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The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

alexskra.com

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Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#181

Post by boomlinde »

the_biot wrote: post #134

For all that Google search has been utterly crap for going on a decade now, I have to admit part of the reason is that they get targetted relentlessly by SEO spam operations like this. I like DuckDuckGo for now, but I imagine as they get bigger they're going to be a target for these kinds of spam just the same.

> they get targetted relentlessly by SEO spam operations like this.

Why, though? There is an arbitrary ranking system that seems increasingly independent of what I actually searched for. Google had created a game where the winner isn't necessarily relevant or at all useful. It's inevitable that spammers will play that game.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#182

Post by TeMPOraL »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #171

I'm surprised to find out people actually return to the search results page using the back button. Whenever I am serious enough (enough to keep looking after the first link I click does not satisfy me) about finding something I always Middle-Click or Ctrl+Click the links to open them in new tabs.

Artefact of mobile use perhaps? "Open in new tab" is slightly harder on a phone or on a tablet.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#183

Post by matsemann »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #168

For every country/market somebody should better make a search engine to compete with Google. Now this is a chance for Norway.

Used to have https://www.kvasir.no/ but now it's just a skinned Google.

sesam.no (not valid domain anymore) was an engine made by some a big Norwegian company back in 2005 or so.

Norway used to be big in search. FAST got acquired by MS back in 2008.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#185

Post by studentrob »

trangus_1985 wrote: post #153
FeepingCreature wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like the sort of thing that should require a judge's order.

Cloudflare is not a public institution. It troubles me that they get to define, draw, and then maintain that line. However, I do agree - privacy unveiling like that should require a judge's order.

Yes, it is akin to revealing the IP of a user on a social media site.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#186

Post by sleepyhead »

Crazyontap wrote: post #92

Can somebody else who is in Norway can confirm this? It could be simply be a malware injecting this. Would be great to eliminate this possibility

It's not showing for the example search (Rema 1000) for me right now, but I did a search yesterday, about a person/company and the result was news related content, and ended up with a site with the same image. However I can't find havfruen (mermaid) in my browser history so they must use other domains as well.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#187

Post by studentrob »

avian wrote: post #177
eru wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might take that stance, to avoid liability and complication. At the moment, they have a very clear rule. If they stop providing services to obvious spammers, they will create lots of grey areas, and they will also implicitly make a judgement that the client they still serve are _good_ in some way, and an enterprising lawyer or muckraker might exploit that.

How is that different from a hosting provider that has to address legal complaints regarding spam, copyright infringement, etc. on their servers? Just like a hosting provider, they specifically have a relationship with the website owner to provide the reverse proxy service. It's not like they can say "we don't know who or how our service is being used". It seems to me that if they want to be in this business they hav…

Presumably if illegal content is not taken down by the customer then the host cancels the service, right? Otherwise the host risks liability. That's different from revealing the IP of a customer which requires a court order.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#188

Post by stavros »

trangus_1985 wrote: post #153
FeepingCreature wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like the sort of thing that should require a judge's order.

Cloudflare is not a public institution. It troubles me that they get to define, draw, and then maintain that line. However, I do agree - privacy unveiling like that should require a judge's order.

But they don't, that's explicitly their stance. There is no line. They host everyone equally. To do the opposite would require drawing a line.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#190

Post by jmiserez »

gnyman wrote: post #122

Pet theory (disclaimer that I know very little about SEO) would be that the website with the cloned content loads fast and does not load 4 MiB of javascript, thus beating the original content in ranking mostly because of the speed, which is I believe a important factor in Google rankings (and getting more important). And add to that the some link spam and preventing the visitors to return not get any bounce back... E…

Once the hard requirement on speed impacts the quality of results it no longer helps me as a user. I'd rather have the sites invest their time in good content and wait a few seconds rather than get fast but low quality SEO-ed results. Same with AMP, the quest for speed doesn't make my experience faster if I still load the original page (which is often still necessary).
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