CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by devoutsalsa » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:01 AM UTC

whyenot wrote: post #150

kccqzy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another problem of the entire SEO industry. Websites trust these SEO consultants and growth hackers more than they trust information from Google itself. Somehow, it becomes widely accepted that the best information on Google ranking is from those third parties but not Google.

I'm not sure it is so cut and dried. Who is more likely to give you accurate information on how to game Google's ranking: Google themselves, or an SEO firm. I suspect that Google has far less incentive to provide good information on this than an SEO firm would.

Google will give you advice on how to not be penalized by Google. They won’t give you advice on how to game the system in your favor.

The more Google helps you get ahead, the more you end up dominating the search results. The more you dominate the results, the more people will start thinking to come straight to you. The more people come straight to you, the more people never use Google. The less people use Google, the less revenue Google generates.

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

#162

Post by mantra2 » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:05 AM UTC

bagacrap wrote: post #146

notatoad wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it seems incredibly short-sighted to assume that just because these actions might possibly give you a small bump in SEO right now, they won't have long-term consequences. if CNET deletes all their old articles, they're making a situation where most links to CNET from other sites lead to error pages (or at least, pages with no relevant content on them) and even if that isn't currently a signal used by google, it could…

No doubt those links are redirected to the CNET homepage.

Isn’t mass redirecting 404s to the homepage problematic SEO-wise?

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

#163

Post by mminer237 » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:07 AM UTC

aliasxneo wrote: post #16

laweijfmvo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed some articles (and not just "Best XXX of 202Y" articles) that seem to always update their "Updated on" date which Google unhelpfully picks up and shows in search results leading me to think the page is much more recent than it is.

I've been curious about how they are doing this. It seems to be an increasing trend and is making the query mostly useless.

  Updated on

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

#164

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:08 AM UTC

demizer wrote: post #80

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #20

One of my favourite websites growing up: download.com

When download.com became infested with ad ware was a sad day. I used to visit that site a lot to see what cool software I could install. Thank the heavens for Linux for teaching me proper package management.

[deleted]

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

#165

Post by p1mrx » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:09 AM UTC

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #20

One of my favourite websites growing up: download.com

softseek.com was better, because everything had a screenshot. I would actually prefer this interface over modern app stores:

https://web.archive.org/web/19991013034959/http://softseek.c...

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

#166

Post by arvidkahl » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:13 AM UTC

SEO optimization is actively destroying the archives of blogs out there. Pruning articles to rank better is rewarded. Removing knowledge to "play the game" is a viable path to making money.

The saving grace here? The existence of the Wayback Machine. A non-profit by the Internet Archive that is severely underfunded. If you ever needed a reason to donate, this is probably it. And even then, the survival of this information depends on a singular platform. Digital historians of the future will have a tough job.

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

#167

Post by Animats » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

If you use a robots.txt file to put your site's archives off limits to Google, does Google obey that? Your own search box can still search them.

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

#168

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

This is a great example of the harms of AI.

Google presumably used AI to rank pages (it hasn’t been just PageRank for a while).

The AI has noticed people don’t engage with older content, so it deranks older content. It also deranks websites with lots of older content.

So websites pull their older content , which is an important form of historical memory.

Even if the AI isn’t actually doing this, people assume it is.

Because AIs aren’t rules based, we have to guess what it’s doing.

And we guess it’s deranking old sites.

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

#169

Post by not_kurt_godel » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:21 AM UTC

meragrin_ wrote: post #139

crazygringo wrote: post #7

Is there any evidence this would even work? Surely Google determines "fresh, relevant" content according to whatever has recently been published, which this doesn't change. If anything, doesn't Google consider sites with a long history of content with tons of inbound links as more authoritative and therefore higher-ranked? This baffles me. It baffles me why this would be successful SEO -- and assuming that it actuall…

> It baffles me why this would be successful SEO -- and assuming that it actually isn't, it baffles me why CNET thinks it would be. If the content deleted is garbage, why wouldn't it help? No clue on CNET's overall quality, but I don't have a favorable image of it. Just had a look at their main page and that did not do it any favors.

Because the remaining content is also garbage (probably even worse garbage gauging by the trends I observed before I started ignoring CNET altogether)

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

#170

Post by kristopolous » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 1:22 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #68

So 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 feel like they presume I'm a gullible person they need to protect who is just on the Internet for shopping and watching entertainment.

Wasn't the point of them tracking us so much to customize and cater our results? Why have they normalized everything to some focus group persona of Joe six-pack?

***

Let's try an experiment

Type in "Chicago ticket" which has at least 4 interpretations, a ticket to travel to Chicago, a citation received in Chicago, A ticket to see the musical Chicago and a ticket to see the rock band Chicago.

For me I get the Rock band, citation, baseball and mass transit ticket in that order.

I'm in Los Angeles, have never been to Chicago, don't watch sports, and don't listen to the rock band. Google should know this with my location, search and YouTube history but it apparently doesn't care. What do you get?