet, you must be willing to pay for them. Nobody exists just to write free passionate articles on the Internet and earn no money from them.

Re: Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

#17

Post by pupppet »

What really ticks me off are all these sites clearly scraping content from Stack Overflow that somehow end up near the top of the search results. How is there not an automated fix for this. Lemme help you out with this Googlers: If site content A == site content B, pagerank = -1.

Re: Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

#18

Post by helph67 »

miguelazo wrote: post #9
more_corn wrote: post #4

Just switch search engines.

To what? I'm unaware of any decent alternatives, unfortunately. I have all my defaults set to DuckDuckGo, but as soon as I search anything remotely uncommon, I end up having to switch to Google (although at least you can block the ad results with Ublock Origin browser extension).

There are search engines that value your privacy. Qwant https://www.qwant.com/ Ecosia https://www.ecosia.org/ and Start Page https://www.startpage.com/

This page may also help... https://www.kylepiira.com/2020/02/07/which-search-engine-has...

Re: Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

#19

Post by tintor »

pupppet wrote: post #17

What really ticks me off are all these sites clearly scraping content from Stack Overflow that somehow end up near the top of the search results. How is there not an automated fix for this. Lemme help you out with this Googlers: If site content A == site content B, pagerank = -1.

Using that rule it would be very easy to derank any website.

Re: Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

#20

Post by autotune »

dylanowen wrote: post #13
bluepoint wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people here a few days ago recommended kagi, a paid service with a limited free option. I have been trying it and so far the results seem great!

Kagi has been amazing: verbatim mode that actually works, blocking sites you don't want to see, boosting sites you always want to prioritize, and lists of sites you can customize for specific searches.

Based off your recommendation and others, and looking at the site and it’s features, I am going to sign up for a month and give it a real try. I’ve been using google since the beginning and it feels time for a change.
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