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New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

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Re: New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

#91

Post by Nullabillity »

iamthepieman wrote: post #88
Nullabillity wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer not having my full search history linked to my personal info and payment details, but that's just me.

The privacy, spam, signal to noise, and user experience equation is different for everyone. For me it's a good tradeoff since they (say) don't store your history and the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet.

> they (say) don't store your history

They don't show your history.

> the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet.

I can take measures to prevent Google from linking together a full profile. It sucks that it's necessary, but once you log in it's effectively game over. And your payment info has enough stable identifiers that it's trivial to link you to pretty much anything else you've paid for.

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The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation.

Re: New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

#92

Post by iamthepieman »

Nullabillity wrote: post #91
iamthepieman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy, spam, signal to noise, and user experience equation is different for everyone. For me it's a good tradeoff since they (say) don't store your history and the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet.

> they (say) don't store your history They don't show your history. > the ad profile Google builds on you is probably more damaging to your privacy than a photo of the entire contents of your wallet. I can take measures to prevent Google from linking together a full profile. It sucks that it's necessary, but once you log in it's effectively game over. And your payment info has enough stable identifiers that it's triv…

That's why I said it's an equation, a balance, if you will. Sounds like you are all the way over on one side. We need the Stallman's of the world but most people are not that committed to a single issue.

> The core misconception here seems to be the idea that there is such a thing as a honest for-profit corporation.

And I would say there's degrees. Even if all companies eventually slouch into a google-like organization, at least you can jump on the bandwagon until that happens and find another when it does. And maybe none of the wagons are headed to a strict privacy, user controlled data, and free-software utopia, but maybe not all of them are headed to Gomorrah.

Re: New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

#93

Post by mminer237 »

akasakahakada wrote: post #75
verve_rat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that hard to solve if you have a "I like this / I hate this" signal from the user. Unfortunately for Google, G+ was probably their best chance at something like that. Now they just have stuff like time on page to try and figure that out.

No I could just make another bot to rank myself higher.

Google already has to implement bot protection for its ads.

Re: New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

#94

Post by Kerbonut »

pkoird wrote: post #28

I would really love for Google to provide advanced search capabilities or filters to superusers who know EXACTLY what they are searching for. I wouldn't even mind paying for it tbh.

Google has been A/B testing filters. I had it for a single search before it was gone never to be found again.

Re: New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

#96

Post by andrewmcwatters »

I'm interested in entirely private, self-hosted web crawlers. The sort of instance you could set up on a $12/yr VPS to provide search results for small, specific portions of the web that you wouldn't get rich details from Google, Bing, et al. Personally curated search.

I don't know of anyone who does this well, unfortunately.

As much as I appreciate what Kagi is trying to do, I don't think I necessarily want a replacement for Google. Or if I did, it would have been Google from the 2000s.

I want something different and better.

Re: New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

#97

Post by nullhole »

FragrantRiver wrote: post #73
wackget wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just checked out Love and Lemons. Sorry but I can't say it impressed me at all. The vast majority of the page is blogspam garbage. Nobody needs a ten-paragraph introduction and an explanation of why you're using cocoa powder and vanilla in a brownie recipe. Interestingly the first result for "brownie recipe" for me is BBC Food which is about as close to no-BS as you'll find.

Your brownies are probably going to suck. Just because you can't be arsed to read more than two sentences about how to do something doesn't mean others can't.

It's 299 words (so close to a round number!) of worse-than-useless filler before the recipe. You get two amazon sponsored links and one blog plug for some author with that. There's also an interstitial you have to click through.

I can see why GP was not impressed.

Re: New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

#98

Post by pb7 »

nullhole wrote: post #97
FragrantRiver wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your brownies are probably going to suck. Just because you can't be arsed to read more than two sentences about how to do something doesn't mean others can't.

It's 299 words (so close to a round number!) of worse-than-useless filler before the recipe. You get two amazon sponsored links and one blog plug for some author with that. There's also an interstitial you have to click through. I can see why GP was not impressed.

The very first thing on the page is a "Jump to recipe" link. If you too are a victim of dwindling attention spans like the rest of us, you have the option to skip straight past the beautiful photos and background.

Re: New ways we're tackling spammy, low-quality content on Search

#100

Post by lupire »

minimaxir wrote: post #4

The post alludes to it, but one of the targets here is AI-generated content. > We’ve long had a policy against using automation to generate low-quality or unoriginal content at scale with the goal of manipulating search rankings. This policy was originally designed to address instances of content being generated at scale where it was clear that automation was involved. > Today, scaled content creation methods are mor…

Also, Google launches a tool to AI-generate web pages at scale. Maybe Search will be able to detect those Google generated pages.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4492468-google-paying-...

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