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This is a bit tongue in cheek, but it is also kind of true: The easiest way for Google to detect spammy, low-quality content is to ... simply add up the number
by quitit 3y ago
This is a bit tongue in cheek, but it is also kind of true:
The easiest way for Google to detect spammy, low-quality content is to ... simply add up the number of Google Ads placements on the page.
Those flooding the internet with garbage content are doing so because the verbiage is tightly intermingled with Google Ad placements, that's the business model.
Google -could- go a step further and deactivate those accounts, but that would impact their revenue, so nah.
- xnx 3y agoIn general, I believe Google's ranking system attempts to be hands-off and not hard-code what factors might correlate to good/bad rankings, but I do wonder if they had to put in a special rule to ignore any automatic quality signals related to their own ad system (or competitors!). It would make sense to do this for revenue preservation reasons, but I wonder if they also might have to do it for anti-trust reasons.
- quitit 3y agoWhile we're just shooting the breeze, there is still something to what you're saying here. It's a long held complaint that Google's ad/analytics/tracking scripts slow down page load/page render times. It's also long held that Google prioritise speed in rankings. My guess is that they'd be excluding their own scripts and ad load times as part of that page load calculation, even though that is not a genuine result and would down-rank pages that utilise competitor ad platforms.
- Jensson 3y agoGoogle is really bad at large scale coherent strategies. Google search ranking teams are almost completely isolated from Google ad teams. It is like two different companies and cultures, Google ads is run a lot more like Amazon.
- jseliger 3y agoI feel like I've read dozens of announcements from Google regarding its efforts to improve search quality. That can't be literally true, but the sense of deja vu inculcates a certain skepticism. In a links post I just published (https://jakeseliger.com/2024/03/05/links-a-moon-landing-rapidly-advancing-biology-bureaucrats-culture-and-more/ https://jakeseliger.com/2024/03/05/links-a-moon-landing-rapi...), I wrote: Still, the Google search monopoly is under more serious threat than it’s been in the company’s history, and that may inspire real change. Amusingly, I used Google search to try and find a video of Sergey Brin saying that he’s un-retired to come back to work on AI, and Google search didn’t easily find it—but it turned up a bunch of spammy YouTube videos.
- renewiltord 3y agoIt's an arms race, so "we are improving search against spam" is a thing they will post when they fall behind sufficiently. This goes all the way back to the "Panda" update ten years or so ago. It's been a thing for ages because they've got a Red Queen problem.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- janalsncm 3y agoThere was a freakonomics podcast episode about this the other day. Basically, plumbers with names like “AAA Plumbing” tend to be worse. Plumbers who can’t compete on service tend to try to directly game the rankings.
- rchaud 3y agoIn this case, 'tend to be worse' could simply mean they receive more negative reviews, because the overall volume of jobs they pick up is huge compared to plumbers who didn't try to manipulate where they appeared in the directory. Happy customers leave fewer reviews than angry ones.