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Yes, I've noticed this particularly with technical results. A lot of sites seem to have scraped StackOverflow and GitHub issues, put a crappy ad-loaded interfac

by paulgb 5y ago

Yes, I've noticed this particularly with technical results. A lot of sites seem to have scraped StackOverflow and GitHub issues, put a crappy ad-loaded interface around them, and somehow out-rank the original SO/GitHub content. It's like the bad-old-days of ExpertsExchange, which somehow was never delisted by Google for its shady SEO tactics.

coldpie 5y ago
You just have to look at Google's profit motive here. Their motive isn't to provide quality search results. Their motive is to show users ads, either in the search results themselves or on the destination sites via their ad network. The SEO spam sites aren't a bug, they are a feature of Google's profit algorithm. Google's search quality will never improve so long as their motivation is to show you ads. Why should it? Competition may help here, either by an outsider like the OP suggests, or via breaking Google up with anti-trust enforcement, or both (my preference). As a user, your best personal and ethical move is to install an ad-blocker, to make ad-based business models less viable, which will help promote business models that don't abuse the customer.
- the_other 5y ago
  The core problem, I guess, is that search engines view all their results as ads. That’s why they got into the ad business in the first place.
  - nickff 5y ago
    >" The core problem, I guess, is that search engines view all their results as ads. That’s why they got into the ad business in the first place. " This seems a bit overly cynical. Some search engines only served ads, but they're long gone. The survivors are those who dedicated themselves to finding links which were responsive to people's search intent. They seem to have gotten into ads because it was the best business model in this market.
wott 5y ago
> A lot of sites seem to have scraped StackOverflow and GitHub issues, put a crappy ad-loaded interface around them, and somehow out-rank the original SO/GitHub content. Some even made slideshows of SO screen captures and put that on Youtube, with a fake video or spoken intro to make believe an actual content will be discussed... A number of shameless people would go any length to grab bits of money anywhere and anyhow, and I've hit those links a couple of times.
acdha 5y ago
> It's like the bad-old-days of ExpertsExchange, which somehow was never delisted by Google for its shady SEO tactics. This is really what made me suspect that Google was teetering on the edge of the MBA death spiral: these problems run for years when they'd be easy to block, which suggests to me that whatever metric gets you a bonus / promoted doesn't include things like that which are long-term threats to their core business even if it's selling a lot of ads short-term.
_hcuq 5y ago
They outrank the original content because google is corrupt.

by paulgb 5y ago

coldpie 5y ago

You just have to look at Google's profit motive here. Their motive isn't to provide quality search results. Their motive is to show users ads, either in the search results themselves or on the destination sites via their ad network. The SEO spam sites aren't a bug, they are a feature of Google's profit algorithm. Google's search quality will never improve so long as their motivation is to show you ads. Why should it? Competition may help here, either by an outsider like the OP suggests, or via breaking Google up with anti-trust enforcement, or both (my preference). As a user, your best personal and ethical move is to install an ad-blocker, to make ad-based business models less viable, which will help promote business models that don't abuse the customer.

the_other 5y ago
The core problem, I guess, is that search engines view all their results as ads. That’s why they got into the ad business in the first place.
- nickff 5y ago
  >" The core problem, I guess, is that search engines view all their results as ads. That’s why they got into the ad business in the first place. " This seems a bit overly cynical. Some search engines only served ads, but they're long gone. The survivors are those who dedicated themselves to finding links which were responsive to people's search intent. They seem to have gotten into ads because it was the best business model in this market.

wott 5y ago

> A lot of sites seem to have scraped StackOverflow and GitHub issues, put a crappy ad-loaded interface around them, and somehow out-rank the original SO/GitHub content. Some even made slideshows of SO screen captures and put that on Youtube, with a fake video or spoken intro to make believe an actual content will be discussed... A number of shameless people would go any length to grab bits of money anywhere and anyhow, and I've hit those links a couple of times.

acdha 5y ago

> It's like the bad-old-days of ExpertsExchange, which somehow was never delisted by Google for its shady SEO tactics. This is really what made me suspect that Google was teetering on the edge of the MBA death spiral: these problems run for years when they'd be easy to block, which suggests to me that whatever metric gets you a bonus / promoted doesn't include things like that which are long-term threats to their core business even if it's selling a lot of ads short-term.

_hcuq 5y ago

They outrank the original content because google is corrupt.