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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

#491

Post by codeflo »

jpk wrote: post #348
ajmurmann wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid that, as so often with any topic, the vast majority of users never or rarely uses the time filter and so everything gets optimized for the users to dumb to search properly.

In this case I'm not too keen on blaming users for this when the option is sorta buried in the current design. The Tools button isn't prominent, the current value of the time range option is completely hidden when it's on the default of "Any time", and the search query doesn't change if you alter the time range option. (And, to my knowledge, there's not a search query incantation for specifying the time range.) If th…

Or perhaps more likely: Giving users a more prominent way to filter by time didn’t improve ad clicks and was thus A/B tested out of the product.

Just like it was A/B tested that the best background color to contrast the ad area against the organic results’ #ffffff is #fffffe.

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

#492

Post by roody15 »

Google search is terrible these days. I find myself using other engines even yandex to find things these days. It has been in a decline now for at least the last 3-5 years.

All this SEO garbage may be responsible but I still think google could do a much better job.

Feels like Google is just over monetizing it’s search at this point and the quality of product is in a free fall.

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

#493

Post by wmeredith »

pohl wrote: post #484
dannysullivan wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been diligently working to improve the results through things like our helpful content system, and that work is continuing. You can read about some of it in a recent post here (and it also describes the Perspectives feature that's live on mobile): https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-perspectiv...

It's great that you responded to the question. Is there a reason you didn't answer it, though?

> Are the employees at Google working on Search aware of how bad search results have become in the past year or two?

I would assume they didn't answer this because the answer is either "No" because echo chamber or "Yes" but they don't want to say that publicly.

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

#494

Post by aaarrm »

roody15 wrote: post #492

Google search is terrible these days. I find myself using other engines even yandex to find things these days. It has been in a decline now for at least the last 3-5 years. All this SEO garbage may be responsible but I still think google could do a much better job. Feels like Google is just over monetizing it’s search at this point and the quality of product is in a free fall.

I saw someone mention kagi, a premium search engine, on here recently and I've been loving it. Hadn't heard of yandex, I'll give that one a try too.

Google definitely has an incentive to push content farms covered in Google ads to the top of its search engine, whereas a premium service's only incentive is to provide the best search engine possible.

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

#495

Post by micadep »

dannysullivan wrote: post #461
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).

Hi. So I'm the person at Google quoted in the article and also who shared about this myth here: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1689018769782476800 It's not that we discourage it. It's not something we recommend at all. Not our guidance. Not something we've had a help page about saying "do this" or "don't do this" because it's just not something we've felt (until now) that people would somehow think they sho…

What the Google algorithm encourage/discourage and what google blog or documentation encourage/discourage are COMPLETELY different things. Most people here are complaining about the former, and you keep responding about the latter.

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

#496

Post by dannysullivan »

pohl wrote: post #484
dannysullivan wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been diligently working to improve the results through things like our helpful content system, and that work is continuing. You can read about some of it in a recent post here (and it also describes the Perspectives feature that's live on mobile): https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-perspectiv...

It's great that you responded to the question. Is there a reason you didn't answer it, though?

"We've been diligently working to improve the results" was the response to the question of "Are the employees at Google working on Search aware of how bad search results have become in the past year or two?" I thought that was a clear response.

To be more explicit, yes, we're aware that there are complaints about the quality of search results. That's why we've been working in a variety of ways, as I indicated, to improve those.

We have continued to build our spam fighting systems, our core ranking systems, our systems to reward helpful content. We expanded our product reviews system to cover all types of reviews, as this explains: https://status.search.google.com/incidents/5XRfC46rorevFt8yN...

We regularly improve these systems, which we share about on this page: https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2Gw...

The work isn't stopping. You'll continue to see us revise these systems to address some of the concerns people have raised.

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

#497

Post by dannysullivan »

lampshades wrote: post #490
smoldesu wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take responsibility for the results of your actions like an adult. "your actions", give me a break. The parent commenter doesn't own Google, and you aren't forced to use the platform. Are people on this site really convinced that an L3 Google engineer can flick the "Fix Google" switch on the search engine?

You said L3 so I was curious. I looked up the guy's LinkedIn [0] and honestly an L3 engineer would have a lot more context about Google's search. Danny, what do you even do? [0] https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannysullivan/

I work for our search quality team, directly reporting to the head of that team, to help explain how search works to people outside Google and bring concerns and feedback back into team so we can look at ways to improve. I came to the position about six years ago after retiring from writing about search engines as a journalist, explaining how they work to people from 1996 onward.

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

#498

Post by Capricorn2481 »

smoldesu wrote: post #485
awiejtrailw wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook doesn't have guidance telling content creators to publish conspiracy theories, but their policies are willfully optimized to promote it. Take responsibility for the results of your actions like an adult.

> Take responsibility for the results of your actions like an adult. "your actions", give me a break. The parent commenter doesn't own Google, and you aren't forced to use the platform. Are people on this site really convinced that an L3 Google engineer can flick the "Fix Google" switch on the search engine?

> Are people on this site really convinced that an L3 Google engineer can flick the "Fix Google" switch on the search engine?

No, it's just when someone speaks on behalf of the company with the terms "we," they are typically addressed with "you." That doesn't mean we think they're the CEO. Are you unfamiliar with this concept? I can send you an SEO guide on it.

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

#499

Post by dannysullivan »

awiejtrailw wrote: post #475
dannysullivan wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello from Google! I work for our search ranking team. Sadly, we can't control publishers who do things that we do not advise and do not recommend. We have no guidance telling publishers to get rid of "old" content. That's not something we've said. I shared this week that it is not something we recommend: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1689018769782476800 This also documents the many times over the years we…

Facebook doesn't have guidance telling content creators to publish conspiracy theories, but their policies are willfully optimized to promote it. Take responsibility for the results of your actions like an adult.

We don't have a policy or any guidance saying to remove old content. That said, we absolutely recognize a responsibility to help creators understand how to succeed and what not to do in terms of Google Search. That's why we publish lots of information about this (none of which says "old content is bad." A good place to review the information we provide is from our Search Essentials page: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials

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

#500

Post by dannysullivan »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #479
dannysullivan wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has demonstrated getting rid of "old" content somehow makes the rest of the site "fresh" and therefore ranks better. What's likely the case is that some people have updated content to make it more useful -- more up-to-date -- and the content being more helpful might, in turn, perform better. That's a much different thing that "if you have a lot of old content, the entire site is somehow old." And if you read t…

But there's the rub, you're not making content more helpful. You're making it longer and more useless so we have to scroll down more so Google can rake in more ads. The fact that you're calling it more "helpful" is insidious. That's why garbage SEO sites are king on the internet right now. It's the same thing you guys do with Youtube, where you decreased monetization for videos under a certain length. Now every conte…

This is our guidance about how people should see themselves to create helpful content to succeed in Google Search: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creat...

That includes self-assessment questions, including this:

"Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't.)"

That's not telling people to write longer. Our systems are not designed to reward that. And we'll keep working to improve them.

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