4 ms·

Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions (doin

Not specific to Mahalo, but I certainly care about search results quality. My recent experience searching out answers to my Android programming questions (doing my first app) have led to frustration as the Google results appear promising, but upon clicking through, I find garbage aggregator websites. This may be a problem on all search engines, but its driving my domain-specific searches to sites like Stack Overflow. I really wish Google would address this issue.

shadowsun7 16y ago
I agree with ryanhuff. Recently I spent time searching for camera reviews - smaller, entry-level ones where there's less press. About 70% of the sites I got were these dumb contentless websites plastered with camera ads and affliate links (to stores like Amazon and Adorama). That's well and good, but after a couple of tries I began to be really pissed off at the lack of useful information. I see the same issues while searching for certain bits of news. Earlier today I ran a search for Spain's loss to Switzerland (soccer, in the World Cup). Amongst the top results was a small section dedicated to Google News. Two of the three on display led me to ugly blogs, plastered with ads, that had essentially copied content from other news organizations and reposted them. My point: somebody searching for actual angel cake recipes will be greatly annoyed every time they come across Mahalo's (content-less) pages. Sure, some of their pages have content, and are probably useful - but at what cost? I wish Google will address this, and soon.
- frossie 16y ago
  I wish Google will address this, and soon. I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat. There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it. A lot of people switched from Altavista (remember them?) to Google overnight - because of better search results. They can do it again.
  - ddemchuk 16y ago
    "There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it." Wait...what? Come on, you don't honestly believe that, do you? Google's algo is a huge step up from the days when you can stuff your meta keywords to get up to the top of the previous SE's. It's in Google's best interest to find the best content to return for given keywords. Now best to techies implies high quality, unbiased, trusted content. Good to an SEO implies highly optimized, well targeted content. Good to Google is high converting, ad-serving and user-clicking worthy content. It's not as simple as serving perfect, good quality content for Google. They have an ad network to cater to first, searchers come second.
    - prawn 16y ago
      What point are you actually arguing? That MFA sites are wrecking Google's search quality or that they're not? You seem to push both points in the one post which is even more confusing given "Wait...what? Come on, you don't honestly believe that, do you?"
    - frossie 16y ago
      They have an ad network to cater to first, searchers come second. I'd like to think that isn't true. But if it was, my point stands - as a searcher, I am willing to go somewhere where the searchers come first. Search is not a lock-in. Changing search engines is almost painless.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    > I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat. Honest question, because I'm a recent DDG convert (and I'm not exactly an "early adopter" of anything) ... what do you think of its search results for this? A DDG search of "camera reviews" gave http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ for its top hit, and the site actually seems pretty useful to me.
    - frossie 16y ago
ddemchuk 16y ago
Everyone wants high quality search results, of course. But like I said in my OP, Google is a for profit company that depends on high traffic keyword searches and high volume publishers to maintain their livelihood. It's not that far of a stretch for them to not necessarily be dying for "quality" search results as much as we are. If the lower quality results are making them money, it would be against their own business model to squelch them. So it really is a question of who this issue is affecting. For us, it's annoying. For Google, it's a profit source.
- mvandemar 16y ago
  You are absolutely correct. However, at that point it becomes an ethics issue. If these are financially motivated search results without disclosure then it becomes a whole different ball of wax. If they are deliberately screwing up their relevancy algorithm in the name of a bottom line then people need to know that.
  - ddemchuk 16y ago
    The reason people trust and believe the spam search results that come up and blindly make purchases on those sites is the same reason they can't realize that Google isn't some non-profit public service but is in reality an ad-littered money machine: people are stupid.
- shadowsun7 16y ago
  I don't think you're right here - Google's stated aim has long been to provide the best search experience for its users. Nothing it has done in the past, empirically, has shown that it wants anything otherwise. Even Cutts's response in the article above exposes such thinking. To Google, what's best for the company is best for its users. Bing (and now DDG) are hot on their heels, and so it doesn't make sense when you claim that there's a split between what Google wants and what we want, which are better search results, etc etc.

shadowsun7 16y ago

I agree with ryanhuff. Recently I spent time searching for camera reviews - smaller, entry-level ones where there's less press. About 70% of the sites I got were these dumb contentless websites plastered with camera ads and affliate links (to stores like Amazon and Adorama). That's well and good, but after a couple of tries I began to be really pissed off at the lack of useful information. I see the same issues while searching for certain bits of news. Earlier today I ran a search for Spain's loss to Switzerland (soccer, in the World Cup). Amongst the top results was a small section dedicated to Google News. Two of the three on display led me to ugly blogs, plastered with ads, that had essentially copied content from other news organizations and reposted them. My point: somebody searching for actual angel cake recipes will be greatly annoyed every time they come across Mahalo's (content-less) pages. Sure, some of their pages have content, and are probably useful - but at what cost? I wish Google will address this, and soon.

frossie 16y ago
I wish Google will address this, and soon. I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat. There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it. A lot of people switched from Altavista (remember them?) to Google overnight - because of better search results. They can do it again.
- ddemchuk 16y ago
  "There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it." Wait...what? Come on, you don't honestly believe that, do you? Google's algo is a huge step up from the days when you can stuff your meta keywords to get up to the top of the previous SE's. It's in Google's best interest to find the best content to return for given keywords. Now best to techies implies high quality, unbiased, trusted content. Good to an SEO implies highly optimized, well targeted content. Good to Google is high converting, ad-serving and user-clicking worthy content. It's not as simple as serving perfect, good quality content for Google. They have an ad network to cater to first, searchers come second.
  - prawn 16y ago
    What point are you actually arguing? That MFA sites are wrecking Google's search quality or that they're not? You seem to push both points in the one post which is even more confusing given "Wait...what? Come on, you don't honestly believe that, do you?"
  - frossie 16y ago
    They have an ad network to cater to first, searchers come second. I'd like to think that isn't true. But if it was, my point stands - as a searcher, I am willing to go somewhere where the searchers come first. Search is not a lock-in. Changing search engines is almost painless.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  > I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat. Honest question, because I'm a recent DDG convert (and I'm not exactly an "early adopter" of anything) ... what do you think of its search results for this? A DDG search of "camera reviews" gave http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ for its top hit, and the site actually seems pretty useful to me.
  - frossie 16y ago

ddemchuk 16y ago

Everyone wants high quality search results, of course. But like I said in my OP, Google is a for profit company that depends on high traffic keyword searches and high volume publishers to maintain their livelihood. It's not that far of a stretch for them to not necessarily be dying for "quality" search results as much as we are. If the lower quality results are making them money, it would be against their own business model to squelch them. So it really is a question of who this issue is affecting. For us, it's annoying. For Google, it's a profit source.

mvandemar 16y ago
You are absolutely correct. However, at that point it becomes an ethics issue. If these are financially motivated search results without disclosure then it becomes a whole different ball of wax. If they are deliberately screwing up their relevancy algorithm in the name of a bottom line then people need to know that.
- ddemchuk 16y ago
  The reason people trust and believe the spam search results that come up and blindly make purchases on those sites is the same reason they can't realize that Google isn't some non-profit public service but is in reality an ad-littered money machine: people are stupid.
shadowsun7 16y ago
I don't think you're right here - Google's stated aim has long been to provide the best search experience for its users. Nothing it has done in the past, empirically, has shown that it wants anything otherwise. Even Cutts's response in the article above exposes such thinking. To Google, what's best for the company is best for its users. Bing (and now DDG) are hot on their heels, and so it doesn't make sense when you claim that there's a split between what Google wants and what we want, which are better search results, etc etc.