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More content by people, for people in Search

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261–270 of 320 posts

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#261
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…

literally every dang recipe website in the universe... Ugh.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#262
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…

This is especially annoying with recipes. There's usually a massive backstory that takes up 90% of the page. Some recipe websites even post a button to jump directly to the recipe, at least they're self-aware.

I used to search for recipes on the Internet. The spam became unbearable. Then I spent $30 on a cookbook, one recipe per page. Very happy with the outcome. Simple, fast, effective: it just works.

Happiness meta-rule: Throw electronics away, use analog equivalents instead.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globohomo Art Style lol. That’s what I’ll call it from now on.

The name seems a gift to right-wing critics.

Globohomo means global homogeneity, even if some right wingers seem to think it means...something else lol

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#264
post #224

I am so sick and tired of sites that have a bunch of filler content in them just to appear higher in search results. You search for something, say "How to change a light bulb" and you get all this front loading with sections on "what is a light bulb?" "Why do light bulbs need changing?" "Picking a light bulb" and then finally the answer. Maybe a search engine that could prioritize getting to the point would be good.

Basic queries like "how to change a light bulb" are better answered on Youtube; it's not 1995 anymore, a web page explaining that with text and pictures is slower than creating a video. The only ones still writing web pages for things like that are trying to sell you something. If they weren't, they'd also just make a video.

Completely disagree. Videos take forever. Often times I have a specific query and text is easier to search than information within videos.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#265

Good. I'm getting sick of adding -2022 and -best to my searches. The results are a wasteland...

That's a super interesting approach to culling the spam, since web spammers often are trying to make old content look new. Does it work well?

YMMV. It seems like google only lists "authoritative" domains on the first few pages. Tried to fight the brightest TV by nits / mcd/m3 and that trick didn't work for me :(

Sometimes adding "reddit" helps.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#266
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK.. In a sense, I am overstating. Having an anti-spam team is obviously a recognition that SEO/Spam exists and that Google is trying to discourage or mitigate. But Google is well beyond just attracting spam. Success in Google search rankings is, for many sites, the better part of online success. If Google ranks needlessly wordy recipes more highly than concise & useful recipes... then wordy recipes get written . It'…

>There's never any reckoning with 2nd order effects. Can you articulate what concrete actions Google could take that would address these 2nd order effects? >, Google made changes to youtube's recommendation engine in a way that really "encourages" frequent, regular videos. [...] A week off or a couple of flops is harshly punished. I've seen this repeated many times (especially from Youtubers making videos about "burn…

I suspect some of the contradiction comes from whether you're measuring views per video or ad revenue per month.

If one youtuber produced a 32-minute video per month and got 500,000 views while another produced eight 4-minute videos per month and averaged 200,000 views per video, who do you suppose gets the most ad money? I'd wager the latter.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#267

I am so sick and tired of sites that have a bunch of filler content in them just to appear higher in search results. You search for something, say "How to change a light bulb" and you get all this front loading with sections on "what is a light bulb?" "Why do light bulbs need changing?" "Picking a light bulb" and then finally the answer. Maybe a search engine that could prioritize getting to the point would be good.

I've found that DDG (and by some extension, Bing) seems to do a little bit better at this. But, the only search engine I've found that actually does a good job at this is Kagi. It's really good at filtering out those SEO spam articles, and even separates out stuff like listicles when it's not what you're looking for.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#268
AI content writing tools are now staggeringly good at producing a huge volume of pointless text, for incrementally $0.00 per word - previously the nonzero cost per word of hiring the lowest-cost writer available, was at least a little bit of drag on the whole Internet filling with pointless content.

Google has a giant hard problem to solve here. I hope they are successful.

If they aren't successful, it could be a door opening for someone else to take a stab at search.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#269
post #164
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web pages have a timeline in the form of a scroll bar on the right

Actually that's a cool idea, put a graph on the scroll bar which shows where most people spent their time, same as the Youtube widget.

Medium kinda does something like this by highlighting the most shared part. Alternatively, you can also use AI to summarize the text on web pages.

Re: More content by people, for people in Search

#270

>> 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…

I agree with you, but Google also faces a perhaps impossible problem of how to detect good content on YouTube.

They can look at how long people watch; but that ends up rewarding rambling pointless blather when a concise two minute video would be perfect.

They can look at likes or subscribes, but that causes many wasted human lifetimes per day, of people saying and listening to pleading to click said buttons.

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