[HN Gopher] Google stops letting sites like Forbes rule search f...
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       Google stops letting sites like Forbes rule search for "Best CBD
       Gummies"
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2024-11-20 21:07 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | akira2501 wrote:
       | An entire department was just rendered useless. I genuinely don't
       | feel bad.
        
         | kasey_junk wrote:
         | Was probably a whole company right? Pretty good argument that
         | Forbes the traditional media property and Forbes the seo giant
         | are 2 different things: https://larslofgren.com/forbes-
         | marketplace/
        
         | readyplayernull wrote:
         | I wouldn't be surprised of the whole thing being automated.
        
         | _DeadFred_ wrote:
         | It was funny watching the warrior whatever site back in the day
         | when Panda came along. Love when these people get their
         | horrible business models kneecapped.
         | 
         | Now let's make corporate stock manipulation illegal again and
         | ban corporate stock buybacks. Talk about a purely manipulative
         | business strategy.
        
           | red_trumpet wrote:
           | What's the problem with stock buybacks?
        
             | mathgeek wrote:
             | Couple articles that explore that:
             | 
             | https://hbr.org/2020/01/why-stock-buybacks-are-dangerous-
             | for...
             | 
             | https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/are-
             | stock-...
        
             | notyourwork wrote:
             | Nothing directly, it just sounds bad at face value.
        
       | kiru_io wrote:
       | Google should vibe out others as well. If I search now "Best CBD
       | Gummies", the first few results are: vice.com independent.co.uk
       | healthline.com observer.com
       | 
       | How is Forbes worse than any of those shallow comparison pages?
        
         | glial wrote:
         | FWIW, Kagi is a little better but not much. First results are:
         | 
         | * cornbreadhemp.com * forbes.com * healthline.com
        
           | al_borland wrote:
           | Kagi does let the user adjust the rankings of these sites if
           | they don't want them coming up. While it would be nice to
           | have this done proactively for the link farms, at least the
           | user does have some control.
           | 
           | Forbes did make it on the blocked and lowered leaderboards.
           | 
           | https://kagi.com/stats?stat=leaderboard
        
       | Ancalagon wrote:
       | Hopefully this is a step in the right direction. Google's search
       | results have gotten so bad - seems like even some of the simplest
       | searches are just packed with AI generated and SEO garbage. I
       | don't even want SearchGPT do take over the search market space
       | because I'm almost sure it will still be garbage. Just bring back
       | the google from 5-10 years ago please :(.
        
         | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
         | You can't go back to the way things were. The world moves
         | forward and changes, and we have to adapt to it.
         | 
         | Web search has always been an extremely messy solution to many
         | problems. Think about the premise: type in anything, and
         | somehow it will read your mind, intuit who you are and what you
         | really wanted, find the exact thing amid the morass of the
         | whole web, and then give it to you?
         | 
         | That's impossible. So it uses tricks to make it _seem_ like it
         | worked. It uses information about you to refine results. It
         | uses curated, human-edited search and result heuristics for the
         | most common or difficult search queries. It uses a giant corups
         | of data, and shows you _things_ that are _like_ what you
         | wanted.
         | 
         | You don't notice that it isn't giving you the best result,
         | because there are so many mediocre-but-acceptable results to
         | look at. And it doesn't have to work perfectly every time,
         | because we can "sift through" results and "refine" our search.
         | Often we are flooded with results that are _targeted_ at us,
         | rather than what we want, because, remember: Google is an
         | advertising company, and the entire Web is now a shopping mall,
         | where either you 're being sold-to, or you're just being sold.
         | 
         | You will get _results_ , and they will sort-of seem like what
         | you wanted, so you will just sort of sigh and accept it.
         | Because what other option is there?
         | 
         | There are more intelligent, more accurate, more _safe_ , ways
         | to solve the problems people have, that are not "a search
         | engine". It's time we start implementing them.
        
       | wslh wrote:
       | My feeling as a Google user since the beginning is that the
       | search engine doesn't matter anymore in terms of quality. That is
       | why I wonder how Google supposely discover their own "bugs" so
       | late.
        
       | burnt-resistor wrote:
       | Forbes motto should be: "The mouthpiece for the finest
       | neoliberal-libertarian propaganda for the complete
       | transactionalization, commodification, and privatization of
       | America and the world exclusively for the benefit of capital
       | owners."
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | AMEN!
       | 
       | I remember this guy
       | 
       | http://www.seobook.com/blog
       | 
       | pointing out the line between what you can get away with with SEO
       | and what you can't get away with and what you can't get away with
       | is making Google look stupid.
        
       | bhartzer wrote:
       | Google should have done this 5-10 years ago.
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-20 23:00 UTC)