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Yeah, that's one of the main issues. And it's about to get worse with the newer generative models. I don't think Google ever had a great algorithm and switched

Yeah, that's one of the main issues. And it's about to get worse with the newer generative models. I don't think Google ever had a great algorithm and switched to something worse. It's just the SEO actors putting crap out there now, and clickbait. The thing it became worse at was recommending small sites/blogs over big publications/sites. Back in the day, all they had to face was people trying to spread viruses but those results were super obvious. And they weren't even flagged back then, just users were smart enough to instantly spot it from the result.

Nextgrid 4y ago
I don't think it's that hard. It's that spam sites benefit Google so there is no incentive to do anything about it, as the spam websites may contain Google ads/analytics and contribute to Google's bottom line. Spam sites generally try to either show you lots of ads, make you click on affiliate links or outright sell you something. This can all be detected and used as a negative ranking signal, so that all else being equal, a page without advertising/affiliate links/etc would rank higher than a page with those elements. This would allow non-spam content (if it exists and matches the query) to outrank spam content.
- whatyesaid 4y ago
  Yeah, I think incentives play a part. Similar to YouTube where a cesspool is usually good for them but not for you. Given Bing and DuckDuckGo don't have the same incentives I wonder if their results are any better.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Bing and DDG have absolutely the same problem. Microsoft has turned their entire ecosystem (including OS) into an advertising-saturated cesspool. DDG might be "okay" for a while just because they're still trying to gain marketshare, but the underlying incentives are the same. A paid search engine is the only solution that aligns the end-user's incentives with the search engine provider's.
ChatGTP 4y ago
Maybe at some point the complexity of their models has grown too complicated to understand and tune. Google themselves don’t even know how their search works anymore ?

Nextgrid 4y ago

I don't think it's that hard. It's that spam sites benefit Google so there is no incentive to do anything about it, as the spam websites may contain Google ads/analytics and contribute to Google's bottom line. Spam sites generally try to either show you lots of ads, make you click on affiliate links or outright sell you something. This can all be detected and used as a negative ranking signal, so that all else being equal, a page without advertising/affiliate links/etc would rank higher than a page with those elements. This would allow non-spam content (if it exists and matches the query) to outrank spam content.

whatyesaid 4y ago
Yeah, I think incentives play a part. Similar to YouTube where a cesspool is usually good for them but not for you. Given Bing and DuckDuckGo don't have the same incentives I wonder if their results are any better.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Bing and DDG have absolutely the same problem. Microsoft has turned their entire ecosystem (including OS) into an advertising-saturated cesspool. DDG might be "okay" for a while just because they're still trying to gain marketshare, but the underlying incentives are the same. A paid search engine is the only solution that aligns the end-user's incentives with the search engine provider's.

ChatGTP 4y ago

Maybe at some point the complexity of their models has grown too complicated to understand and tune. Google themselves don’t even know how their search works anymore ?