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I disagree - Google can and should modify their algorithms until the site that users actually want is first. Tracking which sites users click on for those searc

I disagree - Google can and should modify their algorithms until the site that users actually want is first. Tracking which sites users click on for those searches, or maybe which sites users with those searches click on last should give a pretty strong signal that python.org should be ranked far above the spam farms no matter what the content percentage difference is. Content percentage is a clearly gameable metric that shouldn't outweigh other factors. I'm honestly surprised Google employees haven't fixed this somehow, surely they have thousands of people running into this problem daily.

imchillyb 3y ago
> Google can and should modify their algorithms until the site that users actually want is first. Why? Google is an ad company, that has integrated search. Why would they cut their own bottom line in order to make data happy? You aren’t their customer. You are Google’s data. Google’s customers buy your data. Why would they change anything about their business model, which works amazingly well?
- criddell 3y ago
  > Google’s customers buy your data AFAIK, Google doesn’t sell user data.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-...
- mint2 3y ago
  Because not paying attention to the quality of the product means google is A-okay with the normal brand arc and is on the part where the brand cuts quality to boost profits while coasting on name recognition- I.e the enshittification phase. They can coast for an indeterminate amount of time, but with the risk that eventually the consumer will be fed up and stop using them, especially if a decent alternative pops up.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    Decent alternatives have been bandied about here for over a decade. Guess what? There are none. Google’s business model is selling user data to the highest bidder. Google’s other business model is selling opportunity to collect data on people. You as a search user are not a customer, but a data point. There is literally no incentive for this to change. Desiring an ad company to not show ads is a ridiculous desire.
    - mint2 3y ago
      That’s not quite right - users are customers paying for a service, search, in exchange for a payment, I.e. their time and eyeballs. At the same time google coordinates with their other customer and swaps the time and eyeballs for money. But users are definitely a customer paying with time in return for search results. If the product becomes too obnoxious, people don’t even need an alternative to quit. It’s happened with other products. Not everyone will quit, but the customer base will shrink.
      - imchillyb 3y ago
        Google owns chrome, and chromium. Google’s data gathering isn’t just search. Anyone not using Firefox, and even those who are using Firefox, is gifting Google data. That data is worth more than search results or search data. Google knows where you browse. Google knows how many clicks, scrolls, and keys pressed. Google knows what your email contents and preferences. Search is a tiny portion of Google’s data collection behemoth and whether users quit Google search for bingo search doesn’t matter much to them.
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  Their business model depends on users finding their search results useful. I think Google’s business is far more fragile than it looks. That’s why they’re doing all the things that are now in the crosshairs of regulators.
skilled 3y ago
Google has never worked this way. By adding more examples to an SEO article you are also actively farming long-tail clicks, which will make people spend more time on the page and if Google was to use that as a metric (there have been rumours) then it is beneficial to the SEO site as well. Like I said, Python or any other language can fix this issue by changing the entire mindset of how documentation is built. You can then get the OSS community involved on GitHub to slam dunk on all the SEO spammers. Just look at MDN or Web.dev, both have their content repos up on GitHub and people contribute metric tons of useful info. And both of these sites have healthy standings in the context of SEO.
- pie_flavor 3y ago
  No, MDN routinely loses to w3schools and geeksforgeeks too.
  - skilled 3y ago
    I do agree with you but I didn’t feel it was necessary to point that out. MDN doesn’t use SEO titles so my guess is, that is where it loses out a bit, but for most in-depth JS/CSS stuff, I generally get MDN as a top result. Can’t remember the last time I visited W3S/GFG to be honest. It’s about to get worse though as it appears that DigitalOcean is putting a nail in the coffin for CSS-Tricks and Google will absolutely demote it because of inactivity, only the most linked-to pages will survive until DO decides to shit the bed and try and move the entire site to their Tutorials platform.
- SenAnder 3y ago
  > Like I said, Python or any other language can fix this issue by changing the entire mindset of how documentation is built. Please, please, I beg of you, in the name of all that is holy, do not push for SEO bloat in documentation!
- lesuorac 3y ago
  I mean at one point Google never returned image results. Certainly some of the Python queries could return a card promoting a result from python.org just like other queries return a card promoting wikipedia.org
motoboi 3y ago
It seems that you believe Google is not taking those signals in consideration in their algorithm. Google search rank has been an ML driven algorithm for ages now and take into account dozens of signals. User rejection (how fast people come back to the search from a result click) and obviously which results get clicked more often are examples of that.
- miloignis 3y ago
  I do believe that they do this, but that their weighting is off, sorry for not being clear. I was mostly responding to the parent comment talking about ratios. Based on other comments saying they like the sites I consider spammy, maybe the weights aren't even wrong, they're just not optimized for me!
raincole 3y ago
> Google can and should modify their algorithms until the site that users actually want is first. Who, exactly? A professional Python programmer probably has their IDE/editor set up so it can shows a brief document for `str.endswith` already. Someone who is new to Python (probably not even a programmer yet) might actually prefer the hand-holding from those content farm pages. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37483100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37483100
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > A professional Python programmer probably has their IDE/editor set up so it can shows a brief document for `str.endswith` already. Someone who is new to Python (probably not even a programmer yet) might actually prefer the hand-holding from those content farm pages. Someone who has been exposed to the most basic Python features and knows they want info on str.endswith can just type help(str.endswith) in the Python interactive environment.
  - hedora 3y ago
    So, maybe google should tell them that and turn away their business?
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      I’m saying that fact shapes the set of people resorting to Google in the first place and what they are looking for.
  - danaris 3y ago
    Which is all very well (and for something simple like str.endswith might well be enough), but for many things, even a professional Python programmer might either a) not remember the exact name of the method or other thing they're looking up, or b) want a more detailed explanation or examples showing usage. None of that is going to be given either in an IDE or from help().
- soraminazuki 3y ago
schaefer 3y ago
> Google can and should modify their algorithms until the site that users actually want is first. That is what Google is doing! But remember, the advertiser is the user, not the person running the search. If you want to be the user, and get good search, pay for kagi.
binary132 3y ago
How do you know their users don’t actually want these other sites and would rather read the formal docs?
- convolvatron 3y ago
  I've been doing a little python lately. the top hits are 80% ads, and if they even have what you want its buried after 2-3 pages of nonsensical crap. this isn't a real choice
kalupa 3y ago
but will this strategy give them more advertising impressions or clicks? if not, then why bother? Google dropped it's desire to be user-friendly quite a while ago, when it became clear that it didn't matter if they were serving anyone but it's advertisers

imchillyb 3y ago

> Google can and should modify their algorithms until the site that users actually want is first. Why? Google is an ad company, that has integrated search. Why would they cut their own bottom line in order to make data happy? You aren’t their customer. You are Google’s data. Google’s customers buy your data. Why would they change anything about their business model, which works amazingly well?

criddell 3y ago
> Google’s customers buy your data AFAIK, Google doesn’t sell user data.
- imchillyb 3y ago
  > https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-...
mint2 3y ago
Because not paying attention to the quality of the product means google is A-okay with the normal brand arc and is on the part where the brand cuts quality to boost profits while coasting on name recognition- I.e the enshittification phase. They can coast for an indeterminate amount of time, but with the risk that eventually the consumer will be fed up and stop using them, especially if a decent alternative pops up.
- imchillyb 3y ago
  Decent alternatives have been bandied about here for over a decade. Guess what? There are none. Google’s business model is selling user data to the highest bidder. Google’s other business model is selling opportunity to collect data on people. You as a search user are not a customer, but a data point. There is literally no incentive for this to change. Desiring an ad company to not show ads is a ridiculous desire.
  - mint2 3y ago
    That’s not quite right - users are customers paying for a service, search, in exchange for a payment, I.e. their time and eyeballs. At the same time google coordinates with their other customer and swaps the time and eyeballs for money. But users are definitely a customer paying with time in return for search results. If the product becomes too obnoxious, people don’t even need an alternative to quit. It’s happened with other products. Not everyone will quit, but the customer base will shrink.
    - imchillyb 3y ago
      Google owns chrome, and chromium. Google’s data gathering isn’t just search. Anyone not using Firefox, and even those who are using Firefox, is gifting Google data. That data is worth more than search results or search data. Google knows where you browse. Google knows how many clicks, scrolls, and keys pressed. Google knows what your email contents and preferences. Search is a tiny portion of Google’s data collection behemoth and whether users quit Google search for bingo search doesn’t matter much to them.
fauigerzigerk 3y ago
Their business model depends on users finding their search results useful. I think Google’s business is far more fragile than it looks. That’s why they’re doing all the things that are now in the crosshairs of regulators.

skilled 3y ago

Google has never worked this way. By adding more examples to an SEO article you are also actively farming long-tail clicks, which will make people spend more time on the page and if Google was to use that as a metric (there have been rumours) then it is beneficial to the SEO site as well. Like I said, Python or any other language can fix this issue by changing the entire mindset of how documentation is built. You can then get the OSS community involved on GitHub to slam dunk on all the SEO spammers. Just look at MDN or Web.dev, both have their content repos up on GitHub and people contribute metric tons of useful info. And both of these sites have healthy standings in the context of SEO.

pie_flavor 3y ago
No, MDN routinely loses to w3schools and geeksforgeeks too.
- skilled 3y ago
  I do agree with you but I didn’t feel it was necessary to point that out. MDN doesn’t use SEO titles so my guess is, that is where it loses out a bit, but for most in-depth JS/CSS stuff, I generally get MDN as a top result. Can’t remember the last time I visited W3S/GFG to be honest. It’s about to get worse though as it appears that DigitalOcean is putting a nail in the coffin for CSS-Tricks and Google will absolutely demote it because of inactivity, only the most linked-to pages will survive until DO decides to shit the bed and try and move the entire site to their Tutorials platform.
SenAnder 3y ago
> Like I said, Python or any other language can fix this issue by changing the entire mindset of how documentation is built. Please, please, I beg of you, in the name of all that is holy, do not push for SEO bloat in documentation!
lesuorac 3y ago
I mean at one point Google never returned image results. Certainly some of the Python queries could return a card promoting a result from python.org just like other queries return a card promoting wikipedia.org

motoboi 3y ago

It seems that you believe Google is not taking those signals in consideration in their algorithm. Google search rank has been an ML driven algorithm for ages now and take into account dozens of signals. User rejection (how fast people come back to the search from a result click) and obviously which results get clicked more often are examples of that.

miloignis 3y ago
I do believe that they do this, but that their weighting is off, sorry for not being clear. I was mostly responding to the parent comment talking about ratios. Based on other comments saying they like the sites I consider spammy, maybe the weights aren't even wrong, they're just not optimized for me!

raincole 3y ago

> Google can and should modify their algorithms until the site that users actually want is first. Who, exactly? A professional Python programmer probably has their IDE/editor set up so it can shows a brief document for `str.endswith` already. Someone who is new to Python (probably not even a programmer yet) might actually prefer the hand-holding from those content farm pages. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37483100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37483100

dragonwriter 3y ago
> A professional Python programmer probably has their IDE/editor set up so it can shows a brief document for `str.endswith` already. Someone who is new to Python (probably not even a programmer yet) might actually prefer the hand-holding from those content farm pages. Someone who has been exposed to the most basic Python features and knows they want info on str.endswith can just type help(str.endswith) in the Python interactive environment.
- hedora 3y ago
  So, maybe google should tell them that and turn away their business?
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    I’m saying that fact shapes the set of people resorting to Google in the first place and what they are looking for.
- danaris 3y ago
  Which is all very well (and for something simple like str.endswith might well be enough), but for many things, even a professional Python programmer might either a) not remember the exact name of the method or other thing they're looking up, or b) want a more detailed explanation or examples showing usage. None of that is going to be given either in an IDE or from help().
soraminazuki 3y ago

schaefer 3y ago

> Google can and should modify their algorithms until the site that users actually want is first. That is what Google is doing! But remember, the advertiser is the user, not the person running the search. If you want to be the user, and get good search, pay for kagi.

binary132 3y ago

How do you know their users don’t actually want these other sites and would rather read the formal docs?

convolvatron 3y ago
I've been doing a little python lately. the top hits are 80% ads, and if they even have what you want its buried after 2-3 pages of nonsensical crap. this isn't a real choice

kalupa 3y ago

but will this strategy give them more advertising impressions or clicks? if not, then why bother? Google dropped it's desire to be user-friendly quite a while ago, when it became clear that it didn't matter if they were serving anyone but it's advertisers