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I would have thought it well known by Search Engine Journal that at intervals Google implements changes that in one way or the other influences what kind of sit

I would have thought it well known by Search Engine Journal that at intervals Google implements changes that in one way or the other influences what kind of sites are rated in which way... And that, at times of change this may lead to very substantial changes in ranking, sometimes letting a lot of "irrelevant"/"lower quality" (...all this is subjective to some extent) results flow to the top for certain queries, even for a prolonged period of time... Back in the day these algo updates were quite the thing to monitor and discuss on certain SEO-related sites... That said I only comment out of casual interest as I stopped using Google more than a decade ago.

nvr219 3y ago
What do you use now for all the various things? I cut google out for most things but still use their search from time to time (and of course have to use google docs but that's because the people I'm collaborating with are on google)
- calamari4065 3y ago
  Kagi. Startpage is a good wrapper for Google if you care about privacy. (Or it was, I haven't checked in many years) DDG is worse than google, IMO. Bing works, I guess, but I trust Microsoft almost as much as I trust google. At this point I've given up on Google. If I can't find it in kagi after a bit of effort, I'll either work around it or ask a person I know in the given field. God, the internet sucks so much now. I miss the early 2000s :(
  - hedora 3y ago
    I’ve found ddg is much better than google, but switched to kagi, which is better still. For queries that fail on kagi, I check ddg and google, but it never helps. Kagi’s FastGPT works well on queries where the search engines fail, but is worse at search on average.
    - calamari4065 3y ago
      DDG has been much more aggressive about replacing my query with whatever their algorithm decides I meant. They support no advanced query operators, not even double quotes. A search engine that ignores my query and shows me something else is not super valuable to me
martinibuster 3y ago
This has nothing to do with changes in the algorithm. I've been in search for 20+ years, so I'm quite familiar with how Google works. ;) My article explains why it's likely happening. TL/DR is that spammers are likely exploiting two loopholes. 1. Longtail keywords are low competition and may trigger different algorithms. 2. Some/many of the search queries the spam ranks for trigger the more permissive Local Search algorithm Plus there are other reasons why those sites are getting through, which are discussed in detail in the article.
- lolinder 3y ago
  > My article explains why it's likely happening. Are you saying you're the author of TFA?
  - tech234a 3y ago
    Yes. If you roll over the author at the top of the article, there is a link to various other social media profiles where the author has used this username.

nvr219 3y ago

What do you use now for all the various things? I cut google out for most things but still use their search from time to time (and of course have to use google docs but that's because the people I'm collaborating with are on google)

calamari4065 3y ago
Kagi. Startpage is a good wrapper for Google if you care about privacy. (Or it was, I haven't checked in many years) DDG is worse than google, IMO. Bing works, I guess, but I trust Microsoft almost as much as I trust google. At this point I've given up on Google. If I can't find it in kagi after a bit of effort, I'll either work around it or ask a person I know in the given field. God, the internet sucks so much now. I miss the early 2000s :(
- hedora 3y ago
  I’ve found ddg is much better than google, but switched to kagi, which is better still. For queries that fail on kagi, I check ddg and google, but it never helps. Kagi’s FastGPT works well on queries where the search engines fail, but is worse at search on average.
  - calamari4065 3y ago
    DDG has been much more aggressive about replacing my query with whatever their algorithm decides I meant. They support no advanced query operators, not even double quotes. A search engine that ignores my query and shows me something else is not super valuable to me

martinibuster 3y ago

This has nothing to do with changes in the algorithm. I've been in search for 20+ years, so I'm quite familiar with how Google works. ;) My article explains why it's likely happening. TL/DR is that spammers are likely exploiting two loopholes. 1. Longtail keywords are low competition and may trigger different algorithms. 2. Some/many of the search queries the spam ranks for trigger the more permissive Local Search algorithm Plus there are other reasons why those sites are getting through, which are discussed in detail in the article.

lolinder 3y ago
> My article explains why it's likely happening. Are you saying you're the author of TFA?
- tech234a 3y ago
  Yes. If you roll over the author at the top of the article, there is a link to various other social media profiles where the author has used this username.