4 ms·

It's fine for general search queries but really poor for long tail queries. Generally its low quality content designed to rank top over high quality articles w

It's fine for general search queries but really poor for long tail queries. Generally its low quality content designed to rank top over high quality articles written by unknown publication.

shash7 5y ago
Agree. I can't remember the name but there's a huge media company which basically shares backlinks among its media properties so they almost always show up on the top spot. Even articles better suited to the search query are ranked lower than these popular publications.
- Hard_Space 5y ago
  That applies to any publishing company. I used to work at a major UK publisher. We launched a site in the entertainment space (very competitive)in 2007, and it was immediately high-ranked, because all the older properties linked to it systematically (i.e. in footers, etc.). I don't think much has changed in this regard, since then.
realusername 5y ago
All the very specific code errors I google have very relevant results but everything more generic is filled with useless marketing junk nowadays. I notice this effect getting worse every year as well, only the ultra specific queries are still usable nowadays, everything else in the middle got spammed and the results are worthless.
- usui 5y ago
  See my reference to my "Rant HN" thread elsewhere in this thread because I couldn't disagree with you more. The more specific my code searches get, the worse the experience becomes. I put in a literal quoted phrase and Google doesn't have the decency to just tell me there are no results, it has to waste my time too by returning pages that don't have ANY of the keywords in the quoted phrase. What kind of search engine is that?
  - realusername 5y ago
    There's also another issue with some of those queries yeah. Due to the way Google is parsing keywords, any search with special characters is basically worthless even with quotes (which does include a lot of code search).

It's fine for general search queries but really poor for long tail queries. Generally its low quality content designed to rank top over high quality articles written by unknown publication.

shash7 5y ago

Agree. I can't remember the name but there's a huge media company which basically shares backlinks among its media properties so they almost always show up on the top spot. Even articles better suited to the search query are ranked lower than these popular publications.

Hard_Space 5y ago
That applies to any publishing company. I used to work at a major UK publisher. We launched a site in the entertainment space (very competitive)in 2007, and it was immediately high-ranked, because all the older properties linked to it systematically (i.e. in footers, etc.). I don't think much has changed in this regard, since then.

realusername 5y ago

All the very specific code errors I google have very relevant results but everything more generic is filled with useless marketing junk nowadays. I notice this effect getting worse every year as well, only the ultra specific queries are still usable nowadays, everything else in the middle got spammed and the results are worthless.

usui 5y ago
See my reference to my "Rant HN" thread elsewhere in this thread because I couldn't disagree with you more. The more specific my code searches get, the worse the experience becomes. I put in a literal quoted phrase and Google doesn't have the decency to just tell me there are no results, it has to waste my time too by returning pages that don't have ANY of the keywords in the quoted phrase. What kind of search engine is that?
- realusername 5y ago
  There's also another issue with some of those queries yeah. Due to the way Google is parsing keywords, any search with special characters is basically worthless even with quotes (which does include a lot of code search).