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Google Search Is Dying (2022)

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Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#161

Post by bsenftner »

franze wrote: post #48

In the German market for any product related query where you want a product comparison or test, you get results from 2 companies, which are in the business to place multiple very well SEO optimized pages on popular high quality websites (mostly newspapers). i.e.: https://www.welt.de/vergleich/stabstaubsauger/ https://www.krone.at/vergleich/staubsauger-test/ https://www.stern.de/vergleich/staubsauger/ These pages are…

And the number of ordinary people that try to gas light me for stating that Google has failed in their most basic mission. It's been years, and unless you work in tech or marketing, you're apparently obvious to the situation, and still think of Google as one may have during the 90's.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#162

Post by iamshs »

I am a Sikh, I need to clarify some of my concepts, look for meanings etc and nearly all the search terms are polluted by Hindu Nationalist and Islamist Dawah guys. There were websites started early on, which are now abandoned and hence don't score high. It is such a mess honestly using internet being a minority.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#163

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

Marketing and the ad industry ruin everything they touch.

You throw away most of your mail because of them, both physical and the e variety. You don't answer your phone because of them. They abused popups so badly they were basically removed from the standard. Adblockers are such a necessity for making anything on the web usable that they'd be built in if it weren't for the fact that Chrome is made by a company that sells ad space.

And of course they ruined search too. And it won't be fixed because Google itself is part of the problem, not the solution.

And if you work for them, you're helping make the world a worse place. Please stop. I'm not going to go as far as Hicks and say you should kill yourself, but you should quit your job and try your hand at improving the world instead.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#164

Post by fnord123 »

mmcgaha wrote: post #150
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…

Maybe I am wrong about this, and maybe the SEO junk sites would find a way to evolve, but what I really want from google is a plonk button so I can have a personal kill file for sites that I never want to see again.

Google allowing the blacklisting of sites with lots of ads on them and using google analytics?

They have enough information when yiu clock back and select a different result. And this hasnt killed SEO spam.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#165

Post by fnord123 »

j_crick wrote: post #130
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.

I haven't used Google in ages. Do they convert stupid recipes using volume for flour to use mass?

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#166

Post by parasubvert »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #145
moffkalast wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What makes you think that the niche subreddits aren't also full of marketing firms, bots, and upvote networks? With very few exceptions, they are.

They also have an okay s:n ratio in my experience, as the mod team can work the experience. Like for example, q&a type threads tend to be useful. There are folks promoting things but it’s obvious when they are.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#167

Post by dgb23 »

owisd wrote: post #73
Gigachad wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally anything google values will be abused and ruin the internet. If they valued shortness then everything would be trimmed to bullet points removing useful info. The problem is really not that google is doing a bad job, it’s that the incentives to get views on pages ruins the internet.

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.

I use search engines for two reasons:

- to gather compressed information quickly

- to navigate the web

The first point is best served by sources that I like and trust, often authoritative to some degree. If they already have a good search (like MDN or Wikipedia) I will often use that directly or go via DDG: !mdn keyords..., !wiki keywords... If not, I type the name of the website as a keyword in front (like reddit...)

The second is really more about finding specific types of websites. For example John Smith's blog that I don't remember etc.

What I'm saying is that to fix the web, we need more sites that can act as the first point above. Whether they are wikis or not is more of a practical consideration. The point is that they don't suck and that there's not enough of them IMO.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#168

Post by wslh »

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…

Limit your search to Reddit, HN and/or Stack Exchange!

I really loved the first paragraph of the article about Reddit: "Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit". I want to add this that just happened at my company, that shows really bad execution on the Reddit side. Bad as if the current Reddit management is surfing tiny waves in some paradise.

Our company tried to use Reddit Ads for years. We are not US based and there was problems using every credit or debit card. The ones that work everywhere and. obviously, in Google Adwords.

We retried a few months ago and it worked but our Reddit ads were not approved because they were in the crypto space where indeed we are in the security auditing and research side and also work for Web3 projects.

Then, they assigned a higher level Reddit contact, they gave us several forms to fill to show that we were not in the wrong Web3 side. We completed every form over several weeks, until they say they don't have an account manager for our account. At this point I don't know if the right thing is to talk to the CXO level directly. Yes, Reddit management doesn't understand their own business and most probably loosing a lot of money.

BTW: I specifically ranted about ways of challenging Google back in 2013 in the same vein [1].

[1] http://blog.databigbang.com/letters-from-the-future-challeng...

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#169

Post by londons_explore »

Whenever you are thinking Google is dying, please instead consider what an ideal page of search results would look like...

When you search for "2012 honda civic brake hose burst pressure psi", which pages exactly would you wish were at the top...?

Typically, I find that when google search fails me, it's because the content I'm looking for actually doesn't exist. I'm seeing SEO spam simply because nobody has written a detailed blog post about the exact topic I'm after.

The problem isn't Google, the problem is the whole internet (or at least the part not behind a login wall)

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#170

Post by worrycue »

michaelt wrote: post #103
greyman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense will it kill social media?

The bit of social media people use to talk to their IRL friends and family will be fine. But the bit of social media where people are listening to celebrities, getting their news, sharing memes, discussing common interests? It might get flooded with bots so convincing as to be indistinguishable from normal users.

So Facebook is the one most likely to survive. Reddit, Twitter, Hacker News, ... etc. soon to be flooded with LLM generated spam.
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