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> Over years they were slowly degrading search experience because making search better, faster and more efficient means we would spend less time watching ads.

by ffsm8 2y ago

> Over years they were slowly degrading search experience because making search better, faster and more efficient means we would spend less time watching ads. That honestly sounds like revisionism to fit your narrative. Occam's razor would decree that the degradation simply came through SEO, and it's inverse correlation of quality (SEO means essentially pushing terrible content higher for advertising revenue) It most likely wasn't Google's aim to reduce their search quality, it was just a side effect of them becoming too successful, that it became unreasonably profitable to game the system

SXX 2y ago
Google actually have a daily history of internet available on palm of their hand as well as insane access to both user behaviour (Android, Chrome) and website statistics (Analytics, Adsense, Google DNS, etc). They had the power to not succumb to "SEO" content spam, but this wouldn't improve their ads revenue baseline. Pushing their own services and centralised internet on other hand...
zo1 2y ago
The feedback loop with Google is they got better and better at indexing everything, so more "indexable" content got created to take advantage of it. There was probably some sort of tipping point where normal human behavior and content-generation couldn't keep up with Google's increased capability, so the increase came in generated/copied/llmd/spam content which outpaced the natural growth of real content. This further pushed google to get better and better at "indexing" everything, making the issue worse. Cherry on top for Google: Due to the sheer "volume" of content this loop ended up creating, it posed a larger moat for any new entrants into the search market thus strengthening their monopoly position. There will be a subsequent tipping point: Where due to the sheer volume of generated/spammed/seo crap on the internet, the volume of "real" content will be so small that it'll become within reach of being indexable again by smaller players. We're already seeing this to some extent, and it'll only get better.
- Majromax 2y ago
  > Where due to the sheer volume of generated/spammed/seo crap on the internet, the volume of "real" content will be so small that it'll become within reach of being indexable again by smaller players. Will it be discoverable, though?
croes 2y ago
It wasn't SSO that put ads before the real search results. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  SEO didn't get rid of the yellow backgrounds on ads either. A few times during the peak of LLM fever I found that I could search an LLM-related term and get zero organic results above the fold. Every visible "result" was actually an ad disguised as a result.

by ffsm8 2y ago

SXX 2y ago

Google actually have a daily history of internet available on palm of their hand as well as insane access to both user behaviour (Android, Chrome) and website statistics (Analytics, Adsense, Google DNS, etc). They had the power to not succumb to "SEO" content spam, but this wouldn't improve their ads revenue baseline. Pushing their own services and centralised internet on other hand...

zo1 2y ago

The feedback loop with Google is they got better and better at indexing everything, so more "indexable" content got created to take advantage of it. There was probably some sort of tipping point where normal human behavior and content-generation couldn't keep up with Google's increased capability, so the increase came in generated/copied/llmd/spam content which outpaced the natural growth of real content. This further pushed google to get better and better at "indexing" everything, making the issue worse. Cherry on top for Google: Due to the sheer "volume" of content this loop ended up creating, it posed a larger moat for any new entrants into the search market thus strengthening their monopoly position. There will be a subsequent tipping point: Where due to the sheer volume of generated/spammed/seo crap on the internet, the volume of "real" content will be so small that it'll become within reach of being indexable again by smaller players. We're already seeing this to some extent, and it'll only get better.

Majromax 2y ago
> Where due to the sheer volume of generated/spammed/seo crap on the internet, the volume of "real" content will be so small that it'll become within reach of being indexable again by smaller players. Will it be discoverable, though?

croes 2y ago

It wasn't SSO that put ads before the real search results. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976

schmidtleonard 2y ago
SEO didn't get rid of the yellow backgrounds on ads either. A few times during the peak of LLM fever I found that I could search an LLM-related term and get zero organic results above the fold. Every visible "result" was actually an ad disguised as a result.