More content by people, for people in Search • Hacker News Board

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#111

Post by Ensorceled » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:18 AM UTC

firasd wrote: post #32

I'm not sure this whole drive towards 'original content' makes sense. It encourages people to make long rambling pages that don't get to the point In fact it seems like Google worked better when wikipedia was almost always the first result on various topics What I mean by rambling is if you type something like "types of oranges" and suddenly land on a page where some dude is clearly just filling up paragraphs for goo…

The first headline is "Better ranking of original, quality content"

The update literally says they are working to get rid of the type of useless content you are talking about.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#112

Post by NoMAD76 » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:19 AM UTC

nextaccountic wrote: post #65

null_object wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another poster has already suggested `uBlacklist` so I won't waste bandwidth by repeating the link, but I want to underline the utility of this extension, because it's transformed my experience of using Google search for code problems. Before using this, I was finding the first page of my search results were overwhelmed with StackOverflow-scrapers, which returned SO answers reformatted into some sort of garbage and u…

Could you share the url list?

Also you can use this for uBlock https://letsblock.it

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#113

Post by bluecalm » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

yrro wrote: post #34

nixcraft wrote: post #23

>Better ranking of original, quality content Hah. Just another day, someone sent me this link[1] which took images and text from my page[2] for the Google query "linux check disk space". Here is the thing my page doesn't even appear on Google. The ripped page points to the source[2] and has a link back to the original images. These scammers know how to game Google with their AI-driven sites, and they adopt it faster…

My Google experience would be improved immeasurably if there was a way for me to block domains after I decide I never want to see them in my search results again.

Letting you blacklist a site is one thing. They could improve upon it by letting people downvote/upvote pages and then using their extensive information vault to decide who is somewhat reputable or just similar to you.

I mean, I am 40 years old programmer/entrepreneur interested in sports and traditional board and card games. I like nice restaurants and hotels and even sometimes write Google reviews on them. I have my Gmail account since the beginning and I am paying YouTube and Google services customer. I am using Google phones since the Nexus. Google knows who I am, what I like, where I visit. It's pretty good at estimating revenue of my company. What about using the info for something useful for once and just show me pages people like me liked and don't show me pages people like me think are spam/scam? Please?

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#114

Post by ape4 » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

yrro wrote: post #34

nixcraft wrote: post #23

>Better ranking of original, quality content Hah. Just another day, someone sent me this link[1] which took images and text from my page[2] for the Google query "linux check disk space". Here is the thing my page doesn't even appear on Google. The ripped page points to the source[2] and has a link back to the original images. These scammers know how to game Google with their AI-driven sites, and they adopt it faster…

My Google experience would be improved immeasurably if there was a way for me to block domains after I decide I never want to see them in my search results again.

Of course, not the same but the Google News thing on Android lets you say you're not interested in this suggestion or don't show me this news source again.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#115

Post by pyb » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:23 AM UTC

xthestreams wrote: post #36

nixcraft wrote: post #23

>Better ranking of original, quality content Hah. Just another day, someone sent me this link[1] which took images and text from my page[2] for the Google query "linux check disk space". Here is the thing my page doesn't even appear on Google. The ripped page points to the source[2] and has a link back to the original images. These scammers know how to game Google with their AI-driven sites, and they adopt it faster…

cnr.it is a domain which belongs to the Italian Research Council, and that subdomain seems to be a blog by the Institute of Microelectronics and Microsystems. These are not scammers, it's probably an amateur researcher which published that information in a blog which is usually read by no-one. Probably it wasn't even meant to be public. But because of the prestige of the domain, it becomes first in relevant searches.…

Still, it appears someone at CNR copy-pasted someone else's blog and published it as their own.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#116

Post by Ensorceled » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:24 AM UTC

I'm cynical Google will be able to truly fix this or even want to.

I think Google is part of a cartel; their search funnels people to sites that run ads that often are part of the Google network. Yes, they make a ton from search advertising but also a ton from the greater network.

This is really the Mob boss cracking down on underlings who have gone over the line and are collecting too much protection money or are cutting the "goods".

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#117

Post by gregw134 » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #42

akdor1154 wrote: post #29

Cool, so will the relevant wiki page, which is almost certainly both the most linked to and most desired page for almost all "thing" searches, go back to being result #1 instead of buried under content farms, copyspam, and Medium trash?

Wikipedia doesn't run AdSense. Content farms run AdSense. Google algo updates have revenue as one of the core metrics.

This is just completely untrue.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#118

Post by yunohn » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

Andys wrote: post #24

yunohn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn’t write recipes, dedicated and passionate cooks write blogs with recipes in them. I guarantee you that none of them are aiming to provide just a grocery list or instructions, they definitely enjoy writing their story as well. They’re building their own cookbook essentially, not a bunch of lists.

I am sorry, but I believe you are mistaken. Recipe sharing worked one way for all of history until it became profitable to game the search engines by adding story-like content.

Could you source anything that proves this? I’ve always seen personalised stories with recipes, save for barebones websites that are aggregators and not personal blogs. Maybe consider food writing the same as technical writing? Nobody wants to read a dev blog with just snippets of code, they want the story too!

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#119

Post by gsatic » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #95

>> We know people don’t find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers. So... Back when "SEO" was new, I would read the Matt Cutts blog. He was head of "anti-spam." I remember thinking back then that anti-spam was an ignorant frame. Once Google gained importance, websites started trying to improve their rankings. That might mean migrating from Flash to HTML. It migh…

They lost control long long ago. It's basically a Jurassic Park story at this stage.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#120

Post by yunohn » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #22

yunohn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn’t write recipes, dedicated and passionate cooks write blogs with recipes in them. I guarantee you that none of them are aiming to provide just a grocery list or instructions, they definitely enjoy writing their story as well. They’re building their own cookbook essentially, not a bunch of lists.

Or, more likely, they are just SEO optimising by providing a lot of prose (which Google has historically prioritised in search rankings) - the same way as all those AI-generated article summaries on the astroturfing sites

How do you propose anyone (Google or humans) differentiate between 500 mostly-similar recipes for brownies? I think HNers look at food blogs with a very depressing robotic expectation.