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> For the bulk of Google's visitors, they're good enough I'm not sure that's true. Just to pick an example, basically any type of product search now leads to a

> For the bulk of Google's visitors, they're good enough I'm not sure that's true. Just to pick an example, basically any type of product search now leads to auto-generated spam/borderline-spam websites that scrape reviews from Amazon, which are themselves often fraudulent. I guess you could say that's "good enough" but only in the sense that someone being scammed at some point consents to something that makes them a victim of the scam. For many searches, you'll see "reddit" autocompleted to the end of the search because Google's organic results are not good enough and people are trying to weed out the spam somehow, albeit in an imperfect way that restricts results to one site.

redmen 5y ago
To add to that, most people are satisfied with snake oil and false cures. I guess you could call that good enough.. I call it morally irresponsible.
greyhair 5y ago
Worse than that are the SEO results that don't give you what you want at all. For products, one of the worst offenders is Target. Yes, Target. They show up near the top of about 60% of my searches, including for things they simply do not carry. But hey, they carry a similar product that you might be interested in! (not) SEO results make Google money, but they also make the results suck.
bottled_poe 5y ago
The scammers are aware of this too, and many online forums are filled with astroturfers.
unethical_ban 5y ago
DuckDuckGo is horrendous for spam and malware distribution. I have stopped recommending it to non-technical people because they can't recognize the obviously evil/bad-pattern sites that are on the first page of many DDG searches I do
- ipaddr 5y ago
  What are you searching for?
  - usefulcat 5y ago
    Ditto. Been using DDG for daily for years. It's far from perfect but this does not sound remotely familiar.
  - unethical_ban 5y ago
    User manuals for stereo systems, specs for old hardware. Anything that can be generically referenced, maybe a bit harder to find. Someone can throw up a webpage that SEO's on "manual" or "user guide" and when I type in "Sony DTH-345 user guide" I'll see results like "manualsonline.xyz" that are clearly bogus. I can't lab it up now, but that is the gist. And DDG has it while Google rarely has the same level of it.
    - wmeredith 5y ago
      Isn't DDG just Bing's index with privacy (and some other QoL) features?
      - unethical_ban 5y ago
        That's my understanding. And while I appreciate that Bing is the "baseline", I would be interested in what it would take for them to do additional cleanup on results. Blacklisting domains should be a no-brainer. "Safe search" for suspicious sites, not adult theme.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
Thats the advantage Facebook has, people trust each other if they know them or a recommendation comes from a friend of a friend, but you cant really see who is recommending something on Amazon, Reddit and other sites.
manigandham 5y ago
What exactly is Google supposed to do here? They're returning what's available. Beyond that it goes from search engine to active curation and recommendation - and they are actively moving in that direction by replacing results with "answers", which I find to be much worse.
- russellendicott 5y ago
  Nothing, really. It's the "what's available" that's the problem. Quality paid services can't gain market share because free is a anticompetitive. Consumers will almost always choose it if it's not complete garbage. This throws all the metrics off for search because quality paid services become a statistical anomaly.
- account42 5y ago
  They could stop encouraging SEO. They could start penalizing sites that show different things to googlebot and a real browser again. The could do a better job penalizing sites that just copy content from other sites. They could penalize ad-laden sites. They could stop prioritizing youtube results over text content. They could allow you to blacklist sites again. They could do so many things. None of this is curation, put priorization of search result is exactly what a search engine does.
  - redhedgehog12 5y ago
    > They could stop encouraging SEO. Have you read any of Google's advice to site owners? It amounts to "provide your users with what they're looking for, and do it with a fast and easy to use site". If you think SEO is an easy hack to get any site to the position 1 for any search, you're just ignorant of the landscape. All the "SEO" crap you see about keyword density or whatever, is just an industry trying to sound different and like they've got the key to position 1. > They could start penalizing sites that show different things to googlebot and a real browser again. Google is ridiculously good at this. Would be keen to see examples of a site that does this in a meaningfully negative way that ranks well for searches that matter. I don't fully agree with all of your other points but I can see why you'd mention them.
ziml77 5y ago
I've been using Kagi search and I find the same stuff there. I can block them from my personal results as I encounter the garbage, but it's there by default. And the people trying to get their garbage spam sites to rank high are wise to the common tricks people use to attempt to get better results. Just today I accidentally clicked on a result that from the title looked like it would lead me to reddit. I should have paid attention to the URL because instead I was sent through a bunch of redirects to some terrible spam site.
- flawn 5y ago
  Is it powered by Google? I'd rather use an alternative which has the same quality of results as Google's engine.
pers0n 5y ago
Part of it is, that everyone already has heard about Google. Trying to get another search engine that people trust and have heard about is hard, not to mention it has to work decently.

redmen 5y ago

To add to that, most people are satisfied with snake oil and false cures. I guess you could call that good enough.. I call it morally irresponsible.

greyhair 5y ago

Worse than that are the SEO results that don't give you what you want at all. For products, one of the worst offenders is Target. Yes, Target. They show up near the top of about 60% of my searches, including for things they simply do not carry. But hey, they carry a similar product that you might be interested in! (not) SEO results make Google money, but they also make the results suck.

bottled_poe 5y ago

The scammers are aware of this too, and many online forums are filled with astroturfers.

unethical_ban 5y ago

DuckDuckGo is horrendous for spam and malware distribution. I have stopped recommending it to non-technical people because they can't recognize the obviously evil/bad-pattern sites that are on the first page of many DDG searches I do

ipaddr 5y ago
What are you searching for?
- usefulcat 5y ago
  Ditto. Been using DDG for daily for years. It's far from perfect but this does not sound remotely familiar.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  User manuals for stereo systems, specs for old hardware. Anything that can be generically referenced, maybe a bit harder to find. Someone can throw up a webpage that SEO's on "manual" or "user guide" and when I type in "Sony DTH-345 user guide" I'll see results like "manualsonline.xyz" that are clearly bogus. I can't lab it up now, but that is the gist. And DDG has it while Google rarely has the same level of it.
  - wmeredith 5y ago
    Isn't DDG just Bing's index with privacy (and some other QoL) features?
    - unethical_ban 5y ago
      That's my understanding. And while I appreciate that Bing is the "baseline", I would be interested in what it would take for them to do additional cleanup on results. Blacklisting domains should be a no-brainer. "Safe search" for suspicious sites, not adult theme.

Terry_Roll 5y ago

Thats the advantage Facebook has, people trust each other if they know them or a recommendation comes from a friend of a friend, but you cant really see who is recommending something on Amazon, Reddit and other sites.

manigandham 5y ago

What exactly is Google supposed to do here? They're returning what's available. Beyond that it goes from search engine to active curation and recommendation - and they are actively moving in that direction by replacing results with "answers", which I find to be much worse.

russellendicott 5y ago
Nothing, really. It's the "what's available" that's the problem. Quality paid services can't gain market share because free is a anticompetitive. Consumers will almost always choose it if it's not complete garbage. This throws all the metrics off for search because quality paid services become a statistical anomaly.
account42 5y ago
They could stop encouraging SEO. They could start penalizing sites that show different things to googlebot and a real browser again. The could do a better job penalizing sites that just copy content from other sites. They could penalize ad-laden sites. They could stop prioritizing youtube results over text content. They could allow you to blacklist sites again. They could do so many things. None of this is curation, put priorization of search result is exactly what a search engine does.
- redhedgehog12 5y ago
  > They could stop encouraging SEO. Have you read any of Google's advice to site owners? It amounts to "provide your users with what they're looking for, and do it with a fast and easy to use site". If you think SEO is an easy hack to get any site to the position 1 for any search, you're just ignorant of the landscape. All the "SEO" crap you see about keyword density or whatever, is just an industry trying to sound different and like they've got the key to position 1. > They could start penalizing sites that show different things to googlebot and a real browser again. Google is ridiculously good at this. Would be keen to see examples of a site that does this in a meaningfully negative way that ranks well for searches that matter. I don't fully agree with all of your other points but I can see why you'd mention them.

ziml77 5y ago

I've been using Kagi search and I find the same stuff there. I can block them from my personal results as I encounter the garbage, but it's there by default. And the people trying to get their garbage spam sites to rank high are wise to the common tricks people use to attempt to get better results. Just today I accidentally clicked on a result that from the title looked like it would lead me to reddit. I should have paid attention to the URL because instead I was sent through a bunch of redirects to some terrible spam site.

flawn 5y ago
Is it powered by Google? I'd rather use an alternative which has the same quality of results as Google's engine.

pers0n 5y ago

Part of it is, that everyone already has heard about Google. Trying to get another search engine that people trust and have heard about is hard, not to mention it has to work decently.