7 ms·

I'm not sure this whole drive towards 'original content' makes sense. It encourages people to make long rambling pages that don't get to the point In fact it s

by firasd 4y ago

I'm not sure this whole drive towards 'original content' makes sense. It encourages people to make long rambling pages that don't get to the point In fact it seems like Google worked better when wikipedia was almost always the first result on various topics What I mean by rambling is if you type something like "types of oranges" and suddenly land on a page where some dude is clearly just filling up paragraphs for google like "so you want to learn about oranges? an orange is a great type of fruit. here's a bunch of text about oranges being described in historic literature"

BillinghamJ 4y ago
My impression is that this update is specifically about deranking those types of pages
amarant 4y ago
I think there's a different driving factor that. I've heard of a metric that is how long you spend on a given URL. Not sure how they gather that data, probably only gathered from Chrome users. Anyway, from what I've heard, that's the reason recipe sites have started posting 4 pages of drivel about the dish before getting to the actual recipe. Or so I've heard, I don't really have any good sources for this, could just be hearsay
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  > probably only gathered from Chrome users. Or, Google Analytics. Or Google ads. Or, if you return to Google and try other links for the same query. Or if you return to Google and refine the query (e.g., a new search where the term is within a predefined threshold of word vector similarity) There are plenty of ways to approximate time spend on link.
- smoe 4y ago
  A couple of months ago I read on various SEO blogs (they all seem to mostly copy and paste each other with little original research) that these days it is less about keywords and technical things like semantic html, but if and how long people engage with the search result. E.g. if a link to your page is shown to the user in search and they don't click or they return to search page too quickly, Google sees this as a signal that the result was not helpful.
  - naravara 4y ago
    If it's based on length of engagement this does explain the trend towards verbosity I've noticed. I assumed the long leading paragraphs and introduction and background sections were just excuses to keep dropping the keywords in, but I guess it's to make me have to spend a lot of time reading and scrolling to get to the meat of the answer.
  - stonemetal12 4y ago
    I guess that means we can use adds and tracking against itself. Any time you go to a webpage that is ad heavy quickly leave. Over time they get ranked down until they shape up or die.
whage 4y ago
This resonates with me so freaking much. I am disgusted by how every bit of information on webpages seem to be buried between paragraphs of empty EMPTY talk and even when they seem to get to the point, most of the time there is no real information there. Sorry, this had to come out. We really need better search engines.
- civilized 4y ago
  I think it's going to require a social rating system. Which is why people append "reddit" to searches these days.
  - layer8 4y ago
    It’s safe to assume that a social ranking system covering the whole web will be gamed.
    - hattmall 4y ago
      Yes, but if it's truly social it won't be easy. There need to be ways to see who did what and filter them out and various groups / spheres of influence. Just like in real life. If it is a hidden algorithmically social function then of course it will be gamed. But IRL there are certain people whose advice and recommendations you value and those whose you ignore. And in other cases you can easily ask the source of other information to find out if it is high value or not. MLM is the gamification of the IRL social structure and it's fairly easy to opt-out. That's what search needs, a way to see the path information took to be presented to you and a way to filter it. Unfortunately right now, so much of the best information is in Facebook groups, post and comments. The interface there is absolutely horrible though and not designed to provide you information, but to maximize the amount of ads that come across your screen. The same is true for video information. It's not easily searchable or digestible. The web peaked when information was predominantly text form and not fragmented into walled gardens.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        > Yes, but if it's truly social it won't be easy. There need to be ways to see who did what and filter them out and various groups / spheres of influence. Just like in real life. Appending site:news.ycombinator.com instead of Reddit?
lopis 4y ago
Clearly the end game for Google is to, also, become TikTok. 100% algorithmically sorted original content.
- pas 4y ago
  I have no problem with that if it can also read my mind and serve up what I need. Until then, I want the option to correct their generous recommendations.
darkwater 4y ago
You have just described the typical content-farm page created to game Google. I hope this update is going to lower the ranking of those pages (pages that usually have an ad every paragraph or more).
- hattmall 4y ago
  Every site needs a commercialization score and a way to filter them down. Number of ads should be a dead give away, but that's antithetical to Google's business.
  - darkwater 4y ago
    Yeah, I was going to suggest the same: farm-factory sites are easily identifiable by the number of Ads, especially on the doubleclick.net domain. But maybe for Google in the long-run would be a net positive to ban those sites anyway, due to better "organic" results and how people will see Google results.
vandreas2 4y ago
Feels like the early days of the internet when the computer savvy knew how to find what they were looking for (possibly even using early google) and everyone else was condemned to sifting through trash to get something useful. These days I find myself reaching more often for specialised search like going straight to wikipedia or amazon if I want to get a direct answer.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  I almost spit coffee all over my keyboard. "straight to ... amazon if I want to get a direct answer.". Hilarious.
Ensorceled 4y ago
The first headline is "Better ranking of original, quality content" The update literally says they are working to get rid of the type of useless content you are talking about.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
medion 4y ago
Encourages people to make long rambling pages which don’t get to the point? Ever seen YouTube, it’s exactly the same. 10-11+ min videos saying almost nothing because it’s the most lucrative length. The internet of today is just everyone gaming everything for a dollar.
- addandsubtract 4y ago
  At least Youtube has a timeline (with sometimes even chapters) that let you jump ahead. The thumbnails are also a good indication on what type of content you can expect from a video.
  - nichos 4y ago
    Web pages have a timeline in the form of a scroll bar on the right
    - dash2 4y ago
      Actually that's a cool idea, put a graph on the scroll bar which shows where most people spent their time, same as the Youtube widget.
      - addandsubtract 4y ago
        Medium kinda does something like this by highlighting the most shared part. Alternatively, you can also use AI to summarize the text on web pages.
  - ciupicri 4y ago
    Most YouTube junk does not even have a proper meaningful description, just some buzzwords for SEO.
- the_omegist 4y ago
  I sometimes search for specific keywords in the transcript of the video to directly jump to the point in very long videos. Otherwise i just click at the middle & judge.
cma 4y ago
Wikipedia doesn't bring in adsense dollars, I'm surprised it is usually still on the first page (frequently it isn't for disease searches, which have some of the highest ad spends).
machiaweliczny 4y ago
But it's very easy to exclude most popular words and use TF-IDF and Google probably uses that to devalue rambling.
dalbasal 4y ago
The dissonance is between Google's native perception and external reality: reality 1: The www exists. Google indexes it, analyzes it and delivers it to users. Users like certain things, like original content. reality 2: Google's ranking policies/algorithms influence the web. The "original content" that exists in a world without Google is different to the content that exists in a world where Google ranks such web pages more highly. Google refuse to see or present themselves in the role that they actually occupy. They avoid thinking of the search algorithm as encouraging or discouraging anything. It's just analyzing. On youtube, This mindset is even more loopy, because on youtube they actually own the platform. The recommendation engine or whatnot implements what is clearly a new policy, Youtube pretends that there was no policy to change in the first place.
- jasode 4y ago
  >Google refuse to see or present themselves in the role that they actually occupy. They avoid thinking of the search algorithm as encouraging or discouraging anything. It's just analyzing. Can you clarify what you mean by this? As an outside observer, it seems that Google recognizes that their search engine does have a "Heisenberg" effect akin to "measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the system" E.g. the Google search ranking causes the rise of content farms. Google then fights back with a new revision to the algorithm to downrank them. That constant arms race between various blackhat SEO and Google's new algorithms was commented on many times by Matt Cutts (Google former head of search quality): https://hn.algolia.com/?q=matt+cutts https://hn.algolia.com/?q=matt+cutts Another example is the RapGenius punishment by Google to discourage content that tries to game the algorithm: https://www.google.com/search?q=rapgenius+penalty+google+rankings https://www.google.com/search?q=rapgenius+penalty+google+ran... Google often makes manual human intervention e.g. M Cutts team telling HN they're looking into RapGenius SEO hack: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 Are those are not examples of Google understanding its effect on internet content that tries to game their algorithm? I think the issue is that Google's algorithm isn't perfect -- and therefore it appears like they don't discourage bad content.
  - dalbasal 4y ago
jccalhoun 4y ago
I hadn't thought that the reason they do this is to appear to have original content. It seems like distinguishing between the original source of information and a site that has a bunch of filler "original content" but just exists to republish/plagiarize some other site's content must be a difficult problem to solve.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Those types of rambling posts are clearly one of the targets of this update. From the Search Central guidance, here’s a question for site operators to ask themselves to “Avoid creating content for search engines first”: > Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't). https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-content-update https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-co...
- dmix 4y ago
  It's funny because one of the points is a) dont summarize other sites b) dont write overly long articles just to make google happy It's a shame a) is never helping with b)
antidnan 4y ago
This is especially annoying with recipes. There's usually a massive backstory that takes up 90% of the page. Some recipe websites even post a button to jump directly to the recipe, at least they're self-aware.
- fatherzine 4y ago
  I used to search for recipes on the Internet. The spam became unbearable. Then I spent $30 on a cookbook, one recipe per page. Very happy with the outcome. Simple, fast, effective: it just works. Happiness meta-rule: Throw electronics away, use analog equivalents instead.
badwolf 4y ago
literally every dang recipe website in the universe... Ugh.
_hcuq 4y ago
Yeah. The more words, the more space to insert ads. Then people tap on those ads by mistake when scrolling.
MicolashKyoka 4y ago
An AI trained on the body of verified human knowledge that understands natural language could replace a good deal of the googling done by people. In an ideal world, such an endeavor would be supported by governments all around the world (or a single "Earth government"), with yearly updates to keep up with the state of the art.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
yes, yes, and yes! I've started just closing the tab. I don't give a shit that a certain country planted oranges and it gave them naval superiority, I want to know what types of oranges there are!
_the_inflator 4y ago
I agree. That's why I habitually add "wiki" to most of my search phrases in the first place, in order to circumvent the whole SEO trash and get to the point. Google prolly cannot earn money simply by featuring high quality stuff like Wikipedia or nerd websites. Usually SEO farms spend money on Google to earn money. So that's why search really cannot improve in my opinion due to this conflict of interest.

by firasd 4y ago

BillinghamJ 4y ago

My impression is that this update is specifically about deranking those types of pages

amarant 4y ago

I think there's a different driving factor that. I've heard of a metric that is how long you spend on a given URL. Not sure how they gather that data, probably only gathered from Chrome users. Anyway, from what I've heard, that's the reason recipe sites have started posting 4 pages of drivel about the dish before getting to the actual recipe. Or so I've heard, I don't really have any good sources for this, could just be hearsay

wodenokoto 4y ago
> probably only gathered from Chrome users. Or, Google Analytics. Or Google ads. Or, if you return to Google and try other links for the same query. Or if you return to Google and refine the query (e.g., a new search where the term is within a predefined threshold of word vector similarity) There are plenty of ways to approximate time spend on link.
smoe 4y ago
A couple of months ago I read on various SEO blogs (they all seem to mostly copy and paste each other with little original research) that these days it is less about keywords and technical things like semantic html, but if and how long people engage with the search result. E.g. if a link to your page is shown to the user in search and they don't click or they return to search page too quickly, Google sees this as a signal that the result was not helpful.
- naravara 4y ago
  If it's based on length of engagement this does explain the trend towards verbosity I've noticed. I assumed the long leading paragraphs and introduction and background sections were just excuses to keep dropping the keywords in, but I guess it's to make me have to spend a lot of time reading and scrolling to get to the meat of the answer.
- stonemetal12 4y ago
  I guess that means we can use adds and tracking against itself. Any time you go to a webpage that is ad heavy quickly leave. Over time they get ranked down until they shape up or die.

whage 4y ago

This resonates with me so freaking much. I am disgusted by how every bit of information on webpages seem to be buried between paragraphs of empty EMPTY talk and even when they seem to get to the point, most of the time there is no real information there. Sorry, this had to come out. We really need better search engines.

civilized 4y ago
I think it's going to require a social rating system. Which is why people append "reddit" to searches these days.
- layer8 4y ago
  It’s safe to assume that a social ranking system covering the whole web will be gamed.
  - hattmall 4y ago
    Yes, but if it's truly social it won't be easy. There need to be ways to see who did what and filter them out and various groups / spheres of influence. Just like in real life. If it is a hidden algorithmically social function then of course it will be gamed. But IRL there are certain people whose advice and recommendations you value and those whose you ignore. And in other cases you can easily ask the source of other information to find out if it is high value or not. MLM is the gamification of the IRL social structure and it's fairly easy to opt-out. That's what search needs, a way to see the path information took to be presented to you and a way to filter it. Unfortunately right now, so much of the best information is in Facebook groups, post and comments. The interface there is absolutely horrible though and not designed to provide you information, but to maximize the amount of ads that come across your screen. The same is true for video information. It's not easily searchable or digestible. The web peaked when information was predominantly text form and not fragmented into walled gardens.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      > Yes, but if it's truly social it won't be easy. There need to be ways to see who did what and filter them out and various groups / spheres of influence. Just like in real life. Appending site:news.ycombinator.com instead of Reddit?

lopis 4y ago

Clearly the end game for Google is to, also, become TikTok. 100% algorithmically sorted original content.

pas 4y ago
I have no problem with that if it can also read my mind and serve up what I need. Until then, I want the option to correct their generous recommendations.

darkwater 4y ago

You have just described the typical content-farm page created to game Google. I hope this update is going to lower the ranking of those pages (pages that usually have an ad every paragraph or more).

hattmall 4y ago
Every site needs a commercialization score and a way to filter them down. Number of ads should be a dead give away, but that's antithetical to Google's business.
- darkwater 4y ago
  Yeah, I was going to suggest the same: farm-factory sites are easily identifiable by the number of Ads, especially on the doubleclick.net domain. But maybe for Google in the long-run would be a net positive to ban those sites anyway, due to better "organic" results and how people will see Google results.

vandreas2 4y ago

Feels like the early days of the internet when the computer savvy knew how to find what they were looking for (possibly even using early google) and everyone else was condemned to sifting through trash to get something useful. These days I find myself reaching more often for specialised search like going straight to wikipedia or amazon if I want to get a direct answer.

ROTMetro 4y ago
I almost spit coffee all over my keyboard. "straight to ... amazon if I want to get a direct answer.". Hilarious.

Ensorceled 4y ago

The first headline is "Better ranking of original, quality content" The update literally says they are working to get rid of the type of useless content you are talking about.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

medion 4y ago

Encourages people to make long rambling pages which don’t get to the point? Ever seen YouTube, it’s exactly the same. 10-11+ min videos saying almost nothing because it’s the most lucrative length. The internet of today is just everyone gaming everything for a dollar.

addandsubtract 4y ago
At least Youtube has a timeline (with sometimes even chapters) that let you jump ahead. The thumbnails are also a good indication on what type of content you can expect from a video.
- nichos 4y ago
  Web pages have a timeline in the form of a scroll bar on the right
  - dash2 4y ago
    Actually that's a cool idea, put a graph on the scroll bar which shows where most people spent their time, same as the Youtube widget.
    - addandsubtract 4y ago
      Medium kinda does something like this by highlighting the most shared part. Alternatively, you can also use AI to summarize the text on web pages.
- ciupicri 4y ago
  Most YouTube junk does not even have a proper meaningful description, just some buzzwords for SEO.
the_omegist 4y ago
I sometimes search for specific keywords in the transcript of the video to directly jump to the point in very long videos. Otherwise i just click at the middle & judge.

cma 4y ago

Wikipedia doesn't bring in adsense dollars, I'm surprised it is usually still on the first page (frequently it isn't for disease searches, which have some of the highest ad spends).

machiaweliczny 4y ago

But it's very easy to exclude most popular words and use TF-IDF and Google probably uses that to devalue rambling.

dalbasal 4y ago

The dissonance is between Google's native perception and external reality: reality 1: The www exists. Google indexes it, analyzes it and delivers it to users. Users like certain things, like original content. reality 2: Google's ranking policies/algorithms influence the web. The "original content" that exists in a world without Google is different to the content that exists in a world where Google ranks such web pages more highly. Google refuse to see or present themselves in the role that they actually occupy. They avoid thinking of the search algorithm as encouraging or discouraging anything. It's just analyzing. On youtube, This mindset is even more loopy, because on youtube they actually own the platform. The recommendation engine or whatnot implements what is clearly a new policy, Youtube pretends that there was no policy to change in the first place.

jasode 4y ago
>Google refuse to see or present themselves in the role that they actually occupy. They avoid thinking of the search algorithm as encouraging or discouraging anything. It's just analyzing. Can you clarify what you mean by this? As an outside observer, it seems that Google recognizes that their search engine does have a "Heisenberg" effect akin to "measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the system" E.g. the Google search ranking causes the rise of content farms. Google then fights back with a new revision to the algorithm to downrank them. That constant arms race between various blackhat SEO and Google's new algorithms was commented on many times by Matt Cutts (Google former head of search quality): https://hn.algolia.com/?q=matt+cutts https://hn.algolia.com/?q=matt+cutts Another example is the RapGenius punishment by Google to discourage content that tries to game the algorithm: https://www.google.com/search?q=rapgenius+penalty+google+rankings https://www.google.com/search?q=rapgenius+penalty+google+ran... Google often makes manual human intervention e.g. M Cutts team telling HN they're looking into RapGenius SEO hack: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658 Are those are not examples of Google understanding its effect on internet content that tries to game their algorithm? I think the issue is that Google's algorithm isn't perfect -- and therefore it appears like they don't discourage bad content.
- dalbasal 4y ago

jccalhoun 4y ago

I hadn't thought that the reason they do this is to appear to have original content. It seems like distinguishing between the original source of information and a site that has a bunch of filler "original content" but just exists to republish/plagiarize some other site's content must be a difficult problem to solve.

snowwrestler 4y ago

Those types of rambling posts are clearly one of the targets of this update. From the Search Central guidance, here’s a question for site operators to ask themselves to “Avoid creating content for search engines first”: > Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't). https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-content-update https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/08/helpful-co...

dmix 4y ago
It's funny because one of the points is a) dont summarize other sites b) dont write overly long articles just to make google happy It's a shame a) is never helping with b)

antidnan 4y ago

This is especially annoying with recipes. There's usually a massive backstory that takes up 90% of the page. Some recipe websites even post a button to jump directly to the recipe, at least they're self-aware.

fatherzine 4y ago
I used to search for recipes on the Internet. The spam became unbearable. Then I spent $30 on a cookbook, one recipe per page. Very happy with the outcome. Simple, fast, effective: it just works. Happiness meta-rule: Throw electronics away, use analog equivalents instead.

badwolf 4y ago

literally every dang recipe website in the universe... Ugh.

_hcuq 4y ago

Yeah. The more words, the more space to insert ads. Then people tap on those ads by mistake when scrolling.

MicolashKyoka 4y ago

An AI trained on the body of verified human knowledge that understands natural language could replace a good deal of the googling done by people. In an ideal world, such an endeavor would be supported by governments all around the world (or a single "Earth government"), with yearly updates to keep up with the state of the art.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

yes, yes, and yes! I've started just closing the tab. I don't give a shit that a certain country planted oranges and it gave them naval superiority, I want to know what types of oranges there are!

_the_inflator 4y ago

I agree. That's why I habitually add "wiki" to most of my search phrases in the first place, in order to circumvent the whole SEO trash and get to the point. Google prolly cannot earn money simply by featuring high quality stuff like Wikipedia or nerd websites. Usually SEO farms spend money on Google to earn money. So that's why search really cannot improve in my opinion due to this conflict of interest.