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Google rewrites many page titles

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Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#131

Post by skinkestek »

mdoms wrote: post #123
stickfigure wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how site owners habitually attempt to distort reality with tag stuffing and other bullshit metadata, what do you expect? Reality is not what is printed on the tin.

I'd expect Google to downrank sites that are trying to manipulate the system. Not rewrite them.

How could that work out? Low quality sites usually have more juicy ad spots?

More seriously: incentives are stacked against search quality these days. Poor results means more trips into ad laden wastelands, and more returns to the ad laden search results page.

Giving people the result up front and center would directly affect quarterly profit I am afraid.

At least this is the model that makes most sense to me.

The next most probably is machine learning is already out of control and the people who created it left.

Edit: wild speculation of course.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#132

Post by sjtindell »

travisgriggs wrote: post #107

I totally get this. Back in the day when I was a kid, we went to the local library and read about the world. When the librarians weren’t serving me by “checking out books” to me, they were busily putting new and improved titles on the books in receiving. /s Seriously. Google is starting to feel less like the librarian of the net (we index the world) and more like the Truman show: we craft your reality.

It’s the ads. The way Brin and Page phrased it in their 1998 paper, they considered ad-oriented search engines to be lower quality. They were going to be more academic. They thought that there was lots of user data to mine in search…for academic purposes. Then innovation #2 at the actual startup was the ad auctions and that was the beginning of the end, all the way back at the beginning.

I’ve recently read a lot about hedge funds, and it’s astounding how many scientists literally say, “I don’t think hedge funds add value to society, I wouldn’t work there.” And then the firm slides this check across the table, and they didn’t even realize a single check could have that many zeroes, and they join the firm and stay forever. That’s what happened with Google and all the rest.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#133

Post by gnfargbl »

travisgriggs wrote: post #107

I totally get this. Back in the day when I was a kid, we went to the local library and read about the world. When the librarians weren’t serving me by “checking out books” to me, they were busily putting new and improved titles on the books in receiving. /s Seriously. Google is starting to feel less like the librarian of the net (we index the world) and more like the Truman show: we craft your reality.

That's kind of the fundamental insight here though, isn't it? Carnegie developed his libraries as a philanthropic endeavor, with the aim of supporting meritocracy in society. Google developed their library with the aim of making a shit-ton of money from advertising.

Google never was a suitable candidate for the world's authoritative librarian. Unfortunately, we'll probably need another Carnegie to displace them.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#134

Post by ziml77 »

jtbayly wrote: post #110
karaterobot wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the title is spam, and the content is good (this is a big 'if'), the best solution would be to rewrite the title so that it's useful and keep the page at its original rank, based on the content. Ideally, Google would be able to handle all these different cases and just give me the best search results. Now, we all know that's increasingly less true, but in theory that's how it should work.

But “for 2022” is a guarantee that the content is bad if it hasn’t changed in 2022. And yet, I don’t see how Google can automate checking this. It’s possible to add a couple of sentences about how you’ve not seen anything to change your mind about last year’s recommendations. That may well be true. Or false. How can Google know? It just sees content that has changed. So it has been updated in 2022. The bigger issue i…

I hate how true your second paragraph is. Google should punish sites that change the date without updating the content, but all the SEO spam is just going to automate changing content when it changes the date. And then what does Google do? Figure out how to make an AI that can understand all the indexed content and accurately determine if it's truthful?

That seems fundamentally impossible without defining trusted sources. But then that means that you're trusting that Google's trusted sources are good. And if you do think they're good, then why not just check those sources directly?

The only answer I have is to find your own sources that you trust and go to them first.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#135

Post by shockeychap »

One think I don't see getting discussed in the pros and cons is the simple fact that you can't even tell what titles have been rewritten. Google gives no information in the search results to tell you what is original and what they've rewritten. This matches other trends like how it's become ever harder to discern sponsored ads from organic search results.

I used to love Google for how it presented relevant results and made it easy to discern sponsored ads. Today, I avoid Google products like the plague. (I can't escape all of them, but I'm about 90% off.)

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#136

Post by yucky »

time_to_smile wrote: post #115
yucky wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a user, I'm fine with Google counteracting this. Would you be fine with Google changing the work of all authors? Maybe "The Brothers Karamazov" doesn't get enough clicks and Google decides it needs a better title. Or "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" doesn't quite convey what Google thinks it should... How is that different?

To be fair, The Karamazov Brothers is arguably a more natural English translation.

Should Google adjust it then?

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#137

Post by travisgriggs »

sjtindell wrote: post #132
travisgriggs wrote: post #107

I totally get this. Back in the day when I was a kid, we went to the local library and read about the world. When the librarians weren’t serving me by “checking out books” to me, they were busily putting new and improved titles on the books in receiving. /s Seriously. Google is starting to feel less like the librarian of the net (we index the world) and more like the Truman show: we craft your reality.

It’s the ads. The way Brin and Page phrased it in their 1998 paper, they considered ad-oriented search engines to be lower quality. They were going to be more academic. They thought that there was lots of user data to mine in search…for academic purposes. Then innovation #2 at the actual startup was the ad auctions and that was the beginning of the end, all the way back at the beginning. I’ve recently read a lot abou…

Agreed. The industrialization of ad tech has been a loss for humanity. It’s a runaway mechanization at this point.

What I don’t understand, is why we don’t tax it. If an industry generates lots of wealth, but has a questionable impact on society, the “f(r)ee market” west’s response has usually been to throw a stiff vice tax on it. It doesn’t make the vice go away, but it puts a governor on its excess and redirects some of the spoils for projects which hopefully are net positive.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#138

Post by yardstick »

travisgriggs wrote: post #107

I totally get this. Back in the day when I was a kid, we went to the local library and read about the world. When the librarians weren’t serving me by “checking out books” to me, they were busily putting new and improved titles on the books in receiving. /s Seriously. Google is starting to feel less like the librarian of the net (we index the world) and more like the Truman show: we craft your reality.

There’s a grain of truth here, in a bit of a tangent: librarians classify all books using a system like Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress Classification.

While not adjusting titles, librarians do have some influence on how a book is classified and thus filed/organised within the library. Check out the wiki article on Dewey[1] for the various options for homosexuality, which has numbers for it including under areas including mental illness! Depending on the library systems leanings you may still find it there or the section for sexual disorders or hopefully in the sexual relations area. (Disclaimer: I just used this as an easy example because it’s on Wikipedia)

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#139

Post by b112 »

karaterobot wrote: post #92
fma wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google believes the site is being disingenuous by writing a click bait headline, then they should punish the site by decreasing their ranking, not reward it by keeping it high and rewriting a more fitting headline.

But if the title is spam, and the content is good (this is a big 'if'), the best solution would be to rewrite the title so that it's useful and keep the page at its original rank, based on the content. Ideally, Google would be able to handle all these different cases and just give me the best search results. Now, we all know that's increasingly less true, but in theory that's how it should work.

But if the title is spam, and the content is good

Then the content would not need to be spam, to be high ranking.

Not if google just cared about content quality.

So in this scenario, where only quality counts for rankings, all a spammy title shows, is the desire to bypass legitimate rankings.

Thus, it should be downranked.

Again, this was if Google legitimately wanted to rank good content high.

Re: Google rewrites many page titles

#140

Post by mhitza »

soco wrote: post #85
nerdponx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Google is going to try out "AI"-generated titles that are directly summarized from the page content by machine, treating the page title and headings as inputs to the model.

Next step, an AI to regenerate the contents according to what the AI thinks I should have said.

Problem solved WRT copyright issues relating to news articles. If the AI derived content (a la GitHub copilot) is deemed as original "unlicensed" content, no reason to force users to visit the website. (it's been a while since the news media and Google had their legal battles, and I'm unsure what the end resolution was then)
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