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CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

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Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#111

Post by farnarkle »

bagacrap wrote: post #98
pessimizer wrote: post #68

So google's shitty search now economically incentivizes sites to destroy information. Can there be any doubt that Google destroyed the old internet by becoming a bad search engine? Could their exclusion of most of the web be considered punishment for being sites being so old and stable that they don't rely on Google for ad revenue?

I'll just assume you neglected to read TFA, because if you had, you would have discovered that it links to an official Google source that states CNET shouldn't be doing this.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1689018769782476800

That only says that Google discourages such actions, not that such actions are not beneficial to SEO ranking (which is equal to the aforementioned economic incentive in this case).

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#112

Post by amatecha »

npunt wrote: post #102
robertkeizer wrote: post #86

This is why I work at archive.org. Is it perfect? No. Does it have value to society? Absolutely.

I adore archive.org. I'm worried though it is becoming somewhat of a load bearing element of civilization, given the importance of shared and accurate history. We need redundancy. ~~I'm also worried about the deletion of old pages on archive because new owners of a domain update the robots.txt file to disallow it, which I've heard wipes the entire archive.org history of that domain. I hope that gets addressed.~~ Edit…

Yeah wait, what? I hope that's incorrect. Updating robots.txt to disallow should only omit content from that point onward... It shouldn't be retroactive. What if there's a new owner of a respective domain, for example?

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#114

Post by nicechianti »

zx8080 wrote: post #90
demizer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is destroying the internet is a good way to put it. AD dollars are their only priority. I hope Google dies because of it.

What a fantasy. It does not show any sign of profit decrease. How would a company die with $279.8B revenue, steadily increasing yearly?

[dead]

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#115

Post by xdennis »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #20

One of my favourite websites growing up: download.com

I just went to http://download.com . On the frontpage they have demos for NFS Underground 2, Vice City and Age of Empires II. It's like I've entered a time warp. So many memories!

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#116

Post by Izkata »

modeless wrote: post #65
slater wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or mayhap Google et al could realize and understand that having old articles in archive shouldn't penalize your ranking.

Who says this is actually improving their ranking? SEO is smoke and mirrors. I wouldn't be surprised if this whole exercise was actually counterproductive for them, and they just don't realize it.

Yeah, didn't old google's PageRank penalize broken links?

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#117

Post by rdiddly »

This is like the flea on the dog's tail, wagging the tail and dog. I don't know how many more levels of meta we can handle.

Also, if you just dump all that content on archive.org, you're kind of just reaching into archive.org's wallet, pulling out dollar bills, and giving them to Google, whose ostensible goal was to index and make available all the world's information. I feel like that's enough irony and internet for today.

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#119

Post by 101008 »

guy98238710 wrote: post #35
pavel_lishin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck, sometimes that answer is even correct!

I have been recently forking off a subproject from Git repo. After spending a lot of time messing around with it and getting into a lot of unforeseen trouble, I finally asked ChatGPT how to do it and of course ChatGPT knew the correct answer all along. I felt like an idiot. Now I always ask ChatGPT first. These LLMs are way smarter than you would think. GPT4 with WolframAlpha plugin even gave me enough information to…

So you implemented a poly approx fror a Gaussian function without understanding what you were doing (implying that if you wanted to do it yourself it would take hours of studying).

Good luck when you need to update it and adjust it - this is the equivalent than copying/pasting a function from Stack Overflow.

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#120

Post by joshuahaglund »

pessimizer wrote: post #68

So google's shitty search now economically incentivizes sites to destroy information. Can there be any doubt that Google destroyed the old internet by becoming a bad search engine? Could their exclusion of most of the web be considered punishment for being sites being so old and stable that they don't rely on Google for ad revenue?

Aren't they both doing the economically incentivized thing tho? Are you saying maybe some things should be beyond economic incentives?
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