I feel like the internet is a bust at this point - I find it all quite depressing - which is kind of silly I know.
CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
411–420 of 592 posts
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you notice that nowadays a lot of websites have a lot of uninteresting drivel giving a "background" to whatever the thing was you were searching for before you get to read (hopefully) the thing you were searching for? People discovered that Google measures not only how much time you stay on a webpage but also how much you scroll to define how interesting a website is. So now every crappy "tech tips" website that…
> Did you notice that nowadays a lot of websites have a lot of uninteresting drivel giving a "background" to whatever the thing was you were searching for before you get to read (hopefully) the thing you were searching for? I know you came here looking for a recipe for boiled water, but first here's my thesis on the history and cultural significance of warm liquids.
Also you might want look into beer as a replacement for water, or mineral oil
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#413Google also might be at fault for making images on web lower quality. Several years ago, Google had announced that page load speed will affect the ranking. Google's tool, PageSpeed Insights gave recommendations on improving load speed. But it also recommended to lower quality of JPEG images to the level where artifacts would be visible. So instead of proper manual testing (using eyes, not a mathematical formula) on a…
Yes, this is made much worse by Google's "smartphone" crawler on pagespeed insights being an emulated very low end Moto G phone (10 years old?), downclocked to 25% of original (very slow) CPU speed, with a network that maxes out at 1mbit/sec or so, with 150ms latency added.
Makes it incredibly difficult to have nice imagery above the fold at least.
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#414They’re simply wrong in their theory of the case here. My guess is they will look back on this experiment in a year and regret it. Having older, highly linked content on a site is every SEO’s dream.
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#415Earlier 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
I could imagine CNET‘s SEO team got an average rank goal instead of absolute SEO traffic. So by removing low ranked old pages the avg position of their search results goes closer to the top even though total traffic sinks. I‘ve seen stuff like this happen at my own company as well, where a team‘s KPIs are designed such that they‘ll ruin absolute numbers in order to achieve their relative KPI goals, like getting an in…
This is exactly how Red Ventures runs their companies. Make that chart on the wall tv go up, get promotion.
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That only says that Google discourages such actions Nope. It says that Google does not ding you for old content. "Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn't like "old" content? That's not a thing!"
Maybe not related to the age of the content but more content can definitely penalize you. I recently added a sitemap to my site, which increased the amount of indexed pages, but it caused a massive drop in search traffic (from 500 clicks/day to 10 clicks/day). I tried deleting the sitemap, but it didn't help unfortunately.
Ye. I am flabbergasted by people that are gaslighting people into not being "superstitious" about Google's ranking.
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#417So 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
Never has your username been so accurate as to who you are.
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you notice that nowadays a lot of websites have a lot of uninteresting drivel giving a "background" to whatever the thing was you were searching for before you get to read (hopefully) the thing you were searching for? People discovered that Google measures not only how much time you stay on a webpage but also how much you scroll to define how interesting a website is. So now every crappy "tech tips" website that…
> Did you notice that nowadays a lot of websites have a lot of uninteresting drivel giving a "background" to whatever the thing was you were searching for before you get to read (hopefully) the thing you were searching for? I know you came here looking for a recipe for boiled water, but first here's my thesis on the history and cultural significance of warm liquids.
It’s interesting that water is often boiled in metal pots. There are several kinds of metal pots. Aluminum, stainless steel, and copper are often used for pots to boil water in.
Water boils in pots with different metals because only temperature matters for boiling water. If the water is 100c at sea level, it will boil.
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure they can, e.g. on-time delivery (or even better shipments missing the promised delivery date) is a ratio. Or inventory turn rates, there you actually want people to attack the denominator. Generaly speaking, an easy solution is to attach another target to either the nominator or denominator, a target that requires people to move that in value in acertqin direction. That might even be a different team thanthe one…
> Sure they can, e.g. on-time delivery (or even better shipments missing the promised delivery date) is a ratio. Or inventory turn rates, there you actually want people to attack the denominator. These are good in that they’re directly aligned with business outcomes but you still need sensible judgement in the loop. For example, say there’s an ice storm or heat wave which affects delivery times for a large region – y…
Selling something in one quarter, with the understanding that the customer returns it the next, is also clean cut accounting fraud.
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
#420So 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?
An article about reduced quality was pretty popular on HN a few years ago, that Google results looks like ads. But I believe we have hit a new low recently. Perhaps that is true for the overall quality of publications on the net. The amount or either approved news sites without significant content or outright click farms is immense. Even for topics that should net results. A news site filter would already help a lot, but even then the search seems to only react on buzzwords. Sometimes even terms you didn't search at all that were often associated with said buzzwords.