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Anecdote 1: I was Googling a lot of information on Angular, back when I was first introduced to the framework a year or two ago. I'd say that well over half of

Anecdote 1: I was Googling a lot of information on Angular, back when I was first introduced to the framework a year or two ago. I'd say that well over half of the content surfaced by Google was SEO spam: marketers masquerading as tutorials, with the sole intent of upselling me on some shitty Angular plug-in. A lot of them are clever about it too; they don't upsell you until you've invested a decent amount of time reading their "tutorials". The SEO spam only went away as I began entering more granular search queries, as my familiarity with the framework improved. Anecdote 2: I have a close friend that is a high school teacher. She's not all that tech savvy, so I help her out sometimes. Google is damn near useless when it comes to helping her develop her courses. Not exaggerating at all... maybe 60, 70... 80 percent of the results for educational queries are SEO spam. Every result is essentially, "want to learn how to write a monologue? Click here to pay $20/month for the privilege". It's gotten so bad that I jokingly tell her that it would be more efficient to just walk down to the library and take out a book on whatever topic she's querying. But, you know, they do say that every joke has an element of truth to it...

globuous 6y ago
A friend of mine not too tech savy always clicks on these sponsored google links that take a page and a half on some screens when looking something up. I always tell him "you clicked on an ad !" and still, he always clicks on the 2-3 ads showing up before the results, even years after. Mind not that he's a UI/UX designer, his job is attention to detail, yet, he still cannot discriminate between results and sponsored links on the google search page. I wonder how many people do that, but it must make Google a lot of cash !
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Just install an adblocker for him.
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  Only a small % do that. However that small percentage is enough to generate billions in revenue.
scollet 6y ago
Similarly: try comparing big data warehouses/tools by use case.
II2II 6y ago
Searching for teaching materials or activities for children is so bad that developing the materials yourself is usually far less work! I doubt the declining quality of search results is a product of Google's own advertising business, as the article would have us believe, and is mostly a product of third-party SEO spam. This outcome also wholly predictable. Part of the appeal of Google to early adopters was the lack of the SEO spam that destroyed the utility of earlier search engines. I recall conversations at the time when Google was so new they eschewed graphical ads that foresaw this outcome, though our predictions may have been a bit on the pessimistic side (i.e. Google held up against SEO longer than we thought it would).
- londons_explore 6y ago
  In today's world of powerful neural networks, one would think training a network to identify sites which try to get the user to pay for something wouldn't be that hard. I think this is instead an active choice on the part of Google. When the options are "show someone's personal blog as the top result" or "show some company as the top result", they always choose the latter because a company is somehow believed to be more trustworthy.
  - piokoch 6y ago
    I wish I could see that powerful AI in action. Think of something easy like, for instance, AI powered point of sale in the supermarket. Right now many shops introduce "automatic" POS, and the automation means that instead of shop assistant I need to scan every product. Those badass AI should be able to use their image recognition power and be able to recognize products I put on the counter and calculate the price. It seems this is still beyond capabilities AI has (apparently playing chess or go is way easier than working in the grocery store).
    - viraptor 6y ago
      > It seems this is still beyond capabilities AI has Really? Classification of images on a known static background should work very well. Or at least well enough that you can request a manual scan it every 10th item and still get a large speed increase. The bag weight works as a double-check anyway.
nuccy 6y ago
It seems personalization/bubbling is assisting this garbage searches. From my limited observations of close friends and family, different people tend to get different number of useless results for the same query string. I personally disabled all possible personalisations in all google products, including history of searches, youtube views, etc and it seems to actually help, at least I really don't find myself complaining on google quality at all recently.
thu2111 6y ago
Are you defining all paid content as spam? Or all sites that sell products?
- spideymans 6y ago
  It's one thing to be selling Angular templates, when the title on your website, as seen thru Google, is "Buy Angular Templates" It's a totally different thing be selling Angular templates, when your website is titled "Tutorial: Learn how to write Angular services" One the two is clearly misleading.
yencabulator 6y ago
I know some people who sell their teaching material on https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/ https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/ -- that might be worth a shot. Sure, you're still paying, but it's honest & upfront, the prices seem very reasonable to me and on the average the material is better than random searches would find.

globuous 6y ago

A friend of mine not too tech savy always clicks on these sponsored google links that take a page and a half on some screens when looking something up. I always tell him "you clicked on an ad !" and still, he always clicks on the 2-3 ads showing up before the results, even years after. Mind not that he's a UI/UX designer, his job is attention to detail, yet, he still cannot discriminate between results and sponsored links on the google search page. I wonder how many people do that, but it must make Google a lot of cash !

londons_explore 6y ago
Just install an adblocker for him.
cosmodisk 6y ago
Only a small % do that. However that small percentage is enough to generate billions in revenue.

scollet 6y ago

Similarly: try comparing big data warehouses/tools by use case.

II2II 6y ago

Searching for teaching materials or activities for children is so bad that developing the materials yourself is usually far less work! I doubt the declining quality of search results is a product of Google's own advertising business, as the article would have us believe, and is mostly a product of third-party SEO spam. This outcome also wholly predictable. Part of the appeal of Google to early adopters was the lack of the SEO spam that destroyed the utility of earlier search engines. I recall conversations at the time when Google was so new they eschewed graphical ads that foresaw this outcome, though our predictions may have been a bit on the pessimistic side (i.e. Google held up against SEO longer than we thought it would).

londons_explore 6y ago
In today's world of powerful neural networks, one would think training a network to identify sites which try to get the user to pay for something wouldn't be that hard. I think this is instead an active choice on the part of Google. When the options are "show someone's personal blog as the top result" or "show some company as the top result", they always choose the latter because a company is somehow believed to be more trustworthy.
- piokoch 6y ago
  I wish I could see that powerful AI in action. Think of something easy like, for instance, AI powered point of sale in the supermarket. Right now many shops introduce "automatic" POS, and the automation means that instead of shop assistant I need to scan every product. Those badass AI should be able to use their image recognition power and be able to recognize products I put on the counter and calculate the price. It seems this is still beyond capabilities AI has (apparently playing chess or go is way easier than working in the grocery store).
  - viraptor 6y ago
    > It seems this is still beyond capabilities AI has Really? Classification of images on a known static background should work very well. Or at least well enough that you can request a manual scan it every 10th item and still get a large speed increase. The bag weight works as a double-check anyway.

nuccy 6y ago

It seems personalization/bubbling is assisting this garbage searches. From my limited observations of close friends and family, different people tend to get different number of useless results for the same query string. I personally disabled all possible personalisations in all google products, including history of searches, youtube views, etc and it seems to actually help, at least I really don't find myself complaining on google quality at all recently.

thu2111 6y ago

Are you defining all paid content as spam? Or all sites that sell products?

spideymans 6y ago
It's one thing to be selling Angular templates, when the title on your website, as seen thru Google, is "Buy Angular Templates" It's a totally different thing be selling Angular templates, when your website is titled "Tutorial: Learn how to write Angular services" One the two is clearly misleading.

yencabulator 6y ago

I know some people who sell their teaching material on https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/ https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/ -- that might be worth a shot. Sure, you're still paying, but it's honest & upfront, the prices seem very reasonable to me and on the average the material is better than random searches would find.