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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

#141

Post by renewiltord »

LordShredda wrote: post #33
sydbarrett74 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: 'Stories slated to be “deprecated” are archived using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and authors are alerted at least 10 days in advance, according to the memo.'

Offloading trash to an already strained organisation. are they donating any help or is it just taking advantage of charity?

I didn't know they were strained. Probably best to block them so they don't spend resources on unimportant things. You can find a few UA strings here https://udger.com/resources/ua-list/bot-detail?bot=archive.o... Ultimately, it looks like they do respect the `archive.org_bot` string so if you want to help the strained organization, probably best to block it as well.

You can also save them some space, it appears, by uploading a file on your website asking them not to retain it and then sending an email to them. See https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/128352

For now, I just blocked the bot, but when I have some time maybe I'll ask them to delete the data.

Hopefully, with a little community effort we can reduce the strain on them so they can spend their limited resources reasonably.

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

#142

Post by ReflectedImage »

crazygringo wrote: post #7

Is there any evidence this would even work? Surely Google determines "fresh, relevant" content according to whatever has recently been published, which this doesn't change. If anything, doesn't Google consider sites with a long history of content with tons of inbound links as more authoritative and therefore higher-ranked? This baffles me. It baffles me why this would be successful SEO -- and assuming that it actuall…

Several reasons why it works. First is the page rank algorithm will give the other pages on the site a higher score. Per the spec.

Second is there could be spam links pointing to old CNET articles that need to be wiped from CNETs site spam score.

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

#143

Post by chongli »

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?

I think the theory of Google's death is that they are "killing the golden goose." The idea is that they are killing off all the independent websites on the internet. That is, all the sites besides Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/NetFlix/Reddit/etc. that people access directly (either through an app or a bookmark) and which (barring Reddit) block GoogleBot anyway.

These are all the sites (like CNET) that Google indexes which are the entire reason to use search. They are having their rankings steadily eroded by an ever-rising tide of SEO spam. If they start dying off en masse and if LLMs emerge as a viable alternative for looking up information, we may see Google Search die along with them.

As for why their revenues are still increasing? It's because all the SEO spam sites out there run Google Ads. This is how we close the loop on the "killing the golden goose" theory. Google uses legitimate sites to make their search engine a viable product and at the same time directs traffic away from those legitimate sites towards SEO spam to generate revenue. It's a transformation from symbiosis/mutualism to parasitism.

Edit: I forgot to mention the last, and darkest, part of the theory. Many of these SEO spam sites engage in large-scale piracy by scraping all their content off legitimate sites. By allowing their ads to run on these sites, Google is essentially acting as an accessory to large-scale, criminal, commercial copyright infringement.

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

#144

Post by bagacrap »

88913527 wrote: post #135
kccqzy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another problem of the entire SEO industry. Websites trust these SEO consultants and growth hackers more than they trust information from Google itself. Somehow, it becomes widely accepted that the best information on Google ranking is from those third parties but not Google.

It could be premature to place fault with the SEO industry. Think about the incentives: Google puts articles out, but an SEO specialist might have empirical knowledge from working for a various number of web properties. It's not that I wouldn't trust Google's articles, but specialists might have discovered undocumented methods for giving a boost.

They certainly want you to believe that.

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

#145

Post by goodbyesf »

jprd wrote: post #2

Bad. Antithetical to both Google's original ideals and the early 'netzien goals. Google's deteriorating performance shouldn't result in deleting valuable historical viewpoints, journalistic trends and research material just to raise your newly AI-generated sh1t to the top of the trash fire.

> Bad. Antithetical to both Google's original ideals and the early 'netzien goals.

At this point, we should all realize that every ideal and slogan spouted by tech companies is just marketing. We were just too young and naive to know any better. 'Don't be evil'. In hindsight, that should have set off alarm bells.

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

#146

Post by bagacrap »

notatoad wrote: post #138
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).

it seems incredibly short-sighted to assume that just because these actions might possibly give you a small bump in SEO right now, they won't have long-term consequences. if CNET deletes all their old articles, they're making a situation where most links to CNET from other sites lead to error pages (or at least, pages with no relevant content on them) and even if that isn't currently a signal used by google, it could…

No doubt those links are redirected to the CNET homepage.

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

#147

Post by swyx »

robertkeizer wrote: post #86

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

what is it like to work there? can you describe what archive does on a day to day basis? what do you need most apart from I guess donations?

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

#149

Post by 1letterunixname »

The gamification of ranking and clickbait by encouraging digital amnesia and bitrot seems both absurd and evil. New content isn't always good or better when specific content was desired.

0. Donate to internet archive now

1. Website operators should aim to not hide content or download artifacts behind JS with embedded absolute URIs or authenticated APIs.

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

#150

Post by whyenot »

kccqzy wrote: post #108
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

This is another problem of the entire SEO industry. Websites trust these SEO consultants and growth hackers more than they trust information from Google itself. Somehow, it becomes widely accepted that the best information on Google ranking is from those third parties but not Google.

I'm not sure it is so cut and dried. Who is more likely to give you accurate information on how to game Google's ranking: Google themselves, or an SEO firm. I suspect that Google has far less incentive to provide good information on this than an SEO firm would.
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