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Isn't the phenomenon you're describing (and I agree it's a real trend) more due to SEO efforts than to any defects in the search engine itself? It seems like t

Isn't the phenomenon you're describing (and I agree it's a real trend) more due to SEO efforts than to any defects in the search engine itself? It seems like there are millions of how-to informational articles now that are inherently designed to be clickbait. It's not that they don't have useful information, but they make you dig through a lot more verbiage than is necessary, because apparently some search engines think longer = more informative.

cratermoon 5y ago
¿Por que no los dos? Google has increasingly favored results that work in concert with the overall revenue-generating aspects of the web. Selling things has overtaken providing information, and SEO exists to push pages to the top of search results with the explicit purpose of making sites better at earning money. Google's business is selling ads and, perhaps more importantly, selling information about user preferences that allow businesses to better target potential buyers. Just a random example I tried a bit ago. A search of "guitar tuner" gave results like Fender's online tuner site (stuff with plenty of upsells for Fender gear) a site that had a basic online tuner page – filled with ads, and a tutorial at the web site of a company that sells music lessons and runs music camps.
mustacheemperor 5y ago
I think it is a failure on the part of the search engine if it falls for that SEO trickery. I recall in the early 2000s it was popular to fill the bottom of a page with keywords in the same color as the background color, to trick the crawler into thinking the page was full of relevant content. After a little while that stopped working and would actually get your site penalized in ranking. The bad actors are never going to go away, they’re going to keep getting more clever and search engines like Google and Bing with billions in the corporate warchest ought to keep the edge in that arms race.

cratermoon 5y ago

¿Por que no los dos? Google has increasingly favored results that work in concert with the overall revenue-generating aspects of the web. Selling things has overtaken providing information, and SEO exists to push pages to the top of search results with the explicit purpose of making sites better at earning money. Google's business is selling ads and, perhaps more importantly, selling information about user preferences that allow businesses to better target potential buyers. Just a random example I tried a bit ago. A search of "guitar tuner" gave results like Fender's online tuner site (stuff with plenty of upsells for Fender gear) a site that had a basic online tuner page – filled with ads, and a tutorial at the web site of a company that sells music lessons and runs music camps.

mustacheemperor 5y ago

I think it is a failure on the part of the search engine if it falls for that SEO trickery. I recall in the early 2000s it was popular to fill the bottom of a page with keywords in the same color as the background color, to trick the crawler into thinking the page was full of relevant content. After a little while that stopped working and would actually get your site penalized in ranking. The bad actors are never going to go away, they’re going to keep getting more clever and search engines like Google and Bing with billions in the corporate warchest ought to keep the edge in that arms race.