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The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

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Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#91

Post by QuietCF »

finnh wrote: post #12
jessaustin wrote: post #10

TFA talks about Google testing with "unknown IP", but doesn't mention any testing done by the author with cookies cleared or in incognito mode. This seems basic.

What do you expect incognito to change? That would presumably show the same content the author is seeing. Only Google sees the content that drives the ranking. It is Google that needs "incognito" mode, not the author.

For all we know (as the OP doesn’t mention trying incognito) the OP could have malicious software on their device that hijacks their browser to manipulate search results

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#93

Post by bryanrasmussen »

dalmo3 wrote: post #88
sunshineforever wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play a game with google search: I take something very mainstream like a movie title, let's say 'Reservoir Dogs' And change something in it, to say 'Reservoir Cats' for example. Google search 'reservoir cats' and it will completely ignore what you actually search for in favor of the mainstream result. The effect is basically that you can't sesrch for 'reservoir cats'! Even putting something opposite or unrelated to…

Although I'm familiar with your point, I literally just searched for the term you mentioned, navigated all the way to page 6 and every single result was specifically for Reservoir Cats proper, none of them even mentioned Reservoir Dogs in the title, only in the description for some of them.

the same, maybe someone at google read this and fixed it reaaalllly quick.

If I search for Palp fiction it shows me pulp fiction results but asks if I really meant Palp fiction, if I say yeah I really meant that it shows me Palp fiction with a message did you really mean pulp fiction.

on edit: some of the palp fiction is headline palp friction.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#94

Post by gomox »

fny wrote: post #24

Somewhat related: has anyone else noticed a massive change in breadth of results? I was searching for reviews for diving equipment and some less niche items and I feel like I'm being spoonfed results from the same comparison engines. Since when did algo content become king?

I couldn't agree more. More and more lately I've felt like the Altavista days. I know the information I'm looking for is out there, it's just not in the Google results page, which is plastered with unreadable stuff (paywalls, content farms), crap "content cards" in the results page, and sneakier and sneakier ads.

I'm not sure what the beginning of the end was for Google Search, but I think the day where they changed the ad background to white is a good candidate.

Google Search used to be like Chrome or Gmail - we know its wrong in the long term, but it's hard to stop using it because it just works so well.

But these days, not anymore. Search is a lot less sticky, and it is their golden goose they are messing with here.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#95

Post by tesseract »

zadler wrote: post #54
yojo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly. I’ve been researching specific house repair issues and just get nothing but content spam. Whenever I want specific information I find myself adding “reddit” to the query string, which will usually turn up a thread with links out to the actual answer.

Said it before and I’ll say it again, when Reddit finally becomes inaccesible via searches we will have lost a huge and very useful database of succinct information.

Probably even more information of that nature is hidden in Facebook Groups where it was never searchable in the first place.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#96

Post by mahkeiro »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #69
fny wrote: post #24

Somewhat related: has anyone else noticed a massive change in breadth of results? I was searching for reviews for diving equipment and some less niche items and I feel like I'm being spoonfed results from the same comparison engines. Since when did algo content become king?

I'm just sick of seeing pintrest and quora as the top 8 results :/

Pinterest is the worst as you cannot see the results without registering… How can it be a relevant search result! Fortunately -site:pinterest.com make it useable.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#97

Post by raytracer »

sunshineforever wrote: post #70
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atleast you get the results you are looking for... I search for three keywords, and it chooses to ignore the two specific one, and show only the one general one (while puting a line under the search result, that the result does not contain some keywords). Basically, like searching diving suit thickness, and google ignoring "suit" and "thickness" (until i specifically put those two words in quotemarks), and only showi…

I play a game with google search: I take something very mainstream like a movie title, let's say 'Reservoir Dogs' And change something in it, to say 'Reservoir Cats' for example. Google search 'reservoir cats' and it will completely ignore what you actually search for in favor of the mainstream result. The effect is basically that you can't sesrch for 'reservoir cats'! Even putting something opposite or unrelated to…

Reservoir Cats is actually a movie! I feel like I've slipped into an alternative time stream.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#98

Post by dukeofdoom »

estebarb wrote: post #26
fny wrote: post #24

Somewhat related: has anyone else noticed a massive change in breadth of results? I was searching for reviews for diving equipment and some less niche items and I feel like I'm being spoonfed results from the same comparison engines. Since when did algo content become king?

I feel the same. Looking for specialized topics with Google is now very difficult. Now is impossible to look for phones, uncommon words or looking for anything that is not the mainstream result. I'm not sure if the culprit is BERT or using neural ranking. But in the last years I feel that is more common that I leave Google search without useful information. The worse part is that all the competing search engines are…

This happens for unpopular events too.

Memory Hole

"The alteration or outright disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a web site or other archive. Its origin comes from George Orwell's "1984", in which the memory hole was a small incinerator chute used for censoring, (through destroying), things Big Brother deemed necessary to censor."

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Memory%20Hol...

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#99

Post by oarth »

punnerud wrote: post #90

I live in Norway and don’t have this problem now. I had a similar problem about a year ago on my MacBook Air because of some software that altered my Google results in all of my browsers. Don’t remember the name of it, but something smelled fishy when the results was different from the ones on my phone.

Pretty sure affects you too as it's the same for me, on multiple networks, multiple user-agents, multiple devices and so on.

Simply just trie one of the examples like "hvordan regne ut prosent"(how to calculate percentages) or, I don't know..."DNB aksje"(DNB stocks, DNB being the biggest bank in Norway). Sure enough, both ranks on the first page or as the one of the top results. (One is now using the www.nem-varmepumper.dk domain, that is the same thing).

EDIT: Now the DNB one moved from 2 and 3 place to page 2. Things are moving around quickly.

Re: The mermaid is taking over Google search in Norway

#100

Post by bigpeopleareold »

I hate dealing with this and now refuse to use Google now when I saw patterns in search results while I was researching common things (like housing) in Norwegian, here in Norway. I rarely use Google these days, but I thought for a second that Google might be better with search results than DDG in Norwegian, but this stuff is aggravating. This is one of those where they screw around with history that you just have to start fresh again on whatever you were doing instead of going back.

edit: one other thing I have seen, but it doesn't mean it is always spam. All The Words In A Title Are Capitalized - it's something to pay attention to whether it is spam or not. Conventionally, titles are usually not like that in Norwegian.

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