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I've noticed the same thing recently: Googling for common programming stuff (in a language I don't normally use) will turn up results that usually answer the qu
by TillE 3y ago
I've noticed the same thing recently: Googling for common programming stuff (in a language I don't normally use) will turn up results that usually answer the question, but they're bloated with preamble and filler.
I wonder how far Google could get with manual curation. Like if they said, these sites (eg, Stack Overflow, official documentation) have been around forever and have high-quality content, let's crank up their rankings for the appropriate classes of queries. That has its own problems, but it's gotta be better than the status quo.
- bun_at_work 3y agoThe thing is, even if Google _could_ they aren't incentivized to. They are more incentivized to show the ad-ridden content, because often the websites are using Google itself to display the ads. In the case described in the linked post, Google potentially benefits twice, financially. Why would they want to reduce their profit by showing the more relevant posts (those that quickly get to the answer)? I don't know though, maybe StackOverflow also uses Google for their ads, but a quick looks suggests they simply have less ads than the results above them in the article's example search.