4 ms·

The problem is that Google started weighing time spent on page very heavily in their ranking algorithm - I don't remember at what point this happened but it mus

The problem is that Google started weighing time spent on page very heavily in their ranking algorithm - I don't remember at what point this happened but it must be about a decade ago by now. Every time a user clicks a Google result without using "Open in New Tab" and clicks the back button, Google gets a signal about how long they spent on the page. The longer a user spends on the site, the stronger the signal. Once all the SEO vampires figured it out, everyone started to pile on prologues to all their content, not just recipe sites. In my experience that was the beginning of the end. Any recipe site that survived had to adopt the tactic or die, leaving only the spammers and the odd outlier with actual content to write about like Serious Eats. Same thing happened to Youtube and their preview photos; even the legit content creators had to start making those stupid bug eye images.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kqr 3y ago
Yup. This is the Long Click metric. Evaluating search is difficult because it's a tension: if users click a lot, is it because they find many valuable things, or because they didn't find what they were looking for? If a user clicked just once, is it because they found what they were looking for or just that the rest of the results were so bad the user gave up? The long click (user clicked, then didn't click again for a while) is a better metric, but also not ideal: did they stay because they found what they were looking for, or was the result just that confusing they had to stay to comprehend whether it was the right thing? Most often it's because they found what they were looking for, but the pathological cases hide in the middle: many similar correct results, winner is the one that makes the user a little slower. (This has nothing to do with tabs or back buttons, by the way. It happens any time they can detect subsequent clicks on the search result page.) I've worked in the search space (though on less evil projects than Google) and I still struggle with the question on how to evaluate search. If you have ideas, let me know!
- plank 3y ago
  One idea, but people will probably hate me for it: If you return to e.g. the google search site (hence: when the long click metric would be triggered) have a dialog on top saying ‘result great / OK / bad-or-confusing’. Can probably be gamed (bot nets trying to destroy the reputation of others) but at least a long time would not automatically mean ‘great result’. (In the arms race to combat destruction, it could be so that a ‘bad-or-confusing’ click would not actually push a value down, just not make it go higher). Kind regards, Roel
  - squidbeak 3y ago
    This was tried with a +1 button around the time of Google Plus's launch.
- chillfox 3y ago
  I feel like the problem is trying to turn human experience into a metric. Probably the better approach would be to have a well staffed QA team.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    We should be mad at Yahoo for having fucked up. If anything, they could have spun out the search part and be remembered for it,.
  - agileAlligator 3y ago
    I honestly don't think it's possible to have a QA team large enough to handle the gajillions of websites that come up and disappear every day. They just have to come up with better and better metrics until they find one that approximates the human experience the best.
    - sojournerc 3y ago
      You don't have to cover the long tail... Maybe just top 10% of topics would be a big improvement.
oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
Why did people continue to engage with such trashy sites?
rchaud 3y ago
Google also massively reduced AdSense payouts over the years as well. Result? Adsense-based websites started jamming in more ads per page to maintain their old revenue levels. Pages became longer so that more ads could be thrown in.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
Where do you find out about metrics like this?
- throwup238 3y ago
  There are SEO industry nerds that scour Google patents for clues (this long click metric was an early 2010s patent that was granted in 2015), and Google lets information slip from time to time, either officially or unofficially.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

kqr 3y ago

Yup. This is the Long Click metric. Evaluating search is difficult because it's a tension: if users click a lot, is it because they find many valuable things, or because they didn't find what they were looking for? If a user clicked just once, is it because they found what they were looking for or just that the rest of the results were so bad the user gave up? The long click (user clicked, then didn't click again for a while) is a better metric, but also not ideal: did they stay because they found what they were looking for, or was the result just that confusing they had to stay to comprehend whether it was the right thing? Most often it's because they found what they were looking for, but the pathological cases hide in the middle: many similar correct results, winner is the one that makes the user a little slower. (This has nothing to do with tabs or back buttons, by the way. It happens any time they can detect subsequent clicks on the search result page.) I've worked in the search space (though on less evil projects than Google) and I still struggle with the question on how to evaluate search. If you have ideas, let me know!

plank 3y ago
One idea, but people will probably hate me for it: If you return to e.g. the google search site (hence: when the long click metric would be triggered) have a dialog on top saying ‘result great / OK / bad-or-confusing’. Can probably be gamed (bot nets trying to destroy the reputation of others) but at least a long time would not automatically mean ‘great result’. (In the arms race to combat destruction, it could be so that a ‘bad-or-confusing’ click would not actually push a value down, just not make it go higher). Kind regards, Roel
- squidbeak 3y ago
  This was tried with a +1 button around the time of Google Plus's launch.
chillfox 3y ago
I feel like the problem is trying to turn human experience into a metric. Probably the better approach would be to have a well staffed QA team.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  We should be mad at Yahoo for having fucked up. If anything, they could have spun out the search part and be remembered for it,.
- agileAlligator 3y ago
  I honestly don't think it's possible to have a QA team large enough to handle the gajillions of websites that come up and disappear every day. They just have to come up with better and better metrics until they find one that approximates the human experience the best.
  - sojournerc 3y ago
    You don't have to cover the long tail... Maybe just top 10% of topics would be a big improvement.

oneeyedpigeon 3y ago

Why did people continue to engage with such trashy sites?

rchaud 3y ago

Google also massively reduced AdSense payouts over the years as well. Result? Adsense-based websites started jamming in more ads per page to maintain their old revenue levels. Pages became longer so that more ads could be thrown in.

barbariangrunge 3y ago

Where do you find out about metrics like this?

throwup238 3y ago
There are SEO industry nerds that scour Google patents for clues (this long click metric was an early 2010s patent that was granted in 2015), and Google lets information slip from time to time, either officially or unofficially.