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Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

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Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#51

Post by luckylion »

caprese wrote: post #38
colechristensen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google got where it was by being the best at finding what you wanted. I remember those days. Google has a hard time getting me what I want these days, and sites I do find do things to get found that make me like content a lot less (that's you, inane story on top of every recipe required to get ranked)

Their A/B test told them to do it, without wondering if they should do it Basically their engagement numbers were better for a larger amount of people by making search engines counterintuitive for early adopters. We personally need a good robotic search engine that indexes like a robot. Everyone else needs a semi-sentient thing that makes many assumptions about what they want to see.

> Basically their engagement numbers were better for a larger amount of people by making search engines counterintuitive for early adopters.

Which also makes sense ... if you present the "right" result immediately, the user visits one site and has completed whatever he sought to do. if you make him click through 10 pages, he has way more chances to see an interesting ad.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#52

Post by tambourine_man »

Theodores wrote: post #33
tholman wrote: post #23

Google will also happily surface a stackoverflow article from 2010 about how to solve a js problem... frustrating the top 3 answers will be with jquery, when its not the approach someone would take in the last 5 years. Definitely frustrating, but also showing some need to retire specific pieces of the past away from the top recommendations.

You have hit on a major problem there. Stack Overflow was once the fount of all useful genius grade knowledge, but times change and some of the top answers are plain wrong. Take for example the 'how do I centre a div' type of question. You will get to find an answer with thousands of up-votes that will be some horrendous margin hack type of thing where you set the width of the content and have some counter intuitive…

>you do 'display: grid' and use justify/align: center depending on axis. The code makes sense it is not a hack.

It also doesn’t work on IE latest or Edge.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#54

Post by bufferoverflow »

I have a couple of websites generated from databases. Each has around half a million pages of unique content. The first one was indexed in like a week at 100K/day, almost instant tsunami of traffic. The second one is being indexed at 100-1000 pages per day, it's been years.

Google works in mysterious ways.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#55

Post by v_lisivka »

tambourine_man wrote: post #52
Theodores wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have hit on a major problem there. Stack Overflow was once the fount of all useful genius grade knowledge, but times change and some of the top answers are plain wrong. Take for example the 'how do I centre a div' type of question. You will get to find an answer with thousands of up-votes that will be some horrendous margin hack type of thing where you set the width of the content and have some counter intuitive…

>you do 'display: grid' and use justify/align: center depending on axis. The code makes sense it is not a hack. It also doesn’t work on IE latest or Edge.

It's another question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50475428/css-grid-is-not...

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#56

Post by v_lisivka »

speedplane wrote: post #30
sytelus wrote: post #29

According to Google Inside Search, only 1 in 3000 pages gets indexed. As content on Internet grows, the whole idea of downloading every single page to create an index of entire Internet in one place becomes unworkable. So we should see this ratio continue to degrade until this fundamental architecture is improved.

> only 1 in 3000 pages gets indexed ... we should see this ratio continue to degrade until this fundamental architecture is replaced. Content on the internet is growing exponentially. Processing power is not. Losing access to information is just one of the many sad implications of the death of Moore's law.

Simple Bloom filter, generated and published by site itself, can lower the curve a lot.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#57

Post by 3xblah »

userbinator wrote: post #5

It really angers me that, despite the fact that it may be essentially perfectly what I'm looking for, if it was published long ago, Google may refuse to find it. Something like a news search engine would definitely be better off prioritising the new results, but for something more general-purpose, it's an absolutely horrible choice. I know this may be a bit of an edge-case, but I frequently search for service informa…

What makes no sense to me about this blocking scenario is that the pages being searched for are presumably non-commercial ones that no one else is searching for. In other words, they are in low demand.

It follows that a monopoly search engine would have little reason to block "robots" from copying these pages, maybe to appear on some mythical competing search engine; almost no one is searching for them. The results pages would have dubious value in terms of attracting advertisers. They would not be seen by enough eyeballs.

With all the financial and technical resources it now has at its disposal as a result of selling advertising, this search engine still cannot accomodate the user who intently scans through page after page of results, looking for the needle in the haystack. Instead it prides itself at "knowing what people are searching for", i.e. what they have searched in the past, thus being able to offer fast, "intuitive" responses.

It may be that the search engine was designed and is optimised to prioritize repeat queries, i.e., searches for pages that are sought by numerous people. It may also be true that it has been configured to "limit" the resources it will devote to searches for pages that few people are seeking. Perhaps through CAPTCHAs and/or temporary IP bans.

Practically speaking, it could be that there are no significant advertising sales to be made on the results pages for queries that are being submitted by only one or a very small numbers of users.

This is all pure speculation of course.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#58

Post by Theodores »

tambourine_man wrote: post #52
Theodores wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have hit on a major problem there. Stack Overflow was once the fount of all useful genius grade knowledge, but times change and some of the top answers are plain wrong. Take for example the 'how do I centre a div' type of question. You will get to find an answer with thousands of up-votes that will be some horrendous margin hack type of thing where you set the width of the content and have some counter intuitive…

>you do 'display: grid' and use justify/align: center depending on axis. The code makes sense it is not a hack. It also doesn’t work on IE latest or Edge.

Have you been reading SO answers?!?

It works fine in Edge. Why don't you try?

IE latest - there is no such thing.

The latest steam engines, the latest CRT screens and the latest buggy whips probably don't do CSS Grid either.

IE exists for compatibility with enterprise apps but isn't 'latest'. It is legacy.

And the content will still work even if CSS Grid is not supported, just the layout won't be perfect.

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#59

Post by bartread »

tholman wrote: post #23

Google will also happily surface a stackoverflow article from 2010 about how to solve a js problem... frustrating the top 3 answers will be with jquery, when its not the approach someone would take in the last 5 years. Definitely frustrating, but also showing some need to retire specific pieces of the past away from the top recommendations.

I agree that it's frustrating (also happens to me all the time) but would argue that it's stackoverflow's fault. They are, after all, supposed to curate the content to make sure it stays relevant, up to and including deleting questions. At the very least it should be easier to get the accepted answer chenged so at least it's at the top of the page (I can't be bothered to spend enough time gaming the system to get the 2000 points necessary to do this).

Re: Google search only has 60% of my content from 2006

#60

Post by Theodores »

v_lisivka wrote: post #55
tambourine_man wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you do 'display: grid' and use justify/align: center depending on axis. The code makes sense it is not a hack. It also doesn’t work on IE latest or Edge.

It's another question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50475428/css-grid-is-not...

The HTML is extremely naive in this question and I wouldn't expect it to work on any computer given the multitude of flaws.

Just because the kid who can't walk on two feet can't ride a bicycle doesn't mean all bicycles are broken.

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