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Narrative-form journalism is ruining the internet. Me: "This chicken breast I cooked is too dry." Google Search: how to cook chicken breast Article Title: 3

Narrative-form journalism is ruining the internet. Me: "This chicken breast I cooked is too dry." Google Search: how to cook chicken breast Article Title: 3 Ways To Cook Your Chicken So It's Not So Dry - Inspired by This New York Chef Article Content: (4 paragraphs telling the story of how they author couldn't cook chicken well, which culminates with an embedded YouTube video of a 10-minute long video produced by an entirely different cooking website with even more extra content in it)

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Hmm. The internet created much of it. Search engines don't like simple straight answers - the page, and site must have "enough" text. Adsense pages have a minimum length, while writers have stretched and stretched to make the weakest pages long enough, with synonyms, ideally with intro, ad, distraction, filler, discussion of last week's recipe, the pan set with affiliate link, and a load or two before you see the key point and leave. If they can squeeze in another 40 words they're allowed another ad block. Trouble is, there seems little sign that the escalation out of control is peaking... Even though adsense is not quite the blight it once was.
- ThePadawan 8y ago
  > Search engines don't like simple straight answers I would say they clearly do - but the people providing the answers don't. Compare the recent move of Google to provide answers with 0 clicks to the source ("How old is Paul Rudd?", "potato cooking time" both provide answers in the topmost result box for me).
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    That's google on their own site providing an example of do as I say not as I do. :) They've always discouraged and penalised sites that do that themselves. The search guidelines always talked up what was needed on a page quantity wise, and discouraged brevity. Adsense brought additional, and longer restrictions, and then assorted SEO recommendations and some snake oil to talk around the subject, include synonyms etc. All that drove a certain style of writing content for the web that has escalated into a very particular - and easily recognisable - style of waffle. That's almost never what's needed for accuracy, readability or quick answers. Long form journalism for the web is a bastard child of traditional long form journalism and SEO inspired waffle, and probably the most annoying of the lot.
clem 8y ago
This sounds like StackExchange's raison d'etre.
Kluny 8y ago
Hot tip - include "joy of cooking" in the search query and the first result will be the right one.
- quacked 8y ago
  I cannot express how much gratitude I feel for you.
koonsolo 8y ago
This is a real issue with search engines these days. There used to be a time when it was easy to search for a topic, and land on some expert blog explaining the whole thing. Nowadays, search engines present results from big players, where a journalist, that never came close to the real thing, made up a search engine optimized list of crap.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Hmm. The internet created much of it. Search engines don't like simple straight answers - the page, and site must have "enough" text. Adsense pages have a minimum length, while writers have stretched and stretched to make the weakest pages long enough, with synonyms, ideally with intro, ad, distraction, filler, discussion of last week's recipe, the pan set with affiliate link, and a load or two before you see the key point and leave. If they can squeeze in another 40 words they're allowed another ad block. Trouble is, there seems little sign that the escalation out of control is peaking... Even though adsense is not quite the blight it once was.

ThePadawan 8y ago
> Search engines don't like simple straight answers I would say they clearly do - but the people providing the answers don't. Compare the recent move of Google to provide answers with 0 clicks to the source ("How old is Paul Rudd?", "potato cooking time" both provide answers in the topmost result box for me).
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  That's google on their own site providing an example of do as I say not as I do. :) They've always discouraged and penalised sites that do that themselves. The search guidelines always talked up what was needed on a page quantity wise, and discouraged brevity. Adsense brought additional, and longer restrictions, and then assorted SEO recommendations and some snake oil to talk around the subject, include synonyms etc. All that drove a certain style of writing content for the web that has escalated into a very particular - and easily recognisable - style of waffle. That's almost never what's needed for accuracy, readability or quick answers. Long form journalism for the web is a bastard child of traditional long form journalism and SEO inspired waffle, and probably the most annoying of the lot.

clem 8y ago

This sounds like StackExchange's raison d'etre.

Kluny 8y ago

Hot tip - include "joy of cooking" in the search query and the first result will be the right one.

quacked 8y ago
I cannot express how much gratitude I feel for you.

koonsolo 8y ago

This is a real issue with search engines these days. There used to be a time when it was easy to search for a topic, and land on some expert blog explaining the whole thing. Nowadays, search engines present results from big players, where a journalist, that never came close to the real thing, made up a search engine optimized list of crap.