[HN Gopher] Google Is Getting Worse as It Loses Fight Against Se...
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       Google Is Getting Worse as It Loses Fight Against Search Engine
       Spam
        
       Author : elorant
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2024-01-22 21:53 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
        
       | dexwiz wrote:
       | I have noticed search quality has dropped off for anything
       | related to video games. You used to be able to search for guides
       | for a specific level or class and it would return high quality
       | content usually on game specific sites or maybe a wiki. Now its
       | all AI blogspam that just regurgitates the same low quality
       | content over and over in a generic article format while
       | maximizing ad space. They are bad on desktop, but unusable on
       | mobile. The wikis are never the top response, and well made guide
       | sites are no where to be found. You have to find the specific
       | site and search there.
       | 
       | Maybe they addressed affiliated links, but the bar for content
       | generation is so low now, that everything is being impacted. I
       | first noticed this kind of site for recipes (ones that make you
       | scroll past 4 ads and a life story before you get to a recycled
       | recipe), but its infected everything. Google used to be a first
       | stop, and its becoming more and more an option of last resort.
       | This completely seems to be their own doing by driving the web
       | towards an ad centric model. I wonder if it will ever collapse as
       | search degrades, devaluing the ad revenue that people are so
       | quick to chase.
        
         | EA-3167 wrote:
         | I wonder if being able to limit searches to specific geographic
         | regions might be a helpful feature. A lot of the
         | affiliate/content/seo farms are based out of ASEAN countries. I
         | don't want the internet to break off into armed camps, but the
         | ability to exclude some from a search would be useful.
        
           | dexwiz wrote:
           | Even if they are generated in ASEAN countries, are they
           | hosted there? Seems like CDN hosting kind of destroys that
           | kind of filter. Google already returns region specific
           | results for that which is associated with a physical region,
           | but for something that is largely regionless like video
           | games, that just seems like an arms race kind of answer.
        
             | EA-3167 wrote:
             | That's a good point, and I guess the asymmetry is
             | ultimately in favor of the spammers. Aiiieee.
        
       | __loam wrote:
       | Are you guys ready for another bi-weekly article about how Google
       | is getting worse?
        
         | Almondsetat wrote:
         | beats the hourly experience of Google getting worse
        
       | jsnell wrote:
       | Dupe:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39013497
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39031691
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39040559
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067949
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-22 23:01 UTC)