Some thoughts about The Verge article on SEO(dannysullivan.com)
dannysullivan.com
Some thoughts about The Verge article on SEO
https://dannysullivan.com/thoughts-verge-article-seo-6558
70 comments
It's here, with a debaited title:
As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38097938 - Nov 2023 (12 comments)
As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38097938 - Nov 2023 (12 comments)
In this case, I think it’s valuable to know what the original title is since it conveys the spirit of the article.
Of course an article titled pointing fingers at others for ruining the internet would have an outbrain chumbox at the bottom...
I have been in this industry just 5 years shy of Danny.
Danny was a big critic of Google back in the days. What he doesn't realise is that Google has deployed the oldest trick in the book. They took the most prominent critic in the industry and made him into their spokesman. Effectively, leveraging a lot of goodwill he holds in the industry into their own.
I am not saying what Danny is saying is untrue or has malice. I am just saying that Google search has deteriorated immensely and is skewed to about 100 sites that dominate it competely. There is very little space for small business or genuine knowledgespeak unless you have a big budget to churn our content. Just look at Google's testimony in the recent antitrust case and you can see what Google says via the liasion team is opposite to how SEO actually works. Ex - Google using click data but constantly saying for over a decade they don't use the click data.
Danny was a big critic of Google back in the days. What he doesn't realise is that Google has deployed the oldest trick in the book. They took the most prominent critic in the industry and made him into their spokesman. Effectively, leveraging a lot of goodwill he holds in the industry into their own.
I am not saying what Danny is saying is untrue or has malice. I am just saying that Google search has deteriorated immensely and is skewed to about 100 sites that dominate it competely. There is very little space for small business or genuine knowledgespeak unless you have a big budget to churn our content. Just look at Google's testimony in the recent antitrust case and you can see what Google says via the liasion team is opposite to how SEO actually works. Ex - Google using click data but constantly saying for over a decade they don't use the click data.
I get this view. But as my post explains, I'd quit writing about search. I was done. There wasn't going to be more criticism (or praise or whatever) from me because I'd retired from writing about search. I didn't have plans to go to Google when I retired. No one there even knew I was leaving. Which ... you or anyone can choose to believe or not, but that's how it is.
I was far from the only critic (or advocate) for Google or other search engines. There are plenty of others. New people, and with good views, continue to come into the space. The idea of "Google hired me to quiet me," again, while I get it, just wouldn't resolve that.
By the way, nor would some alternative idea that I somehow had secret details of spamming techniques make sense, either. Google had and still has an excellent spam team. They didn't need me to come in and somehow fill gaps.
What Google gained by me coming in, I hope, is someone that both tries to help people better understand how the search engine works from within the search quality team (that's where I work, in that team) and also bring back into that team advocacy and feedback from the outside world (which typically, I realize, isn't that clear to those people outside Google -- here's an example I shared of this last week when asked: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1720491595420856329 )
I was far from the only critic (or advocate) for Google or other search engines. There are plenty of others. New people, and with good views, continue to come into the space. The idea of "Google hired me to quiet me," again, while I get it, just wouldn't resolve that.
By the way, nor would some alternative idea that I somehow had secret details of spamming techniques make sense, either. Google had and still has an excellent spam team. They didn't need me to come in and somehow fill gaps.
What Google gained by me coming in, I hope, is someone that both tries to help people better understand how the search engine works from within the search quality team (that's where I work, in that team) and also bring back into that team advocacy and feedback from the outside world (which typically, I realize, isn't that clear to those people outside Google -- here's an example I shared of this last week when asked: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1720491595420856329 )
I think Danny should avoid future interviews with the Verge. heh. But seriously, I just don't like how the tone of the interview came across. Does anyone see Danny yelling in these conversations to warrant the use of the exclamation mark? If anything this makes the Verge look bad.
As for addressing SEO concerns. There is a lot of frustration out there these days by small sites and companies trying to make their way and Google results can be hit or miss. Major publications like CNET, Forbes, CNN etc are purposefully creating content and cramming it with affiliate links to sell crap to the masses. When a major publication writes about something its not an expert in, one has to start to raise eyebrows and wonder... Its painfully obvious. They get away with it because they are huge brands and can rank for anything, so they are abusing their power.
Sean Kaye says it best here: https://twitter.com/SeanDoesLife/status/1716935563075559630
Additionally, I want to mention an obvious manipulative practice that companies seem to be rewarded for, when if anything, should be penalized for.
And that is avoiding the "standard news" syntax of published content via manipulative URLS. Namely, avoiding using /id/date/title-of-post (or something similar) and just using the rootdomain/title-of-post to make it rank higher and seem more important than it is. These pages are not an About page, or Privacy Page, or Terms of Service page. Its manipulation and a shady practice and companies should be penalized for it.
As for addressing SEO concerns. There is a lot of frustration out there these days by small sites and companies trying to make their way and Google results can be hit or miss. Major publications like CNET, Forbes, CNN etc are purposefully creating content and cramming it with affiliate links to sell crap to the masses. When a major publication writes about something its not an expert in, one has to start to raise eyebrows and wonder... Its painfully obvious. They get away with it because they are huge brands and can rank for anything, so they are abusing their power.
Sean Kaye says it best here: https://twitter.com/SeanDoesLife/status/1716935563075559630
Additionally, I want to mention an obvious manipulative practice that companies seem to be rewarded for, when if anything, should be penalized for.
And that is avoiding the "standard news" syntax of published content via manipulative URLS. Namely, avoiding using /id/date/title-of-post (or something similar) and just using the rootdomain/title-of-post to make it rank higher and seem more important than it is. These pages are not an About page, or Privacy Page, or Terms of Service page. Its manipulation and a shady practice and companies should be penalized for it.
I don't know Danny but as a neutral party he came off awful and not the right person to meet with reporters. He is neither warm or helpful nor entertaining or thoughtful (humble, etc). He comes off as a burned out newspaper columnist.
I think the key problem is he will play with words and what they mean by parsing them in a way to misunderstand the true meaning behind the question and then uses tries to make you feel less. Does he really not understand why writers are saying no one can find anything (translation: Google is showing less pages for keywords searched, less content is being returned and more ads are poluting the results)? He changes it into: millions are searching, I can take a picture of an apple and google will find it. Search results are better he says(in a see you are wrong and stupid for suggesting this). He completely misses the point.. EVERYONE is noticing how bad the results compared to what they were. Sure, millions of searches happen every day still.. but people are unhappy and they see the quality as lower. People don't automatically leave unless there is a reason and place to go to. Google is giving them a good reason.
Google shouldn't have sent someone who could have a thoughtful discussion or an honest discussion or a deceitful but pleasant conversation.
I don't think this guy personally is the reason why things went off the rails but he paints a picture that the search team has their heads in the sand and they are patting themselves on the back with how great results are when everyone can see the emperor has no clothes on.
I think the key problem is he will play with words and what they mean by parsing them in a way to misunderstand the true meaning behind the question and then uses tries to make you feel less. Does he really not understand why writers are saying no one can find anything (translation: Google is showing less pages for keywords searched, less content is being returned and more ads are poluting the results)? He changes it into: millions are searching, I can take a picture of an apple and google will find it. Search results are better he says(in a see you are wrong and stupid for suggesting this). He completely misses the point.. EVERYONE is noticing how bad the results compared to what they were. Sure, millions of searches happen every day still.. but people are unhappy and they see the quality as lower. People don't automatically leave unless there is a reason and place to go to. Google is giving them a good reason.
Google shouldn't have sent someone who could have a thoughtful discussion or an honest discussion or a deceitful but pleasant conversation.
I don't think this guy personally is the reason why things went off the rails but he paints a picture that the search team has their heads in the sand and they are patting themselves on the back with how great results are when everyone can see the emperor has no clothes on.
Gary Illyes and John Mueller (other prominent Google liaisons) are also kind of standoffish. Ginny Marvin is another SEland hire, but isn't as mean spirited, but is still as limited in how helpful responses are. John and Gary commonly mock people asking questions and just parrot Google's speaking points of "just create quality content and we will rank it well" that frequently do not mirror reality. If you have SEO questions, your only other official channel for support are Google forums-- maintained by volunteers outside of Google. That SEOs have no official support from the most prominent search engine (besides ambiguous documentation, ~5 liaisons and forums of dubious value) is laughable. If your site gets deindexed or penalized, good luck finding out why with Google.
With Bing Webmaster tools, I have actually emailed support and gotten a bug fixed within 2 weeks. With Google, your best option is yelling into the abyss.
With Bing Webmaster tools, I have actually emailed support and gotten a bug fixed within 2 weeks. With Google, your best option is yelling into the abyss.
I know it was a long post I made. But yes, I (and we) recognize people want the results better. I covered this at the end (along with some other parts):
"That said, there’s room to improve. There always is. Search and content can move through cycles. You can have a rise in unhelpful content, and search systems evolve to deal with it. We’re in one of those cycles. I fully recognize people would like to see better search results on Google. I know how hard people within Google Search are working to do this. I’m fortunate to be a part of that. To the degree I can help — which includes better communicating, ensuring that I reflect the humbleness that we — and I feel — I’ll keep improving on myself."
"That said, there’s room to improve. There always is. Search and content can move through cycles. You can have a rise in unhelpful content, and search systems evolve to deal with it. We’re in one of those cycles. I fully recognize people would like to see better search results on Google. I know how hard people within Google Search are working to do this. I’m fortunate to be a part of that. To the degree I can help — which includes better communicating, ensuring that I reflect the humbleness that we — and I feel — I’ll keep improving on myself."
I read the verge and listen to their podcast. They don’t come across as overly sensationalist and seem pretty fair in other interviews. I think Google knows their search product isn’t as useful as it once was. Not sure about the root causes, but that’s just my impression from using it for 15 years.
>They don’t come across as overly sensationalist and seem pretty fair in other interviews.
funnily enough, they are the first site that comes to mind when I think about all those horrible blogspam articles meant to stroke common argumentative points back in the early 2010's. Android vs. IPhone, barely relevant influencer making statement tangentially related to tech, a growing focus away from tech and towards why the tech industry is actually every -ism under the planet, etc.
I hope they got better over the last 7 years or so since I stopped reading most news sides in lieu of Youtubers or searching for specific domain experts or niche, no-nonsense websites.
>I think Google knows their search product isn’t as useful as it once was.
I honestly think the elephant is too big to see the full picture of. I can 100% believe that the search team has some novel tech to really make the best search engine from a technical standpoint. I can also 100% believe that some other team (maybe in ads, maybe even as high as special fellows) inject into that pipeline and add in stuff purely meant for profit, even if results suffer. Or that some other support team does in fact work specifically with big sites to influence bump their SEO.
No one a Google can contain the entire codebase of such a product. It's all to easy to obfrusate such enshittification into it without the well-meaning engineers being any the wiser.
funnily enough, they are the first site that comes to mind when I think about all those horrible blogspam articles meant to stroke common argumentative points back in the early 2010's. Android vs. IPhone, barely relevant influencer making statement tangentially related to tech, a growing focus away from tech and towards why the tech industry is actually every -ism under the planet, etc.
I hope they got better over the last 7 years or so since I stopped reading most news sides in lieu of Youtubers or searching for specific domain experts or niche, no-nonsense websites.
>I think Google knows their search product isn’t as useful as it once was.
I honestly think the elephant is too big to see the full picture of. I can 100% believe that the search team has some novel tech to really make the best search engine from a technical standpoint. I can also 100% believe that some other team (maybe in ads, maybe even as high as special fellows) inject into that pipeline and add in stuff purely meant for profit, even if results suffer. Or that some other support team does in fact work specifically with big sites to influence bump their SEO.
No one a Google can contain the entire codebase of such a product. It's all to easy to obfrusate such enshittification into it without the well-meaning engineers being any the wiser.
The primary criticism I have of the verge is they often have pretty non-technical people comment on technical things. It comes through hardest on the podcast where Alex Cranz often seems out of her depth
For me, it started around the end of 2018. It seemed like independent blogs and small sites got nuked from orbit, and articles on sites like Medium took precedence.
My take on what happened is that they decimated a good product in the name of "fighting misinformation" by surfacing content mainly from sites that had moderation policies of whatever sorts. Their way of effectively applying the same App Store style moderation across the entire web.
Things seem to have continued sliding downward in the years since. I won't be surprised when AI eats their lunch.
My take on what happened is that they decimated a good product in the name of "fighting misinformation" by surfacing content mainly from sites that had moderation policies of whatever sorts. Their way of effectively applying the same App Store style moderation across the entire web.
Things seem to have continued sliding downward in the years since. I won't be surprised when AI eats their lunch.
> Namely, avoiding using /id/date/title-of-post (or something similar) and just using the rootdomain/title-of-post to make it rank higher and seem more important than it is.
This causes the small wayward fragments of Library Science curriculum embedded in my brain to quiver with rage.
Bonus points if the tail end of the URL contains what may-or-may-not be a bunch of tracking shit and it's not obvious how much it can be shortened without breaking the link.
This causes the small wayward fragments of Library Science curriculum embedded in my brain to quiver with rage.
Bonus points if the tail end of the URL contains what may-or-may-not be a bunch of tracking shit and it's not obvious how much it can be shortened without breaking the link.
I found it very weird that he was interviewed by The Verge in his capacity as a Google employee, with full blessing from the company's comms team and whoever else, and then decided to post a rebuttal of the article on his personal blog with a large disclaimer that the thoughts are his alone and not his employer's.
I get what you're saying, it's weird to interview him as a Google employee. But actually it would be really weird if they didn't include Danny Sullivan in the article in some capacity. Danny Sullivan, over the years, has been so influential and such an influential voice when it comes to Search and SEO. He previously was on the other side, not working for Google.
It's because when I was interviewed, what I said was all speaking officially for Google. You can attribute anything there to the company directly.
My blog post -- I wrote that on my own. No one from the Google communications team reviewed it, approved it, vetted it and so on. That's what I was trying to explain.
That doesn't mean, of course, people won't think it somehow reflects on Google or what I do there. It no doubt will. But that's not quite the same thing as something being an official company statement.
My blog post -- I wrote that on my own. No one from the Google communications team reviewed it, approved it, vetted it and so on. That's what I was trying to explain.
That doesn't mean, of course, people won't think it somehow reflects on Google or what I do there. It no doubt will. But that's not quite the same thing as something being an official company statement.
> And that is avoiding the "standard news" syntax of published content via manipulative URLS. Namely, avoiding using /id/date/title-of-post (or something similar) and just using the rootdomain/title-of-post to make it rank higher and seem more important than it is. These pages are not an About page, or Privacy Page, or Terms of Service page. Its manipulation and a shady practice and companies should be penalized for it.
As someone who has spent years manipulating ranking I can tell you this has nothing to do with effecting ranking and is most likely about optics/human readability increasing CTR.
If you have data that shows urls like "/id/date/title-of-post" rank worse than "rootdomain/title-of-post" (which is nearly impossible to accurately measure due to the nature of how things are _really_ ranked) I'd argue that the rankings are related to the CTR rather than the URL structure.
I've explored and tested various URL structures across xxx,xxx domains with effectively equal quality content (using "manipulative" ranking methods and content generation tactics) and there was no measurable difference in ranking.
> These pages are not an About page, or Privacy Page, or Terms of Service page.
No judgement, but this seems like an odd stance to me. You seem to feel there is some sort of established standard in the structure of website pages/hierarchy, particularly one that should have punishments enforced against those who don't abide... Thankfully there is not, if there were then there would have to be some sort of agreement on these things - who is going to make those decisions? Who are those decisions going to be optimal for?
No, to all of that.
> As for addressing SEO concerns. There is a lot of frustration out there these days by small sites and companies trying to make their way and Google results can be hit or miss. Major publications like CNET, Forbes, CNN etc are purposefully creating content and cramming it with affiliate links to sell crap to the masses. When a major publication writes about something its not an expert in, one has to start to raise eyebrows and wonder... Its painfully obvious. They get away with it because they are huge brands and can rank for anything, so they are abusing their power.
> Sean Kaye says it best here: https://twitter.com/SeanDoesLife/status/1716935563075559630
What? No. The problem isn't the publishers - the problem is the search engine.
They built a facade. They _cannot_ manage getting relevant results from relevant sources where there is financial incentive to be ranked higher than someone else. It's patches and rules and filters and manual actions all the way up. They can say otherwise all they want and it's bull. They're just trying to get just good enough results for the vast majority of queries so they can keep selling ads - they lost the battle with SEO/spam a _long_ time ago.
You can't/shouldn't penalize the publishers for capitalizing on their "power". You call it an abuse of power - what are they abusing? What are the boundaries? Who set them? Again - expectations on your end, but where do they come from? If you're believing what you're reading at face value re: SEO and think everyone is "playing by the rules" you're in for a rude awakening. That "power" is given to them by Google and their algorithm(s) and search quality team. That "power" is _ultimately_ granted to them by their backlinks and nothing more - they're the billionaires of SEO. They wield the power granted to them by the search engines and they would be foolish not to capitalize on it.
On the other side - Google should have done something about all this years ago. But.. how?
> When a major publication writes about something its not an expert in, one has to start to raise eyebrows and wonder... Its painfully obvious.
You say they're not an expert - but who says you know what's what? And how do you even define what that topic is, let alone who the experts are? How do you assign "expert" status to a website in various topics (that also need to be defined)? Now, we need to do this for _every_ topic - it's not possible. Ok, so we'll choose the important topics and we'll manage who the "experts" are for those topics... This is what they've done. But even then, if you're trying to break into one of these protected topics as a non-behemoth - good luck.
Again, not the problem of the publishers that they can throw garbage content at valuable keywords and outrank the small players with much better content. That's Google's fault. It's _their_ job to determine those rankings and they're not good at it. Refer to my earlier statement about it all being a facade. They're just trying to be "ok" enough - there's no way to be _good_ at search-everything. Too much financial incentive to game the results - they'll never stay ahead of the curve without alienating too many "small" publishers in the process.
There's just no way that what they're saying publically is what they're actually doing or saying privately about how all this works. _Nobody_ is playing fair here.
As someone who has spent years manipulating ranking I can tell you this has nothing to do with effecting ranking and is most likely about optics/human readability increasing CTR.
If you have data that shows urls like "/id/date/title-of-post" rank worse than "rootdomain/title-of-post" (which is nearly impossible to accurately measure due to the nature of how things are _really_ ranked) I'd argue that the rankings are related to the CTR rather than the URL structure.
I've explored and tested various URL structures across xxx,xxx domains with effectively equal quality content (using "manipulative" ranking methods and content generation tactics) and there was no measurable difference in ranking.
> These pages are not an About page, or Privacy Page, or Terms of Service page.
No judgement, but this seems like an odd stance to me. You seem to feel there is some sort of established standard in the structure of website pages/hierarchy, particularly one that should have punishments enforced against those who don't abide... Thankfully there is not, if there were then there would have to be some sort of agreement on these things - who is going to make those decisions? Who are those decisions going to be optimal for?
No, to all of that.
> As for addressing SEO concerns. There is a lot of frustration out there these days by small sites and companies trying to make their way and Google results can be hit or miss. Major publications like CNET, Forbes, CNN etc are purposefully creating content and cramming it with affiliate links to sell crap to the masses. When a major publication writes about something its not an expert in, one has to start to raise eyebrows and wonder... Its painfully obvious. They get away with it because they are huge brands and can rank for anything, so they are abusing their power.
> Sean Kaye says it best here: https://twitter.com/SeanDoesLife/status/1716935563075559630
What? No. The problem isn't the publishers - the problem is the search engine.
They built a facade. They _cannot_ manage getting relevant results from relevant sources where there is financial incentive to be ranked higher than someone else. It's patches and rules and filters and manual actions all the way up. They can say otherwise all they want and it's bull. They're just trying to get just good enough results for the vast majority of queries so they can keep selling ads - they lost the battle with SEO/spam a _long_ time ago.
You can't/shouldn't penalize the publishers for capitalizing on their "power". You call it an abuse of power - what are they abusing? What are the boundaries? Who set them? Again - expectations on your end, but where do they come from? If you're believing what you're reading at face value re: SEO and think everyone is "playing by the rules" you're in for a rude awakening. That "power" is given to them by Google and their algorithm(s) and search quality team. That "power" is _ultimately_ granted to them by their backlinks and nothing more - they're the billionaires of SEO. They wield the power granted to them by the search engines and they would be foolish not to capitalize on it.
On the other side - Google should have done something about all this years ago. But.. how?
> When a major publication writes about something its not an expert in, one has to start to raise eyebrows and wonder... Its painfully obvious.
You say they're not an expert - but who says you know what's what? And how do you even define what that topic is, let alone who the experts are? How do you assign "expert" status to a website in various topics (that also need to be defined)? Now, we need to do this for _every_ topic - it's not possible. Ok, so we'll choose the important topics and we'll manage who the "experts" are for those topics... This is what they've done. But even then, if you're trying to break into one of these protected topics as a non-behemoth - good luck.
Again, not the problem of the publishers that they can throw garbage content at valuable keywords and outrank the small players with much better content. That's Google's fault. It's _their_ job to determine those rankings and they're not good at it. Refer to my earlier statement about it all being a facade. They're just trying to be "ok" enough - there's no way to be _good_ at search-everything. Too much financial incentive to game the results - they'll never stay ahead of the curve without alienating too many "small" publishers in the process.
There's just no way that what they're saying publically is what they're actually doing or saying privately about how all this works. _Nobody_ is playing fair here.
> As someone who has spent years manipulating ranking I can tell you this has nothing to do with effecting ranking and is most likely about optics/human readability increasing CTR.
I do not agree. For example, CTR can be increased by modifying the design/text of a button. Or modifying the placement of the button, etc. CTR will not increase or decreased based on the structure of the URL. Hence the word CLICK in "CTR". Most of the time if the URL is listed somewhere, its truncated. Mobile phones trim it down to the domain name.
Plus it's just bad practice and will run into problems eventually. What happens when you have similar titles? Does this increase CTR or increase mistakes?
I still think its a shady practice and can't think of a single reputable major publication that would utilize that structure for Editorial. They should be penalized for a blatant attempt at manipulation. There is no other logical reason for it.
The verge: /features/23931789/seo-search-engine-optimization-experts-google-results.
> If you have data that shows urls like "/id/date/title-of-post" rank worse than "rootdomain/title-of-post" (which is nearly impossible to accurately measure due to the nature of how things are _really_ ranked) I'd argue that the rankings are related to the CTR rather than the URL structure.
Of course I don't have the data, but one has to assume they are doing it for one simple reason. Manipulation in search. It's not for a better user experience. How often are you typing in URLs manually?
> No judgement, but this seems like an odd stance to me. You seem to feel there is some sort of established standard in the structure of website pages/hierarchy, particularly one that should have punishments enforced against those who don't abide... Thankfully there is not, if there were then there would have to be some sort of agreement on these things - who is going to make those decisions? Who are those decisions going to be optimal for?
Generally speaking, yes URL taxonomy has best practices. I don't believe someone is going to create an about us page with /id/date/about-us and thinks that is a good idea, but anything is possible.
I do not agree. For example, CTR can be increased by modifying the design/text of a button. Or modifying the placement of the button, etc. CTR will not increase or decreased based on the structure of the URL. Hence the word CLICK in "CTR". Most of the time if the URL is listed somewhere, its truncated. Mobile phones trim it down to the domain name.
Plus it's just bad practice and will run into problems eventually. What happens when you have similar titles? Does this increase CTR or increase mistakes?
I still think its a shady practice and can't think of a single reputable major publication that would utilize that structure for Editorial. They should be penalized for a blatant attempt at manipulation. There is no other logical reason for it.
The verge: /features/23931789/seo-search-engine-optimization-experts-google-results.
> If you have data that shows urls like "/id/date/title-of-post" rank worse than "rootdomain/title-of-post" (which is nearly impossible to accurately measure due to the nature of how things are _really_ ranked) I'd argue that the rankings are related to the CTR rather than the URL structure.
Of course I don't have the data, but one has to assume they are doing it for one simple reason. Manipulation in search. It's not for a better user experience. How often are you typing in URLs manually?
> No judgement, but this seems like an odd stance to me. You seem to feel there is some sort of established standard in the structure of website pages/hierarchy, particularly one that should have punishments enforced against those who don't abide... Thankfully there is not, if there were then there would have to be some sort of agreement on these things - who is going to make those decisions? Who are those decisions going to be optimal for?
Generally speaking, yes URL taxonomy has best practices. I don't believe someone is going to create an about us page with /id/date/about-us and thinks that is a good idea, but anything is possible.
> Plus it's just bad practice and will run into problems eventually. What happens when you have similar titles? Does this increase CTR or increase mistakes?
In support of your point of "manipulation" - does it matter? They don't care about the actual content - they just need you to click so they get their ad views. It doesn't matter if there's more than one entry in the database with the same slug - or what content is even there.
> I still think its a shady practice and can't think of a single reputable major publication that would utilize that structure for Editorial. They should be penalized for a blatant attempt at manipulation. There is no other logical reason for it.
I agree that it's non-standard and that they're doing it for a reason not in the best interest of the internet as whole. But, shady? Eh - by the same logic (in my mind) you'd have to call the person who named their business AAA Lockpicking shady because they took advantage of a "standard" way that directories work to get their name above others.
> one has to assume they are doing it for one simple reason. Manipulation in search. It's not for a better user experience.
Ok, so every web service with a presence on search engines is manipulative and should be punished if they do anything that's not in the best interest of the user experience? (I understand this is pedantic, but from the perspective of the search engine - who draws the lines about what is and isn't acceptable, or seen as manipulation?)
I agree with what you're saying in theory, but I'm not sure I can get on board with penalizing any of these publishers for doing what is within their power to improve their position. Like... at some point, as public companies, you could argue that they're obligated to capitalize, no?
We deal with "manipulative" marketing all day, every day. We're drowning in real manipulation where massive corporations are employing people with education and experience to help them manipulate us as much as possible. I have a hard time putting "optimal" url structure in that bucket.
Google/MS/etc should, instead, draw some real lines and enforce their existing and extended policies in a consistent and transparent way. That's the solution here - not pitchforks for those who are taking advantage of what works.
> Generally speaking, yes URL taxonomy has best practices. I don't believe someone is going to create an about us page with /id/date/about-us and thinks that is a good idea, but anything is possible.
For what it's worth - in my testing/experience, dates and _very short_ 'category'/'topic' slugs improved rankings compared to /keyword-only. ie: /shoe-reviews/20231027/blue-shoes proved optimal over /blue-shoes. (Without the dates was equivalent to keyword-only.)
I share your frustration - I just don't see it from your perspective that the publishers should be punished. They're playing by the rules. The rules are terrible and that's not an accident. Google doesn't want specific guidelines that can be/are enforced - they don't want search to be a meritocracy, no matter what they say. They've had plenty of time to make it that and they've gone the complete opposite direction. It's not the publishers that are to blame for taking advantage of the tools and resources available to them to legally improve themselves.
In support of your point of "manipulation" - does it matter? They don't care about the actual content - they just need you to click so they get their ad views. It doesn't matter if there's more than one entry in the database with the same slug - or what content is even there.
> I still think its a shady practice and can't think of a single reputable major publication that would utilize that structure for Editorial. They should be penalized for a blatant attempt at manipulation. There is no other logical reason for it.
I agree that it's non-standard and that they're doing it for a reason not in the best interest of the internet as whole. But, shady? Eh - by the same logic (in my mind) you'd have to call the person who named their business AAA Lockpicking shady because they took advantage of a "standard" way that directories work to get their name above others.
> one has to assume they are doing it for one simple reason. Manipulation in search. It's not for a better user experience.
Ok, so every web service with a presence on search engines is manipulative and should be punished if they do anything that's not in the best interest of the user experience? (I understand this is pedantic, but from the perspective of the search engine - who draws the lines about what is and isn't acceptable, or seen as manipulation?)
I agree with what you're saying in theory, but I'm not sure I can get on board with penalizing any of these publishers for doing what is within their power to improve their position. Like... at some point, as public companies, you could argue that they're obligated to capitalize, no?
We deal with "manipulative" marketing all day, every day. We're drowning in real manipulation where massive corporations are employing people with education and experience to help them manipulate us as much as possible. I have a hard time putting "optimal" url structure in that bucket.
Google/MS/etc should, instead, draw some real lines and enforce their existing and extended policies in a consistent and transparent way. That's the solution here - not pitchforks for those who are taking advantage of what works.
> Generally speaking, yes URL taxonomy has best practices. I don't believe someone is going to create an about us page with /id/date/about-us and thinks that is a good idea, but anything is possible.
For what it's worth - in my testing/experience, dates and _very short_ 'category'/'topic' slugs improved rankings compared to /keyword-only. ie: /shoe-reviews/20231027/blue-shoes proved optimal over /blue-shoes. (Without the dates was equivalent to keyword-only.)
I share your frustration - I just don't see it from your perspective that the publishers should be punished. They're playing by the rules. The rules are terrible and that's not an accident. Google doesn't want specific guidelines that can be/are enforced - they don't want search to be a meritocracy, no matter what they say. They've had plenty of time to make it that and they've gone the complete opposite direction. It's not the publishers that are to blame for taking advantage of the tools and resources available to them to legally improve themselves.
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You will never, ever, ever, ever convince me that search is "better" now than it ever has been, or even more than a few years ago. This seems completely delusional to me.
I define good search as me being able to quickly find what I am looking for. Approximately 1-2 years ago, I forget when it started, I noticed weird instances where no matter what I put into the engine and how long I scrolled or clicked around I absolutely could not find what I was looking for and gave up. I remember vividly the first time it happened, because it startled me. Google had never been like that. At first it was rare, then more often, these days it became so unusable I had to put it down.
I think my final breaking point was trying to find the score of a sports game that had just happened a few hours before and being completely unable to. That's unimportant info, but since I frequently used google often in my day-to-day job, the inability to find what I need is a real serious issue.
Bing has been great so far.
I define good search as me being able to quickly find what I am looking for. Approximately 1-2 years ago, I forget when it started, I noticed weird instances where no matter what I put into the engine and how long I scrolled or clicked around I absolutely could not find what I was looking for and gave up. I remember vividly the first time it happened, because it startled me. Google had never been like that. At first it was rare, then more often, these days it became so unusable I had to put it down.
I think my final breaking point was trying to find the score of a sports game that had just happened a few hours before and being completely unable to. That's unimportant info, but since I frequently used google often in my day-to-day job, the inability to find what I need is a real serious issue.
Bing has been great so far.
Good example and fun exercise for anyone to try - input to google search "Migrating off of GCP." You will only find documentation and videos how to migrate TO GCP. Yea, I don't buy that google mysteriously forgot how the english language works, sorry.
Google never worked well with that kind of language processing task in the heyday of its usefulness either. Searching for "dresses that aren't red" in image search returned almost 100% red dress images (maybe better now). Extremely common words like "off" and "of" were essentially ignored.
I think the worse part is that there were tools around this and they also don't work anymore. Try to search "football -American" and you'll still end up with the search for American Football. search "football -nfl" and it will instead try to inject news of local college/high school teams instead of resorting to FIFA or other assossiations for the worldwide term.
I never expected such boolean logic to be perfect, but it barely even seems to try anymore.
I never expected such boolean logic to be perfect, but it barely even seems to try anymore.
You can try the same experiment with any combination of words, the results are basically the same.
> But the point – and my frustration with reporters who sometimes ask me this type of question – is that it’s clearly absurd. They themselves use Google all the time to find things. Millions of people each day clearly find information that’s useful. And yet, I’ve repeatedly seen notable tech journalists with a straight-face share how you can’t find anything on Google, that it is useless and so on.
Google isn't completely useless, but it has became extremely painful to use. There was a time when Google returned exactly what I needed, or said that there's no result. For the last 5 years or so, I have to manually filter the results and, back when pagination still existed, I went directly to page 2 on some searches to skip the first dozen SEO-filled results. So, sure, I keep finding useful results on Google, but only after having to navigate through a sea of SEO-optimized links.
And yes, I still keep using Google for a third of my search because I have no better choice on these topics.
Google isn't completely useless, but it has became extremely painful to use. There was a time when Google returned exactly what I needed, or said that there's no result. For the last 5 years or so, I have to manually filter the results and, back when pagination still existed, I went directly to page 2 on some searches to skip the first dozen SEO-filled results. So, sure, I keep finding useful results on Google, but only after having to navigate through a sea of SEO-optimized links.
And yes, I still keep using Google for a third of my search because I have no better choice on these topics.
> There was a time when Google returned exactly what I needed, or said that there's no result. For the last 5 years or so, I have to manually filter the results
Sounds to me like Google search is also suffering from a lot of hallucinations, as if progress went backwards.
Sounds to me like Google search is also suffering from a lot of hallucinations, as if progress went backwards.
Kagi. Better results than Google ever returned, and infinitely better than the GPT generated spam you get on the first several pages of Google these days.
> I do recall one question [...] along the lines of “So, what do you think about the idea that people can’t find things on Google Search,” to which I recall joking something like, “Yes, clearly no one finds things any more.”
I really, actually, do not find things on Google anymore. The rate of success has gotten quite bad, under 50%, when it used to be closer to 95%.
Sullivan says in his article that his role is "part of the search quality team", but he thinks this decline in quality is a laughing matter.
It's not going to get better.
I really, actually, do not find things on Google anymore. The rate of success has gotten quite bad, under 50%, when it used to be closer to 95%.
Sullivan says in his article that his role is "part of the search quality team", but he thinks this decline in quality is a laughing matter.
It's not going to get better.
I absolutely don't think it's a laughing matter. I made a joke in the interview with the reporter as a kind of icebreaker (which clearly didn't seem to go well).
But as I also explained after doing that, "I’m pretty sure, went into what I thought was a more serious and thoughtful discussion, at least from my perspective."
I don't think making a joke about something is the same as someone then thinking an entire matter isn't serious. But I can appreciate you disagree.
But as I also explained after doing that, "I’m pretty sure, went into what I thought was a more serious and thoughtful discussion, at least from my perspective."
I don't think making a joke about something is the same as someone then thinking an entire matter isn't serious. But I can appreciate you disagree.
I'm using ChatGPT for 90% of documentation search work, hallucinations and all, simply because Google has become THAT worse for development IMO.
I can't find shit anymore.
Sometimes when I have to use a specific library, I just download the documentation and search using VSCode or something.
I can't find shit anymore.
Sometimes when I have to use a specific library, I just download the documentation and search using VSCode or something.
I'm largely mystified at a lot of the 'Google is rubbish now' takes, but dev documentation is one of the areas that I genuinely find Google was better at a few years ago. I actually do tend to get answers to my questions, but a lot of them are desperately outdated and no longer relevant.
My take on what happened is that Google has a metric in their algorithms called 'Query deserves freshness' - basically, identifying a search where the user isn't going to want old information, and artifically promoting more recent pages over better linked to but older documents. If someone wants to see the weather, they probably aren't looking for the weather on an extremely weird day 4 years ago just because a lot of people linked to it back then.
They seem to have reduced that down, I suspect to reduce search being flooded with misinformation during the pandemic when all information was recent and the more controversial takes sometimes got more coverage. As an unexpected result, if I'm searching a dev query, it ends up surfacing a ton of results from years ago. Yeah, those pages may have more links and history and probably seem to an algorithm to be more trustworthy, but if it's for a library 20 versions old that long since stopped working the way the stackoverflow answer from 2011 says it did, that's pretty useless.
Still, as a trade off, probably better me having to use the time filter dropdown to limit results to recent one's than someone necking bleach and horse de-wormer when they get Covid. And while I'm not quite as onboard with GPT being the death of search as some, dev documentation is one of those areas where generative AI is genuinely a better tool than web search ever was.
My take on what happened is that Google has a metric in their algorithms called 'Query deserves freshness' - basically, identifying a search where the user isn't going to want old information, and artifically promoting more recent pages over better linked to but older documents. If someone wants to see the weather, they probably aren't looking for the weather on an extremely weird day 4 years ago just because a lot of people linked to it back then.
They seem to have reduced that down, I suspect to reduce search being flooded with misinformation during the pandemic when all information was recent and the more controversial takes sometimes got more coverage. As an unexpected result, if I'm searching a dev query, it ends up surfacing a ton of results from years ago. Yeah, those pages may have more links and history and probably seem to an algorithm to be more trustworthy, but if it's for a library 20 versions old that long since stopped working the way the stackoverflow answer from 2011 says it did, that's pretty useless.
Still, as a trade off, probably better me having to use the time filter dropdown to limit results to recent one's than someone necking bleach and horse de-wormer when they get Covid. And while I'm not quite as onboard with GPT being the death of search as some, dev documentation is one of those areas where generative AI is genuinely a better tool than web search ever was.
The original Verge article is hilariously bad. It somehow manages to provoke false rage at Google while attempting to sympathize with every actual charlatan that's the reason for SEO spam on the internet. The Verge needs to look at problems with better lenses than "big company bad, individual people good". But then again, when all you have is a hammer I guess everything looks like a nail.
Danny is clearly upset, and I would be too. We all love the Internet. Imagine being fingered in an article as some mad SEO guy who is among "the people who ruined the Internet". The Verge is a big platform...
Also, SEO is of the more voodoo & charlatan filled branches of technical esoterica. Very little of it is falsifiable or clear. And there is quackery as far as the eye can see.
Transparency into search algos would be better for us all. But the cost of algo transparency is transparency into adtech. And that's a hill Google will die on, and why we need alternatives.
Also, SEO is of the more voodoo & charlatan filled branches of technical esoterica. Very little of it is falsifiable or clear. And there is quackery as far as the eye can see.
Transparency into search algos would be better for us all. But the cost of algo transparency is transparency into adtech. And that's a hill Google will die on, and why we need alternatives.
> SEO is of the more voodoo & charlatan filled branches of technical esoterica.
It's very, very hard for me to avoid thinking of the entire SEO industry in the same light as I think of the adtech industry: a plague that is helping to destroy everything that makes the internet good.
It's very, very hard for me to avoid thinking of the entire SEO industry in the same light as I think of the adtech industry: a plague that is helping to destroy everything that makes the internet good.
I much prefer adtech to SEO.
Adtech is at least trying to be a non-zero-sum game. They bring dollars to the Internet to try to get your attention off the Internet, to buy a real-world product (even that product is itself delivered online). That allows the Internet to provide a lot of creativity for "free".
SEO is purely zero-sum, or negative-sum. There's a fixed amount of attention and they want to drag it from wherever it would naturally be to some place you don't really want it to be.
Advertising also does a ton of privacy violation and other shenanigans, because wherever there is money there is evil. But at least there's a baby somewhere in all that bathwater. SEO makes the Internet worse without improving anything at all.
Adtech is at least trying to be a non-zero-sum game. They bring dollars to the Internet to try to get your attention off the Internet, to buy a real-world product (even that product is itself delivered online). That allows the Internet to provide a lot of creativity for "free".
SEO is purely zero-sum, or negative-sum. There's a fixed amount of attention and they want to drag it from wherever it would naturally be to some place you don't really want it to be.
Advertising also does a ton of privacy violation and other shenanigans, because wherever there is money there is evil. But at least there's a baby somewhere in all that bathwater. SEO makes the Internet worse without improving anything at all.
> There's a fixed amount of attention and they want to drag it from wherever it would naturally be to some place you don't really want it to be.
That is exactly what ads are trying to do. It is the very essence of advertising: get your attention. This is ingrained to the extent that everyone knows "there's no such thing as bad publicity".
And it's just as much if not more 0-sum as SEO. The stated purpose of advertising is to make you spend your money on something that you otherwise wouldn't have. That's sometimes about spending your money on product A instead of A's competitors, and sometimes just to spend your money on X instead of saving/investing it.
Even worse, advertising is trying to convince you to spend irrationally: instead of doing your own cost/benefit analysis, advertising's purpose is to convince you to act out of emotion, or to outright lie about the cost and benefit of the product.
That is exactly what ads are trying to do. It is the very essence of advertising: get your attention. This is ingrained to the extent that everyone knows "there's no such thing as bad publicity".
And it's just as much if not more 0-sum as SEO. The stated purpose of advertising is to make you spend your money on something that you otherwise wouldn't have. That's sometimes about spending your money on product A instead of A's competitors, and sometimes just to spend your money on X instead of saving/investing it.
Even worse, advertising is trying to convince you to spend irrationally: instead of doing your own cost/benefit analysis, advertising's purpose is to convince you to act out of emotion, or to outright lie about the cost and benefit of the product.
> I much prefer adtech to SEO.
I'm exactly the opposite, actually. I have to actively and constantly defend against the attacks of adtech stuff. SEO only really affects how web pages are designed.
But the two fields are pretty closely linked.
I'm exactly the opposite, actually. I have to actively and constantly defend against the attacks of adtech stuff. SEO only really affects how web pages are designed.
But the two fields are pretty closely linked.
You can install an adblocker to filter out adtech.
What kind of blocker should we install to filter out the thousand enshittifications publishers would add to win the SEO game?
Worth noting in this conversation: there's a philosophy that these two techs go hand-in-glove because adtech is the alternative to spending money on SEO. Instead of trying to game the machine, just pay to show up in the "People who thought they were so important, they paid money to get your attention" slot. Much like the notion that in the absence of copyright and patents, you don't get free information but guilds and hitmen... In the absence of adtech you don't get a bright, attention-optimized, clean web but an enshittified web where companies like Proctor & Gamble are trying to SEO their way into showing up above Unilever in searches for 'toilet paper'.
What kind of blocker should we install to filter out the thousand enshittifications publishers would add to win the SEO game?
Worth noting in this conversation: there's a philosophy that these two techs go hand-in-glove because adtech is the alternative to spending money on SEO. Instead of trying to game the machine, just pay to show up in the "People who thought they were so important, they paid money to get your attention" slot. Much like the notion that in the absence of copyright and patents, you don't get free information but guilds and hitmen... In the absence of adtech you don't get a bright, attention-optimized, clean web but an enshittified web where companies like Proctor & Gamble are trying to SEO their way into showing up above Unilever in searches for 'toilet paper'.
> You can install an adblocker to filter out adtech
If only it were that simple. If you want to avoid adtech spying on you, you have to do a whole lot more than that.
If only it were that simple. If you want to avoid adtech spying on you, you have to do a whole lot more than that.
>What kind of blocker should we install to filter out the thousand enshittifications publishers would add to win the SEO game?
well that's what Kagi is trying to do for you. But you can definitely spend a lot of time homespinning some unholy middleware filter on google results to try and cull down the most frequent offenders.
well that's what Kagi is trying to do for you. But you can definitely spend a lot of time homespinning some unholy middleware filter on google results to try and cull down the most frequent offenders.
How about neither? Neither would be good.
> Transparency into search algos would be better for us all
I think that the jury's out on that topic. Danny's absolutely right in asserting that if the full algo were known, people would write to optimize against the algo, which would defeat the purpose of the algo.
Goodhart's Law is in full effect: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
I think that the jury's out on that topic. Danny's absolutely right in asserting that if the full algo were known, people would write to optimize against the algo, which would defeat the purpose of the algo.
Goodhart's Law is in full effect: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
So then the algorithm is crap and that is why they don’t want to show it. If the “full algo” actually prioritizes high quality content we would certainly want everyone to optimize against it!
In general, these models are approximations of an ideal, or some kind of statistical summary across systems that are too complex to completely model.
There's a wide gap between "this algorithm is crap" and "this algorithm stops working if we publish the whole thing publicly and people can explicitly tune data to make number-go-up." That's like claiming a machine learning algorithm is crap because it's possible to build bespoke counter-inputs that maximize badness in the output; that's possible with most ML algorithms, but when someone's not trying to break the machine on purpose, those algorithms often work great.
There's a wide gap between "this algorithm is crap" and "this algorithm stops working if we publish the whole thing publicly and people can explicitly tune data to make number-go-up." That's like claiming a machine learning algorithm is crap because it's possible to build bespoke counter-inputs that maximize badness in the output; that's possible with most ML algorithms, but when someone's not trying to break the machine on purpose, those algorithms often work great.
>but when someone's not trying to break the machine on purpose, those algorithms often work great.
To be fair, that's the exact thing that's wrong here. Creative tools for professionals can assume good faith; no one is trying to break an IDE unless their job is QA for said IDE.
Tools for advertising almost always have bad faith actors, or those actors are the largest presence. The problem becomes untenable when the tool creator has a symbiotic relation with the bad actor.
To be fair, that's the exact thing that's wrong here. Creative tools for professionals can assume good faith; no one is trying to break an IDE unless their job is QA for said IDE.
Tools for advertising almost always have bad faith actors, or those actors are the largest presence. The problem becomes untenable when the tool creator has a symbiotic relation with the bad actor.
How about sites that are shown to use SEO or game the algorithm simply cease to exist on Google after a warning period? Change the incentive structure entirely.
I tried reading both the Verge and this article and 10 paragraphs into each, still in the preamble.
Related thread on the Verge article from earlier:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38097938
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38097938
> I almost certainly would not have said that everyone “who tried to rank higher by messing with the algorithm would be blocked.” That’s not a direct quote, but it also doesn’t make sense as a paraphrase.
> We have ranking systems that largely do not “block” content. They look to reward good content and show it highly in results; lower-quality content drops. Even with actual spam, it’s unusual that we’d literally “block” an entire site. It just isn’t likely to rank well for general queries that aren’t somehow very specific to it.
This, to me, is the fundamental problem that is ruining Google search results. There are many many sites that absolutely should be completely blocked. But Google will never block or downrank those sites because those sites are their golden goose.
We've all done a search with a programming question, expecting the top result to either be the official documentation or Stack Overflow. Instead, we get a content farm site that has either stolen, or ML-generated, the answers from other sites that were actually responsible for crafting the content in the first place. You know the sites, I don't have to name them here.
These content farm sites not only stole their content, but they are very unpleasant to visit. Sure, they may load fast. They may have the content you searched for. But they also have ads. Lots of ads. They also have ad blocker blockers. And they have little pop-ups that ask you to subscribe to the newsletter. Those sorts of things make a site unpleasant to visit. Those are the sorts of things that should make a site get heavily downranked, or completely blocked. No matter what content such a site has, a human doesn't want to suffer through the experience of going to that site.
But Google can't do that. Those sites are their golden goose. Those sites are serving up ads powered by Google. If Google downranks sites that are a bad unpleasant ad-filled user experience, and upranks ad-free wonderful web sites, they're hosed. All those ad impressions their customers paid for will never happen if traffic to ad-laden web sites plummets.
TL;DR: The ideal search engine would only allow a site to show up in a search result if that site was completely free of all ads, trackers, paywalls, pop-ups, or any other unpleasant similar thing. The entire rest of the web would be de-indexed. A search engine that itself is paid for by ads can never do that.
> We have ranking systems that largely do not “block” content. They look to reward good content and show it highly in results; lower-quality content drops. Even with actual spam, it’s unusual that we’d literally “block” an entire site. It just isn’t likely to rank well for general queries that aren’t somehow very specific to it.
This, to me, is the fundamental problem that is ruining Google search results. There are many many sites that absolutely should be completely blocked. But Google will never block or downrank those sites because those sites are their golden goose.
We've all done a search with a programming question, expecting the top result to either be the official documentation or Stack Overflow. Instead, we get a content farm site that has either stolen, or ML-generated, the answers from other sites that were actually responsible for crafting the content in the first place. You know the sites, I don't have to name them here.
These content farm sites not only stole their content, but they are very unpleasant to visit. Sure, they may load fast. They may have the content you searched for. But they also have ads. Lots of ads. They also have ad blocker blockers. And they have little pop-ups that ask you to subscribe to the newsletter. Those sorts of things make a site unpleasant to visit. Those are the sorts of things that should make a site get heavily downranked, or completely blocked. No matter what content such a site has, a human doesn't want to suffer through the experience of going to that site.
But Google can't do that. Those sites are their golden goose. Those sites are serving up ads powered by Google. If Google downranks sites that are a bad unpleasant ad-filled user experience, and upranks ad-free wonderful web sites, they're hosed. All those ad impressions their customers paid for will never happen if traffic to ad-laden web sites plummets.
TL;DR: The ideal search engine would only allow a site to show up in a search result if that site was completely free of all ads, trackers, paywalls, pop-ups, or any other unpleasant similar thing. The entire rest of the web would be de-indexed. A search engine that itself is paid for by ads can never do that.
> This, to me, is the fundamental problem that is ruining Google search results.
That's certainly a large factor, but I think a greater factor (at least for me) is Google's use of ML to try to interpret what I "really" want when I write a search query instead of just going by what I actually wrote. Google makes terrible guesses as to my intent.
That's certainly a large factor, but I think a greater factor (at least for me) is Google's use of ML to try to interpret what I "really" want when I write a search query instead of just going by what I actually wrote. Google makes terrible guesses as to my intent.
I don't even think it's bad ML, it just doesnt respect your query. It should be darn obvious that if I search "Jaguar -car" that the first thing I don't want to see is "Jaguar - latest models". Fortuantely, the actual results past the obvious (but not explicitly marked) ad are of furry felines, but having that at top just shows what interests Google really has.
Though I think your TL;DR is too strong, I think you’re on to something. There are many times I’ll be searching for something probably esoteric and find myself wading through pages of useless semi-spam results when the actual answer is probably that there’s just nothing in the web that answers my question.
The verge produces some good articles. This is not an example. I tried to read it, but quickly got bogged down in irrelevant fluff. So I skimmed the rest.
Then I searched the article for "Sullivan". Every other occurrence is followed by, "is mad" "is pissed" "impatient corporate stooge", and other improbable attacks.
Wow! She wrote a metric ton of words just to say, "I hate Danny".
It is true that Google is a swamp. Thank goodness for Kagi.
Then I searched the article for "Sullivan". Every other occurrence is followed by, "is mad" "is pissed" "impatient corporate stooge", and other improbable attacks.
Wow! She wrote a metric ton of words just to say, "I hate Danny".
It is true that Google is a swamp. Thank goodness for Kagi.
The Verge is rent seeking; they need to be discoverable to exist.
The Verge is like many other web assets these days; facing extinction and mad at everyone else over it.
What a shock, past human social pageantry is being obsoleted. Thats never happened before; we all speak Latin still, and serve the British monarchy, don’t you know.
Horse and buggy, rotary phone makers started a support group all the wannabe Lois Lanes and Clark Kent’s can join up with.
The Verge is like many other web assets these days; facing extinction and mad at everyone else over it.
What a shock, past human social pageantry is being obsoleted. Thats never happened before; we all speak Latin still, and serve the British monarchy, don’t you know.
Horse and buggy, rotary phone makers started a support group all the wannabe Lois Lanes and Clark Kent’s can join up with.
Yikes, this comes across as extremely defensive.
Well, it is defensive because he's literally defending himself. I don't think it deserves a "yikes", though. His tone is calm, his arguments cogent, etc. I think this was actually a very good response.
This is a case where I think both The Verge and Danny get things wrong, they're both far too biased.
The Verge has come to some forgone conclusion about the decline of Google, and Danny works for Google.
The Verge has come to some forgone conclusion about the decline of Google, and Danny works for Google.
This whole article feels like Danny Sullivan cooling off and patiently trying to explain that no, we're all wrong, the sky really is red. It just doesn't fit with my experience. 60% of the time, for actual searches (not just using Google as my lazy equivalent of a memorised bookmarks bar because bookmarks don't work well on mobile) don't work, and I have to wade through crap that is mentally tiring to deal with just to be given the privilege of discovering that it didn't work, the information I want is not being provided by this search, or the toll being exacted by SEO spam crap for the information is soul destroying enough that I need to go somewhere else.
As just one example, my husband likes to play Minecraft. Sometimes he asks me to look up something while he's playing. A couple of weeks ago he asked me several questions about a creature called a "Vex". This is what happened when I tried to use Google to answer those questions.
One of the questions was about its health on Hard difficulty, another was if there were any blocks it couldn't phase through, another was if it's going to attack the villagers he's trying to keep safe in this little area. I don't want to search all of these individually and I figure all of these answers probably exist on one wiki page, so I search "Minecraft Vex wiki". The first result is a Fandom link; click on that, immediate banner scam ad covering half the screen, pop-up scam ad on the bottom, a third scam ad doing some weird scrolling thing on the side of the screen, that turns into an auto-playing video. One of the ads features a group of sexualised women selling deodorant in a tropical environment. The auto-playing video appears to be trying to tell me how great it would be to have a beer (I am 7 years sober, and I've told Google not to give me ads about alcohol). It has been approximately five seconds since I hit the search button on "Minecraft Vex wiki". It is a failure on Google's part that the first result is a site that has this experience. The second result is one of those IGN "wikis" that are generally worse than any other option and also full of ads, so I'm not interested but click to confirm - okay, this looks like it was written by a bad teenager, someone from Fiverr, or both. And it's absolutely full of ads, time to swipe back. The next thing in the results is four variations on questions about Vex, none of them being the questions I had. The next thing in the results is eight little thumbnails directly in the search results, with a little icon in the corner of each image indicating the website it's coming from - why would these image thumbnails ever, ever pop up on what is clearly a search for detailed, technical information? I didn't run an image search, I know how to click the image search button if I want that, and what I was looking for wasn't even possible to solve with an image thumbnail. They don't even have any text to tell me whether they're worth clicking on, they are a completely useless result for my search. What's worse, between them and the useless questions that I didn't ask, this takes up maybe five results worth of space. By the time I get to the third result on the page, I am maybe a third of the way down the page and it's the official Minecraft announcement page for the Vex mob. This is basically a good result for the Minecraft and Vex portions of the term (third time's the charm), but it still doesn't have the information I'm looking for, it's a general overview that doesn't answer any of the specific questions I had. Every other result from here on out was worse than this, until the result that was second to last. That was a minecraft.wiki link which wasn't torturous to navigate, and after clicking on it it was able to answer all of my questions, after I clarified some things with my husband. Why wasn't this result first? "Just make a good website" does not, in any way, describe what Fandom is providing, and Google recommends it to me as the first option. I don't know if it's specific to me because of my search history now, but conducting the same search now has the minecraft.wiki link as the first result, so it's clear Google is trying something to improve. I have zero confidence that the next time I search for information whose location I don't already know, that it will be any different.
This is how at least half of my attempts to use Google to actually search go, and this was an absolute best case scenario for search because it was about probably the world's most popular video game with extensive technical documentation in existence, and I knew exactly what I wanted (a good wiki page on the Vex from Minecraft) and put it in the search, and because Google actually gave me the answer eventually instead of just crapping the bed and having nothing, like it often does. The entire experience was onerous and visually/auditorily offensive drudgery, so that I could answer someone's questions about a video game while they were focusing on another resource they were using to build something in the game. Does Google mark this as a "success" because I got the information I wanted? Because it wasn't successful, it made me want to gouge my eyes out just like every other time I use Google, and what it made me want most of all was an LLM from five years in the future that can just field those questions and provide answers without all of this... "experience". This was not my experience Googling questions 10 years ago. I do not know or care if this is all Danny Sullivan's fault, I don't know him from a can of bread, but it's someone's fault and frankly I hope the company that does this crap can't adapt fast enough and gets destroyed by AI. And you know what's funny? Before my first time using an LLM, I had just accepted that every time I was going to search on the internet it would be a little more soul destroying than it was before, every day for the rest of my life, and there was nothing I could ever do about it because no one would ever be able to compete with Google's monopoly. I had no anger because I had no hope that a solution to this was even possible. After my first time using an LLM with internet access, there were a boatload of problems and potential for abuse but I could immediately see that this technology could insulate me from the demons on the internet that make it a soul-trampling experience, and at least if it got the answers wrong it could say sorry instead of exposing me to unwanted pictures of a woman in a bikini covered in beer foam. Google is a bad, bad, bad experience, and the fact the SEO spammers and this Google employee think it's very effective is both unsurprising and unconvincing. Don't even get me started on the actual Google ads and their determination to make me read the Epoch Times, a newspaper run by a cult that my friend barely escaped from and which there's apparently no way to inform Google I am never going to click on so please don't show it to me anymore.
Okay. I got mad but with reason, Google is rage-inducing in the modern era. Now I can move on with my day.
As just one example, my husband likes to play Minecraft. Sometimes he asks me to look up something while he's playing. A couple of weeks ago he asked me several questions about a creature called a "Vex". This is what happened when I tried to use Google to answer those questions.
One of the questions was about its health on Hard difficulty, another was if there were any blocks it couldn't phase through, another was if it's going to attack the villagers he's trying to keep safe in this little area. I don't want to search all of these individually and I figure all of these answers probably exist on one wiki page, so I search "Minecraft Vex wiki". The first result is a Fandom link; click on that, immediate banner scam ad covering half the screen, pop-up scam ad on the bottom, a third scam ad doing some weird scrolling thing on the side of the screen, that turns into an auto-playing video. One of the ads features a group of sexualised women selling deodorant in a tropical environment. The auto-playing video appears to be trying to tell me how great it would be to have a beer (I am 7 years sober, and I've told Google not to give me ads about alcohol). It has been approximately five seconds since I hit the search button on "Minecraft Vex wiki". It is a failure on Google's part that the first result is a site that has this experience. The second result is one of those IGN "wikis" that are generally worse than any other option and also full of ads, so I'm not interested but click to confirm - okay, this looks like it was written by a bad teenager, someone from Fiverr, or both. And it's absolutely full of ads, time to swipe back. The next thing in the results is four variations on questions about Vex, none of them being the questions I had. The next thing in the results is eight little thumbnails directly in the search results, with a little icon in the corner of each image indicating the website it's coming from - why would these image thumbnails ever, ever pop up on what is clearly a search for detailed, technical information? I didn't run an image search, I know how to click the image search button if I want that, and what I was looking for wasn't even possible to solve with an image thumbnail. They don't even have any text to tell me whether they're worth clicking on, they are a completely useless result for my search. What's worse, between them and the useless questions that I didn't ask, this takes up maybe five results worth of space. By the time I get to the third result on the page, I am maybe a third of the way down the page and it's the official Minecraft announcement page for the Vex mob. This is basically a good result for the Minecraft and Vex portions of the term (third time's the charm), but it still doesn't have the information I'm looking for, it's a general overview that doesn't answer any of the specific questions I had. Every other result from here on out was worse than this, until the result that was second to last. That was a minecraft.wiki link which wasn't torturous to navigate, and after clicking on it it was able to answer all of my questions, after I clarified some things with my husband. Why wasn't this result first? "Just make a good website" does not, in any way, describe what Fandom is providing, and Google recommends it to me as the first option. I don't know if it's specific to me because of my search history now, but conducting the same search now has the minecraft.wiki link as the first result, so it's clear Google is trying something to improve. I have zero confidence that the next time I search for information whose location I don't already know, that it will be any different.
This is how at least half of my attempts to use Google to actually search go, and this was an absolute best case scenario for search because it was about probably the world's most popular video game with extensive technical documentation in existence, and I knew exactly what I wanted (a good wiki page on the Vex from Minecraft) and put it in the search, and because Google actually gave me the answer eventually instead of just crapping the bed and having nothing, like it often does. The entire experience was onerous and visually/auditorily offensive drudgery, so that I could answer someone's questions about a video game while they were focusing on another resource they were using to build something in the game. Does Google mark this as a "success" because I got the information I wanted? Because it wasn't successful, it made me want to gouge my eyes out just like every other time I use Google, and what it made me want most of all was an LLM from five years in the future that can just field those questions and provide answers without all of this... "experience". This was not my experience Googling questions 10 years ago. I do not know or care if this is all Danny Sullivan's fault, I don't know him from a can of bread, but it's someone's fault and frankly I hope the company that does this crap can't adapt fast enough and gets destroyed by AI. And you know what's funny? Before my first time using an LLM, I had just accepted that every time I was going to search on the internet it would be a little more soul destroying than it was before, every day for the rest of my life, and there was nothing I could ever do about it because no one would ever be able to compete with Google's monopoly. I had no anger because I had no hope that a solution to this was even possible. After my first time using an LLM with internet access, there were a boatload of problems and potential for abuse but I could immediately see that this technology could insulate me from the demons on the internet that make it a soul-trampling experience, and at least if it got the answers wrong it could say sorry instead of exposing me to unwanted pictures of a woman in a bikini covered in beer foam. Google is a bad, bad, bad experience, and the fact the SEO spammers and this Google employee think it's very effective is both unsurprising and unconvincing. Don't even get me started on the actual Google ads and their determination to make me read the Epoch Times, a newspaper run by a cult that my friend barely escaped from and which there's apparently no way to inform Google I am never going to click on so please don't show it to me anymore.
Okay. I got mad but with reason, Google is rage-inducing in the modern era. Now I can move on with my day.
Is there a tldr of the original article and the reaction(s)?
Extreme tl;dr incoming...
Original article: Google search sucks now
Response article: No, it doesn't
Original article: Google search sucks now
Response article: No, it doesn't
Thanks mate
I don't know what the Verge is and I don't know much about SpamEngineOptimisation but I think that its not that complicated. You pay Google to have your rubbish rank higher and you pay Kagi to not have to look at that when searching for something useful. And there is still room for beautiful blogposts, interviews and discussions about the different angles and what the real issue is and how to look at this in a calm and objective way and what solutions might be on the horizon, hey, go for it. Choose a nice webfont and color palette and knock yourselves out. toodles.
Title: “The people who ruined the internet”
https://www.theverge.com/features/23931789/seo-search-engine...