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CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search (gizmodo.com)
submitted 2 years ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] Thorned_Rose@kbin.social 38 points 2 years ago

Google is supposed (SUPPOSED) to serve up closest to what you search for. SEO is the antithesis of this - it games the system to get a given website closer to or in front of your eyeballs even if it's content is less relevant. And Google has allowed this to continue (or more likely encouraged it on the down low because businesses that are SEO obsessed are more likely to be send money Google's way) because Google isn't a search engine anymore - Google is an advertising company with some internet services slapped on. Google 'search' is just a clown face for one of their advertising strategies. It doesn't serve up what's relevant - it serves up as much results that generate it revenue as possible without being so obvious about it that users get pissed off and switch search engines.

[-] evatronic@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago

Google ‘search’ is just a clown face for one of their advertising strategies.

It also has a bunch of decent knowledge tools built in, if you know how to use them. I use the stupid calculator thing more than I should; it's like a cheap wolfram alpha.

[-] quicksand@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago

Literally used that to subtract 37 today. Could've done it myself but you type it in Chrome and it previews the answer for free. Such an easy check. I don't wanna support Google but they are at least pros at subtraction, and God knows you can't criticize that

[-] Dr_Decoy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

AND “what percent of X is Y” questions! (stupid percentages)

[-] andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 35 points 2 years ago

I'm so annoyed we're here 25 years from Google's founding, catering to them with the euphemism "SEO" rather than doing what's best for the web and for humanity and expecting Google, the Search Engine company, to improve its capacity to search optimally.

[-] Lemmylaugh@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Enshitification has reached google search too :(((

[-] dojan@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Relevant song.

Honestly, Google's decrease in quality feels very noticeable to me. It's not just Google itself but it's across their services. They're making the user experience worse, and promoting irrelevant, mass-produced garbage. On occasion when I've been looking for something non-technical and niche, I've been taken to random machine-translated websites that just seem entirely AI generated.

This is a great example.. A friend of mine was contemplating getting a sugar glider (swedish: Korthuvad flygpungekorre, or just flygekorre) and I got curious about what they're like as pets. So I Googled it and got the above result. It is poppycock! Almost entirely nonsensical!

Sugar gliders in the Wild

Babysugarslips begin life in their mothers bag and are called joeys, just like kangaroos. Because of this unique start on life sugar gliding aeroplanes are classified as pungdjur, not rodents like the similar sexy squirrel.
...
The sugar whisk is an omnivore, so apart from nectar and juice they'll also eat both plant material and meat, including fruit, insects, and even small birds or rodents.
...
If your swingers aren't tame and not used to being handled, it might take some time and patience to get them to the point where they're sexy.

This type of content has gotten "better" since the release of better language models, but whenever you bump into an article that's written by a machine, it's always so very obvious, because they have a tendency to just meander and not really say anything of substance at all. A prime example being this article about World of Warcraft players being excited about "glorbo", archive.org link.

[-] warmaster@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

That sexy sugar glider tho... 🤣

[-] Gramba@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

I wonder if this is why so many sites now started including previews of new content on old content pages. It's made trying to google by date range completely useless because google now thinks a 12 year old post is brand new because there's a preview of a new post at the bottom when they re-index it.

[-] Thorned_Rose@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I've already noticed this being a problem. I search for a specific issue that's recent. Set the search as past year or month. See a search result that looks relevant and the date on it (according the search engine) is recent. Click on it only to find its a 5yo article.

[-] oforgetaboutit@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

This is because of Google's monopoly on search. If there were more search engines, then sites would just focus on making high quality articles instead of trying to play with the monopolists policies

this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
124 points (99.2% liked)

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