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> It seems weird to me that Google would take "search quality" seriously for 15+ years (including nearly a decade as one of the biggest companies in the world)

> It seems weird to me that Google would take "search quality" seriously for 15+ years (including nearly a decade as one of the biggest companies in the world) and then suddenly stop. Is anybody claiming that it’s sudden? Everybody I’ve seen complain about Google search results has seemed to think that it’s been getting slowly worse over a long period of time.

ffhhj 5y ago
It seems Google started decaying when they gave up their social platform G+ Nowadays all those tweaks to the algorithms, specially search and gmail spam filters, are like a desperate attempt to make the ship move faster by removing parts of the hull while keeping the water out. It will just sink at some point.
Gigachad 5y ago
I don’t think google search has gotten worse, I think the SEO abusers have just started winning. So much content on the web is automatically generated and made to look just like real hand crafted content. So much of it has titles and headings which have little relation to the search. I was recently searching for a piece of ceramic cookware, specifically looking to avoid non stick coatings. And google search showed me lots of listings with my exact search terms, but when I click the page it shows their generic product range which has nothing to do with ceramic despite the title saying so.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >I don’t think google search has gotten worse, I think the SEO abusers have just started winning. So much content on the web is automatically generated and made to look just like real hand crafted content. So much of it has titles and headings which have little relation to the search. right, I mean we have nearly daily posts here about almost human level quality texts you can generate with various machine learning solutions. Add to that sites who serve users needs must focus on doing that, the sites that just game Google search rankings can focus on that.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    I mean maybe the problem is that the SEO abusers are only 35% of the way towards being constructive, a la XKCD https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/ - so the thing that wasn't considered is as your spammers get closer and closer to being constructive the more stress is placed on the systems that have to deal with fighting non-constructive spam and the worse it is for the users. But maybe at some point there will be a breakthrough with SEO abusers being able to be as constructive as the actually useful sites, at which point there will be a short time when the SEO abusers are the only sites returning results, causing all other sites to go out of business, causing the downfall of the SEO sites which rely on actually useful sites for a great deal of their stolen content / content seeding corpora.
- Const-me 5y ago
  I know another possible explanation, way simpler. Vast majority of these SEO abusers are monetized through google ads. For every advertisement dollar spent through google, google takes 30-50%. And 80% of Google's income is from internet ads. I would be surprised if google's search quality would not deteriorate - they have very strong incentive for that.
  - prox 5y ago
    I still get strange results from flaky websites that have strange TLDs and the content is literal garbage. Like just words mangled together. Ads on there are the worst and reach into malware territory. Results like these are on the first page. I have no explanation for it, but 100% of my searches for personal use are DDG or Bing now.
stephc_int13 5y ago
Not sudden for me. It has been progressively worse over time, and unfortunately the competition is not much better. Searching today is not as bad as it was during the Altavista/Netscape/56k modem era, but it is getting dangerously close, from my personal and anecdotal experience.
denlekke 5y ago
i has felt quite sudden for me ~ within the past year
whakim 5y ago
> Is anybody claiming that it’s sudden? I mean, there are two ex-Googlers in this thread claiming firsthand that search quality was considered sacrosanct as of a few years ago, so it seems like it'd have to have been sudden if indeed it has happened at all.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Four and a half years is quite enough time for search results to get worse that I wouldn't call it "sudden".
  - otherotherchris 5y ago
    I didn't notice a rapid decline until early 2019, when the search results stopped containing the keywords I used. Before then there was a blend of synonyms and actual keyword matches. This was roughly when Google's new AI began "interpreting" the "meaning" of the specific jargon and product serial numbers I was inputting, and then decided what I actually needed was song lyrics.
    - nullc 5y ago
      Your post exactly. > decided what I actually needed was song lyrics Or random gossip about media celebs. I'm searching for SCSI cable stuff and getting Kim Kardashian (whoever the #@$%@ that is).
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    True, but I didn't assert "it was great right up to the moment I left." The process might have started before, or indeed after I left. And I wasn't in Search, anyway.
- michaelt 5y ago
  Well, it's possible they attempted to keep search quality high, and they were unsuccessful but they thought they were successful. After all, if me, my team and my boss are rewarded when an imperfect measure of search quality goes up and it's going up, why would I fight to switch to a different measure that wasn't rising?

ffhhj 5y ago

It seems Google started decaying when they gave up their social platform G+ Nowadays all those tweaks to the algorithms, specially search and gmail spam filters, are like a desperate attempt to make the ship move faster by removing parts of the hull while keeping the water out. It will just sink at some point.

Gigachad 5y ago

I don’t think google search has gotten worse, I think the SEO abusers have just started winning. So much content on the web is automatically generated and made to look just like real hand crafted content. So much of it has titles and headings which have little relation to the search. I was recently searching for a piece of ceramic cookware, specifically looking to avoid non stick coatings. And google search showed me lots of listings with my exact search terms, but when I click the page it shows their generic product range which has nothing to do with ceramic despite the title saying so.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>I don’t think google search has gotten worse, I think the SEO abusers have just started winning. So much content on the web is automatically generated and made to look just like real hand crafted content. So much of it has titles and headings which have little relation to the search. right, I mean we have nearly daily posts here about almost human level quality texts you can generate with various machine learning solutions. Add to that sites who serve users needs must focus on doing that, the sites that just game Google search rankings can focus on that.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I mean maybe the problem is that the SEO abusers are only 35% of the way towards being constructive, a la XKCD https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/ - so the thing that wasn't considered is as your spammers get closer and closer to being constructive the more stress is placed on the systems that have to deal with fighting non-constructive spam and the worse it is for the users. But maybe at some point there will be a breakthrough with SEO abusers being able to be as constructive as the actually useful sites, at which point there will be a short time when the SEO abusers are the only sites returning results, causing all other sites to go out of business, causing the downfall of the SEO sites which rely on actually useful sites for a great deal of their stolen content / content seeding corpora.
Const-me 5y ago
I know another possible explanation, way simpler. Vast majority of these SEO abusers are monetized through google ads. For every advertisement dollar spent through google, google takes 30-50%. And 80% of Google's income is from internet ads. I would be surprised if google's search quality would not deteriorate - they have very strong incentive for that.
- prox 5y ago
  I still get strange results from flaky websites that have strange TLDs and the content is literal garbage. Like just words mangled together. Ads on there are the worst and reach into malware territory. Results like these are on the first page. I have no explanation for it, but 100% of my searches for personal use are DDG or Bing now.

stephc_int13 5y ago

Not sudden for me. It has been progressively worse over time, and unfortunately the competition is not much better. Searching today is not as bad as it was during the Altavista/Netscape/56k modem era, but it is getting dangerously close, from my personal and anecdotal experience.

denlekke 5y ago

i has felt quite sudden for me ~ within the past year

whakim 5y ago

> Is anybody claiming that it’s sudden? I mean, there are two ex-Googlers in this thread claiming firsthand that search quality was considered sacrosanct as of a few years ago, so it seems like it'd have to have been sudden if indeed it has happened at all.

kelnos 5y ago
Four and a half years is quite enough time for search results to get worse that I wouldn't call it "sudden".
- otherotherchris 5y ago
  I didn't notice a rapid decline until early 2019, when the search results stopped containing the keywords I used. Before then there was a blend of synonyms and actual keyword matches. This was roughly when Google's new AI began "interpreting" the "meaning" of the specific jargon and product serial numbers I was inputting, and then decided what I actually needed was song lyrics.
  - nullc 5y ago
    Your post exactly. > decided what I actually needed was song lyrics Or random gossip about media celebs. I'm searching for SCSI cable stuff and getting Kim Kardashian (whoever the #@$%@ that is).
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  True, but I didn't assert "it was great right up to the moment I left." The process might have started before, or indeed after I left. And I wasn't in Search, anyway.
michaelt 5y ago
Well, it's possible they attempted to keep search quality high, and they were unsuccessful but they thought they were successful. After all, if me, my team and my boss are rewarded when an imperfect measure of search quality goes up and it's going up, why would I fight to switch to a different measure that wasn't rising?