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Nope, Google search is bad, not because of SEO spammers, but because it prioritizes results that make money for Google, not what you're actually seeking. And f

by prmph 4y ago

Nope, Google search is bad, not because of SEO spammers, but because it prioritizes results that make money for Google, not what you're actually seeking. And for what it's worth, I think AI generated search results will actually be more resistant to spamming, since it can more deeply understand content to determine whether is it spam or not, in the same way email spam is mostly a solved problem. Of course, if entities like OpenAI become "evil", then it is a simple matter for them to render the search less useful, in the pursuit of profits.

Jensson 4y ago
I've worked at Google search, I don't think you understand what a huge cumbersome mess that codebase is, many of the complaints people have about it are probably bugs where some modifier isn't properly taken into account in some sections of it. And I never heard anyone talk about sending people to more valuable sites. Google makes most of their money from search, not on third party ads they might monetize on whatever site you get to, if even a tiny fraction stop using search due to dissatisfactory search results then that is a net loss. So from what I know the issue is scope creep and technical depth for sure. Also there isn't really one search team with one search algorithm, different kinds of searches has different people, so whatever you search for might have someone who isn't good at their job. But, to go with the greed reason you are looking for, I'd bet that if people start seeing bad results for search queries that are moneyizable they would quickly replace the person responsible for it and fix it. On the other hand, low value searches from people who aren't looking to buy anything probably costs more for them to run than they get back in ad revenue, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody at Google would notice if those got worse. In addition, since Google mostly uses internal tools with internal help pages and internal version of stack overflow their programmers wouldn't notice that it got worse either, and things that neither programmers nor money cares about wont get fixed. Lastly, I quit Google years ago and have no stocks or friends left there, I don't care about them. I just wanted to clarify a few things. Also there are a lot of money grubbers at Google, but I mostly saw that in the ads organisation, search and ads are very separated though, ads doesn't have power over search since most ad money comes from search and search is the founders darling. So when things are broken its more likely to be incompetence or bloat or something like that than evil. At least for now, will change in the future as culture there normalizes to the rest of Google/rest of companies.

by prmph 4y ago

Jensson 4y ago

I've worked at Google search, I don't think you understand what a huge cumbersome mess that codebase is, many of the complaints people have about it are probably bugs where some modifier isn't properly taken into account in some sections of it. And I never heard anyone talk about sending people to more valuable sites. Google makes most of their money from search, not on third party ads they might monetize on whatever site you get to, if even a tiny fraction stop using search due to dissatisfactory search results then that is a net loss. So from what I know the issue is scope creep and technical depth for sure. Also there isn't really one search team with one search algorithm, different kinds of searches has different people, so whatever you search for might have someone who isn't good at their job. But, to go with the greed reason you are looking for, I'd bet that if people start seeing bad results for search queries that are moneyizable they would quickly replace the person responsible for it and fix it. On the other hand, low value searches from people who aren't looking to buy anything probably costs more for them to run than they get back in ad revenue, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody at Google would notice if those got worse. In addition, since Google mostly uses internal tools with internal help pages and internal version of stack overflow their programmers wouldn't notice that it got worse either, and things that neither programmers nor money cares about wont get fixed. Lastly, I quit Google years ago and have no stocks or friends left there, I don't care about them. I just wanted to clarify a few things. Also there are a lot of money grubbers at Google, but I mostly saw that in the ads organisation, search and ads are very separated though, ads doesn't have power over search since most ad money comes from search and search is the founders darling. So when things are broken its more likely to be incompetence or bloat or something like that than evil. At least for now, will change in the future as culture there normalizes to the rest of Google/rest of companies.