13 ms·

May 2022 core update releasing for Google Search

96 points by taubek 4y ago

danjc 4y ago
The equivalent of “this sign has sharp edges”
- edm0nd 4y ago
ProAm 4y ago
I wonder if search results will return to the first page of results?
- danuker 4y ago
  Based on the interest rate hikes, and therefore the need to monetize, I would guess the opposite: more only slightly relevant commercial content.
  - jvsg_ 4y ago
    if google search was already so bad in an environment of free money, I shudder to think what happens when that money supply ends.
  - chrischen 4y ago
    Maybe google will release “pro search” where you pay to get good search results and hide all spam/ads.
    - Yiin 4y ago
      kagi.com is doing exactly that (they're still in beta, but I'm extremely happy with the results)
- rurp 4y ago
  As great as that would be, putting more emphasis on organic search results would be one of the biggest pivots in company history. Of the countless updates they've made to the search results page I'm not sure if a single one made organic results more visible.
therein 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
albertgoeswoof 4y ago
I own a small (~500k in sales/annum) ecommerce site. Enough for 3-4 employees, premises and a small owners salary. About 50% of our sales come from organic search results (Google). We write a lot of content, have long form product pages, put out YouTube videos, sponsor blog posts, etc etc. but we have NO IDEA what really works, despite paying for services like ahrefs. All we know is that when we drop off the first page of Google (which is increasingly filled with content and ads instead of search results) our sales take a dramatic hit. And that hit could easily make or break the business and the people we employ. So Google, when you make updates like this, it has real implications on millions of small businesses. It’s not just a feature for “user engagement” or “customer satisfaction”, it’s a big deal.
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  I feel sorry for you, but in your position, my absolute first priority would be finding sales from sources other than Google. They're a private company and they have no obligation to you whatsoever.
  - albertgoeswoof 4y ago
    I agree, that’s why half our sales come from elsewhere (social media, mailing list, subscriptions etc.) But we can’t ignore the power of organic search. For most people it’s where they start when shopping With the level of power google has over us, can they really hide behind the defense of being a private company? What are the changes being made to the algorithm? Why isn’t this public knowledge? Perhaps we should augment any decline in traffic from Google via paid search ads on Google. If google really is operating as a private company, maximising shareholder value, deliberately pushing businesses onto this path is a perfectly logical strategy for them to pursue. The unfortunate implications on society is a consolidation of wealth and power and a widening gap between those who have and those who do not.
    - zikzak 4y ago
      Do you submit a feed to Google? https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en
Someone1234 4y ago
Just let me turn on and leave on verbatim mode permanently please?! Google Search is broken/terrible without it. Even with it 50% of the results are just AI generated spam, and I even have an ad-blocker filter to remove a ton of them.
- karlicoss 4y ago
  as a workaround I'm using a keyword search bookmark in firefox mapped to 'g' https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1
  - abdusco 4y ago
    what does `tbs=li:1` parameter do?
    - aeyes 4y ago
      verbatim search, the same can be found in the menu under tools -> all results -> verbatim
- anyfoo 4y ago
  This is so much a problem. I get that Google is trying to be fuzzy to serve users that are not computer literate and may phrase their queries awkwardly, but by now it seems that they have completely overshot that target. Google's search engine seems to assume that every user is 3 years old, and never interested in anything detailed, but instead trying to learn basic human tasks. This does not only not work when searching for very specific technical terms (that Google likes to replace/expand with superficially similar but completely irrelevant terms). I get that that's probably a minority of searches. But I think it's even worse for more common searches, since now the sphere of SEO spam that you will be inundated with in your results is drastically expanded, with additional spam that only matches because Google did not take your search terms more literally! And then "verbatim mode" takes way too many clicks to activate (every single time), and is mutually exclusive with setting time constraints (e.g. search results for "last month"). I understand why more and more of my queries auto-suggest "reddit" as the last term. By now, you rather have to hope that a human has asked a similar question on reddit, and that other humans happened to know the answer, instead of searching for yourself. It used to be the opposite.
AaronFriel 4y ago
Would love to see Google address scraping mirror sites such as gitmemory.com and algorithmic content farms. I've been using Bing (via DuckDuckGo) for a bit and find that it's a little bit less gamed by these things. Perhaps because those sites are optimizing for exploiting Google's algorithm?
- dmw_ng 4y ago
  Check out the uBlacklist extension, could not live without it.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Agree with filtering out the content farms, strong disagree on mirror sites --- they often have content that has been deleted for whatever reason from the original source, and it's often useful content too.
unwind 4y ago
I love how they use the word "perform" to talk about how sites rank or place in search results. It's not about them finding better results, it's about the results themselves "performing" variously well in the search. It feels so backwards, and feeds into the sad idea that all of the content is just there for Google to bring in front of ad viewers. :/ The next time I lose something around the house, and my fiancée ironizes about how bad I am at searching, I'm going to blame the search performance of the missing thing, instead.
- epolanski 4y ago
  Google is no longer in the business of finding but ranking websites.
- aleksiy123 4y ago
  I feel like this is just because they are directly addressing the webmaster who think in terms of SEO and relative rankings. On the individual level they are trying to "perform". To take your example for the seller of a specific brand of product you couldn't find. It might be a problem with their location or branding. In that case it seems like it makes sense? You are the search algorithm they are trying to game.
franze 4y ago
as I quite often get a few of "we are doomed, a core update hit us" calls whenever googles does something like this, a long time ago wrote a guide on How to do NOTHING when a core update hits you. https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/a/google-update https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/a/google-update hope someone finds it useful
PixelPaul 4y ago
Sales for my business has been great for about a year now. I was just about to hire my first person. The last few weeks sales from google clicks have dropped a LOT and I think this is why. Now I am not so sure about hiring someone. Thanks google.

96 points by taubek 4y ago

danjc 4y ago

The equivalent of “this sign has sharp edges”

edm0nd 4y ago

ProAm 4y ago

I wonder if search results will return to the first page of results?

danuker 4y ago
Based on the interest rate hikes, and therefore the need to monetize, I would guess the opposite: more only slightly relevant commercial content.
- jvsg_ 4y ago
  if google search was already so bad in an environment of free money, I shudder to think what happens when that money supply ends.
- chrischen 4y ago
  Maybe google will release “pro search” where you pay to get good search results and hide all spam/ads.
  - Yiin 4y ago
    kagi.com is doing exactly that (they're still in beta, but I'm extremely happy with the results)
rurp 4y ago
As great as that would be, putting more emphasis on organic search results would be one of the biggest pivots in company history. Of the countless updates they've made to the search results page I'm not sure if a single one made organic results more visible.

therein 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

albertgoeswoof 4y ago

I own a small (~500k in sales/annum) ecommerce site. Enough for 3-4 employees, premises and a small owners salary. About 50% of our sales come from organic search results (Google). We write a lot of content, have long form product pages, put out YouTube videos, sponsor blog posts, etc etc. but we have NO IDEA what really works, despite paying for services like ahrefs. All we know is that when we drop off the first page of Google (which is increasingly filled with content and ads instead of search results) our sales take a dramatic hit. And that hit could easily make or break the business and the people we employ. So Google, when you make updates like this, it has real implications on millions of small businesses. It’s not just a feature for “user engagement” or “customer satisfaction”, it’s a big deal.

LeoPanthera 4y ago
I feel sorry for you, but in your position, my absolute first priority would be finding sales from sources other than Google. They're a private company and they have no obligation to you whatsoever.
- albertgoeswoof 4y ago
  I agree, that’s why half our sales come from elsewhere (social media, mailing list, subscriptions etc.) But we can’t ignore the power of organic search. For most people it’s where they start when shopping With the level of power google has over us, can they really hide behind the defense of being a private company? What are the changes being made to the algorithm? Why isn’t this public knowledge? Perhaps we should augment any decline in traffic from Google via paid search ads on Google. If google really is operating as a private company, maximising shareholder value, deliberately pushing businesses onto this path is a perfectly logical strategy for them to pursue. The unfortunate implications on society is a consolidation of wealth and power and a widening gap between those who have and those who do not.
  - zikzak 4y ago
    Do you submit a feed to Google? https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7439058?hl=en

Someone1234 4y ago

Just let me turn on and leave on verbatim mode permanently please?! Google Search is broken/terrible without it. Even with it 50% of the results are just AI generated spam, and I even have an ad-blocker filter to remove a ton of them.

karlicoss 4y ago
as a workaround I'm using a keyword search bookmark in firefox mapped to 'g' https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&tbs=li:1
- abdusco 4y ago
  what does `tbs=li:1` parameter do?
  - aeyes 4y ago
    verbatim search, the same can be found in the menu under tools -> all results -> verbatim
anyfoo 4y ago
This is so much a problem. I get that Google is trying to be fuzzy to serve users that are not computer literate and may phrase their queries awkwardly, but by now it seems that they have completely overshot that target. Google's search engine seems to assume that every user is 3 years old, and never interested in anything detailed, but instead trying to learn basic human tasks. This does not only not work when searching for very specific technical terms (that Google likes to replace/expand with superficially similar but completely irrelevant terms). I get that that's probably a minority of searches. But I think it's even worse for more common searches, since now the sphere of SEO spam that you will be inundated with in your results is drastically expanded, with additional spam that only matches because Google did not take your search terms more literally! And then "verbatim mode" takes way too many clicks to activate (every single time), and is mutually exclusive with setting time constraints (e.g. search results for "last month"). I understand why more and more of my queries auto-suggest "reddit" as the last term. By now, you rather have to hope that a human has asked a similar question on reddit, and that other humans happened to know the answer, instead of searching for yourself. It used to be the opposite.

AaronFriel 4y ago

Would love to see Google address scraping mirror sites such as gitmemory.com and algorithmic content farms. I've been using Bing (via DuckDuckGo) for a bit and find that it's a little bit less gamed by these things. Perhaps because those sites are optimizing for exploiting Google's algorithm?

dmw_ng 4y ago
Check out the uBlacklist extension, could not live without it.
userbinator 4y ago
Agree with filtering out the content farms, strong disagree on mirror sites --- they often have content that has been deleted for whatever reason from the original source, and it's often useful content too.

unwind 4y ago

I love how they use the word "perform" to talk about how sites rank or place in search results. It's not about them finding better results, it's about the results themselves "performing" variously well in the search. It feels so backwards, and feeds into the sad idea that all of the content is just there for Google to bring in front of ad viewers. :/ The next time I lose something around the house, and my fiancée ironizes about how bad I am at searching, I'm going to blame the search performance of the missing thing, instead.

epolanski 4y ago
Google is no longer in the business of finding but ranking websites.
aleksiy123 4y ago
I feel like this is just because they are directly addressing the webmaster who think in terms of SEO and relative rankings. On the individual level they are trying to "perform". To take your example for the seller of a specific brand of product you couldn't find. It might be a problem with their location or branding. In that case it seems like it makes sense? You are the search algorithm they are trying to game.

franze 4y ago

as I quite often get a few of "we are doomed, a core update hit us" calls whenever googles does something like this, a long time ago wrote a guide on How to do NOTHING when a core update hits you. https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/a/google-update https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/a/google-update hope someone finds it useful

PixelPaul 4y ago

Sales for my business has been great for about a year now. I was just about to hire my first person. The last few weeks sales from google clicks have dropped a LOT and I think this is why. Now I am not so sure about hiring someone. Thanks google.