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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

#121

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

Espionage724 wrote: post #4

I haven't visited a CNET page in years and didn't know they were even still relevant :p The times I have visited CNET pages in the past was to find specific information. If such information happens to be in deleted articles, that would reduce my interactions with CNET in the future. I think they should archive the old articles or even offload them to Wayback willingly, but it's possible some of the articles they're p…

> I haven't visited a CNET page in years and didn't know they were even still relevant :p

I'm not sure that CNet is relevant. I see their headlines regularly because they're a panel on an aggregate I visit. Most of what they publish is on a level with bot-built and affiliate pages.

We just had a long run of "Best internet providers in [US city]" as if people who live there could choose more than one. Between those will be Get This Deal On HP InkJet Printers and Best Back To School VPN Deals 2023 that compares 10 different Kape offerings.

If there is a point to cnet's existence, I truly don't see it.

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

#122

Post by userbinator »

Newer is not always better, especially when you're looking for information on old things, but I suspect there are vested interests who don't want us to remember how much better things were in the past, so they can continue to espouse their illusion of "progress", and this "cleaning up" of old information is contributing to that goal.

Archive.org deserves all the support it needs. If only the Wayback Machine was actually indexed and searchable too...

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

#123

Post by bagacrap »

farnarkle wrote: post #111
bagacrap wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

So whose word do we have to go on that this is beneficial, besides anonymous "SEO experts" and CNET leadership (those paragons of journalistic savvy)?

Perhaps what CNET really means is that they're deleting old low quality content with high bounce rates. After all, the best SEO is actually having the thing users want.

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

#124

Post by xdennis »

loandbehold wrote: post #9

That's what I moved to ChatGPT4 for most of my info queries. Google is badly compromised by SEO. Plus ChatGPT4 gives answer right away within having to go through multiple results and search within each page for specific line I need.

I tried using ChatGPT as a search engine, but it's too slow. With DuckDuckGo/Google you can just go to the domain, type, enter and you have your answer. I haven't used it in a few months, but with ChatGPT you have to log in, pass various screenings, hope it's now down, and then finally get to where you can type.

With a regular search engine you've already found your answer by that time.

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

#125

Post by ghaff »

cout wrote: post #106
ghaff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article isn't super-clear about what's happening and, for most purposes, just dumping stuff on the Wayback Machine is probably not that different from deleting it even if the bits are still "somewhere." A few years back I copied any of my CNET stuff I cared about to my own site and, in general, that's a strategy I've followed with a number of sites as I don't expect anything to continue to be hosted or at least b…

I kinda wish there were some way to store every page I ever visit automatically and index it locally for easy search. Then when I want to look up e.g. the guy who had the popular liquid oxygen fire website back in the 90s it would be easy. But I also fear it would be used against me somehow too.

You can pay for pinboard.in and it does something along the lines of what you're looking for.

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

#126

Post by rany_ »

amatecha wrote: post #112
npunt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It isn't, I really wish that instead of wiping DECADES of history; it only applies to content that was archived from the day of the domain's registration. I think this is slightly more reasonable, but I imagine they simply don't have access to such data.

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

#127

Post by dylan604 »

cout wrote: post #106
ghaff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article isn't super-clear about what's happening and, for most purposes, just dumping stuff on the Wayback Machine is probably not that different from deleting it even if the bits are still "somewhere." A few years back I copied any of my CNET stuff I cared about to my own site and, in general, that's a strategy I've followed with a number of sites as I don't expect anything to continue to be hosted or at least b…

I kinda wish there were some way to store every page I ever visit automatically and index it locally for easy search. Then when I want to look up e.g. the guy who had the popular liquid oxygen fire website back in the 90s it would be easy. But I also fear it would be used against me somehow too.

The things people can do with your browser history of just URLs makes me happy that the actual content on said pages are NOT stored locally.

Otherwise, there is the save page option in your browser if you do want to keep a local copy.

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

#128

Post by dylan604 »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #76
jzb wrote: post #29

This is some bullshit. It’s bad enough that a lot of sites with content going back 10-20 years have linkrot or have simply gone offline. But I am at a loss for words that they’re disappearing content on purpose just for SEO rankings. If this is what online publishing has come to we have seriously screwed up.

The real reason: hiding it from ai scrapers?

something about bathwater and babies comes to mind

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

#129

Post by agrajag »

bagacrap wrote: post #123
farnarkle wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

So whose word do we have to go on that this is beneficial, besides anonymous "SEO experts" and CNET leadership (those paragons of journalistic savvy)? Perhaps what CNET really means is that they're deleting old low quality content with high bounce rates. After all, the best SEO is actually having the thing users want.

Google actually describes an entirely plausible mechanism of action here at [1]. old content slows down site crawling, which can cause new content to not be refreshed as often.

Sure, one page doesn’t matter, but thousands will.

[1] https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1689068723657904129...

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

#130

Post by dereg »

mxkopy wrote: post #96
zx8080 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I suspect that the revenue increases have more to do with the addition of new users in developing markets rather than actual value added. Once all potential users have been reached, Google will have to actually improve their product.

No such suspicion is necessary. Google's revenue from the United States has only increased as a share of its total revenue over the past decade. https://abc.xyz/assets/4c/c7/d619b323f5bba689be986d716a61/34...
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