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Google Search Is Dying (2022)

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Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#121

Post by moffkalast »

pprotas wrote: post #53
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is one of the most astroturfed places on the internet, and there's an entire ecology of PR/marketing firms that focus exclusively on it. There's also a thriving market in "high karma" accounts, which can be bought for as little as $30. > Reddit also doesn't have "promoted" content / responses It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. And low-karma or new a…

> Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. Are you sure? How do you know this?

I think what they're trying to say is some subreddits auto-collapse comments from users with low karma and recent date of creation to combat bots. If reddit gives any more weight to high karma users I can tell you as one that it definitely doesn't seem noticeable at all. Right time and right place comments are always the ones that end up on top.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#122

Post by tazard »

yunohn wrote: post #105
owisd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that whatever ranking system google uses will just be gamed to the same extent. If google downgraded the rank of pages with lots of ads and trackers it would substantially reduce the incentive to game the system, the reason it won’t is because most of those pages are running Adsense so there’s every incentive for google to keep the status quo.

If you provide less monetisation for content creators, you end up with less content too. This is not as simple as you think…

Less content is fine when the issue is too much junk content. Content would then be created by enthusiasts instead of businesses

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#123

Post by input_sh »

Gigachad wrote: post #55
SquareWheel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. User karma isn't factored into the site's sorting algorithms. Post score is, and that influences karma, but not the other way around. edit: On reflection, you may have been referring to the ability to post, rather than the popularity of the post. In that case, the misunderstanding was mine.

It’s not part of the ranking algorithm, it’s part of the anti spam system. If you make a new account and comment, it’s almost never visible to anyone else. You have to warm up accounts with a few comments over a week before they start showing up.

An alternative: create an account, don't use it for a while, use it.

Mods essentially have two variables to work with: account age and karma. Some subs do set minimum karma (I've stumbled upon some that wouldn't accept below 2k karma), but most just go by account age to prevent banned users from going around the ban.

And a tip for spotting karma farmers: just go to one of those big subs that accept screenshots of tweets. If the screenshot has engagements/timestamp cropped, click on a profile. Like 8 times out of 10 it's gonna be an older account that never posted before reposting one of the older popular submissions.

EDIT: Here's an example that took me like 20s to find: https://www.reddit.com/user/DepartureSimples/

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#125

Post by Loic »

yunohn wrote: post #105
owisd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that whatever ranking system google uses will just be gamed to the same extent. If google downgraded the rank of pages with lots of ads and trackers it would substantially reduce the incentive to game the system, the reason it won’t is because most of those pages are running Adsense so there’s every incentive for google to keep the status quo.

If you provide less monetisation for content creators, you end up with less content too. This is not as simple as you think…

You end up with less trash/monetization content and more content from passionate people writing about what they love/like/do for the joy of sharing.

But this does not sustain the chocolate factory.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#126

Post by pjmlp »

pmlnr wrote: post #119
pjmlp wrote: post #110

Indeed, Altavista, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves would probably give better search results than Google as of today.

I upvoted this, but only because of nostalgia. I was there when Google started and it was lightyears ahead of the already gamed Altavista which relied on human ingenuity and meta tags.

Which kind of stresses the point how bad Google has become.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#127

Post by moffkalast »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #49
petesergeant wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit's system is terrible This doesn’t match my experience of reading Reddit

That's because you're just unaware of how astroturfed it is. I just headed over to one of the popular subreddits and randomly picked an account that posted a top meme https://www.reddit.com/user/esberat/submitted/ The account has 8 million post karma and every single post it submits to a subreddit ends up on the front page of Reddit... without fail. The account isn't a mod of any of those subs, but they're clearly us…

> I just headed over to one of the popular subreddits

That was your first mistake, the defaults are cesspools full of karma farming bots. Nobody goes to those for advice.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#128

Post by snowwrestler »

Not sure how you prove a search engine is dying by posting graphs showing search traffic going continuously up.

Reddit is a great source for a certain type of content. Google is a search engine for content. They are complementary… Reddit’s continued strength furthers Google’s relevance.

The only way Google can be hurt by Reddit is if Reddit blocks Google from indexing it (not likely).

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#129

Post by phreeza »

echelon wrote: post #61
kstenerud wrote: post #7

The worst is the SEO pages, especially for popular how-to topics. Every single first page result will be a page that has expanded what used to be said in bullet point form, into a 1500 word essay that you must now slog through in order to get the information you need. And this is by necessity, because Google values prose over bullet points. The majority of things that come up on search nowadays consist of computer-ge…

Even if Google had been good stewards, they failed to diversify. AI AdBlock is going to kill whatever is left of Google within the year. AI content spam is absolutely going to kill social media and search results, but AI adblock will be worse to Google's bottom line. It's coming, and it's going to be brutal.

Last I checked, non AI AdBlock already works pretty well, why would you need AI?

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#130

Post by j_crick »

kstenerud wrote: post #7

The worst is the SEO pages, especially for popular how-to topics. Every single first page result will be a page that has expanded what used to be said in bullet point form, into a 1500 word essay that you must now slog through in order to get the information you need. And this is by necessity, because Google values prose over bullet points. The majority of things that come up on search nowadays consist of computer-ge…

And the worst of SEO pages are cooking recipes, where you have to scroll down screens of badly written meaningless text before you actually get to ingredients list. At least Google still keeps indexing recipe microformats.
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