[HN Gopher] Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam
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       Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam
        
       Author : tablet
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2022-11-25 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mdubakov.medium.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mdubakov.medium.com)
        
       | imagetic wrote:
       | Can't say I'm ever surprised to see another "WTF Google" post.
       | The search has degraded a lot over the years.
       | 
       | With that said, I've tried to switch on more than one occasion
       | and Bing might be the only alternative that worked for me.
       | DuckDuckGo is always way off the mark, no matter how many chances
       | I've given it over the years. Google still wins, even with the
       | ads and spammy stuff.
        
         | ksidudwbw wrote:
         | Brave Search has done it for me
        
         | bluepoint wrote:
         | Some people here a few days ago recommended kagi, a paid
         | service with a limited free option. I have been trying it and
         | so far the results seem great!
        
           | dylanowen wrote:
           | Kagi has been amazing: verbatim mode that actually works,
           | blocking sites you don't want to see, boosting sites you
           | always want to prioritize, and lists of sites you can
           | customize for specific searches.
        
             | autotune wrote:
             | Based off your recommendation and others, and looking at
             | the site and it's features, I am going to sign up for a
             | month and give it a real try. I've been using google since
             | the beginning and it feels time for a change.
        
           | boxed wrote:
           | I've switched. It's great at least for devs.
        
       | tommek4077 wrote:
       | They earn on both. Ads and the ad cramped seo stuff. So they
       | probably wont change anything. And this is the case for the last
       | ten years.
        
       | tintor wrote:
       | DuckDuckGo
        
       | more_corn wrote:
       | Just switch search engines.
        
         | miguelazo wrote:
         | To what? I'm unaware of any decent alternatives, unfortunately.
         | I have all my defaults set to DuckDuckGo, but as soon as I
         | search anything remotely uncommon, I end up having to switch to
         | Google (although at least you can block the ad results with
         | Ublock Origin browser extension).
        
           | helph67 wrote:
           | There are search engines that value your privacy. Qwant
           | https://www.qwant.com/ Ecosia https://www.ecosia.org/ and
           | Start Page https://www.startpage.com/
           | 
           | This page may also help...
           | https://www.kylepiira.com/2020/02/07/which-search-engine-
           | has...
        
           | thewebcount wrote:
           | I've had very good luck with a paid account at kagi.com. They
           | have many filtering options to remove sites you don't ever
           | want to see (like Pinterest, allrecipes.com, etc.).
        
           | sli wrote:
           | I still have to fall back to Google sometimes but DDG covers
           | a good 80% of my search usage just fine. Any amount of
           | switching is better than none at all, even if just to push
           | back against Google's hegemony however we can.
        
       | hienyimba wrote:
       | Whenever articles like these are published, I wonder who the
       | Author thinks does the work of writing free articles on the
       | Internet just for their pleasure. Content is expensive and is
       | created by writers who must be paid.
       | 
       | To demand quality articles from the Internet, you must be willing
       | to pay for them. Nobody exists just to write free passionate
       | articles on the Internet and earn no money from them.
        
         | newZWhoDis wrote:
         | It was that way for more than decade. The internet used to be
         | nothing but passion projects
        
         | Veen wrote:
         | Plus, Mr. Dubakov knows damn well why people write those types
         | of articles. In fact, he's published quite a few shallow search
         | optimized articles on the same Medium blog he's using to
         | complain about the practice and on the Fibery blog. He does it
         | to publicize his startup, just like most of the others.
         | 
         | e.g.
         | 
         | 10 Top Product Marketing Bullshit Things in 2022
         | 
         | Survival guide for an introverted CEO
         | 
         | 10 worst interview questions
         | 
         | 5 Biggest Problems in Software Development
         | 
         | Overcoming fear of public speaking in 8 easy & honest tips
        
       | butz wrote:
       | A huge issue is when one is googling for some obscure issue or
       | error message at work, and end up in a fake website with NSFW
       | content or banners.
        
       | Bellamy wrote:
       | Great ending: "Hug me please." Love it.
        
       | chopete3 wrote:
       | There is a simple way to show your frustration.
       | 
       | 1. Buy Google stock
       | 
       | 2. Google has to show more ads to keep market hype on stock
       | price.
       | 
       | 3. They will fill 2 pages instead of current one page with ads.
       | And then 3 and 4...
       | 
       | 4. You buy more stock and protect your down side.
       | 
       | 5. They will insert 2-3 times more ads per video on youtube.
       | 
       | At some point the average person will loose Google. You win big
       | on stocks until then.
       | 
       | /sarcasm - pls dont do this.
        
       | tlogan wrote:
       | I looked the results for "remote work best practices" and they
       | all seems a valid articles. Not really SEO spam.
       | 
       | Which article is considered as not spam? HRB one? Really?
        
       | bluepoint wrote:
       | I don't know if everyone knows that SEO stands for search engine
       | optimization and it is
       | 
       | > the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a
       | particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the
       | list of results returned by a search engine.
        
         | UIUC_06 wrote:
         | Do you think there's anyone on HN who doesn't know "If you
         | don't know what something is, just type its name into your
         | search engine?"
         | 
         | this was on the first page of DuckDuckGo results for "SEO":
         | 
         | https://moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo
        
       | pupppet wrote:
       | What really ticks me off are all these sites clearly scraping
       | content from Stack Overflow that somehow end up near the top of
       | the search results. How is there not an automated fix for this.
       | Lemme help you out with this Googlers: If site content A == site
       | content B, pagerank = -1.
        
         | UncleMeat wrote:
         | Cue a HN post "wtf google, my archive website is getting marked
         | as spam."
        
           | pupppet wrote:
           | I don't want your archive website near the top of my search
           | results when the original is readily accessible.
        
             | UncleMeat wrote:
             | Won't stop the outrage post.
        
         | tintor wrote:
         | Using that rule it would be very easy to derank any website.
        
           | boxed wrote:
           | Not if the list of A sites was manually curated. Like
           | stackoverflow and wikipedia. This isn't hard for shooting
           | down a ton of sites.
        
             | ericpauley wrote:
             | Then people could derank sites by copying them to stack
             | overflow.
        
         | plantain wrote:
         | So both sites lose? That'll make manipulation easier than ever
         | before.
         | 
         | Or does the older site win? Frequently scraped / already
         | popular sites will love that.
        
           | BugsJustFindMe wrote:
           | It kinda sounds like you think that Google doesn't have the
           | resources to have a human decide that stackoverflow isn't
           | itself a spam clone.
           | 
           | This is a huge problem for a very small number of sites and a
           | non-existent problem for everything else. The list of
           | authoritative, egregiously-copied sources could easily be
           | maintained by one person. The only difficulty comes from
           | determining when to trigger the system.
        
           | pupppet wrote:
           | Derank the newer page, you don't need to derank the entire
           | site.
        
         | levymetal wrote:
         | These can be hidden using uBlock origin. I've got a list you
         | can import (just use the raw link). The selector isn't perfect
         | in Google (sometimes leaves some unattached content) but the
         | link is always removed. Feel free to submit a PR if you find
         | any other SO clones - there seems to be no end to them.
         | 
         | https://github.com/levymetal/filter-lists/blob/main/filters/...
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-25 23:01 UTC)