Blocking Forbes entirely would be useful. Too many people believe it’s a news organization.Forbes is horrific at this kind of seo abuse and others. I've seen Google news pick up some variation of "news" posts that go like:
Big company (msft/samsung/apple) update decision. Millions of customers must xyz.
And:
Famous person (gates, Musk, fink) says blah, will trigger collapse / skyrocket of bitcoin/currency/stock.
It's clearly nonsense spam. I hope that gets tackled next.
Has NYT started carrying unlabeled sponsored content?The reasonable thing would be for Wirecutter branded search results to be ok and NYTimes branded results to be dropped, but I'm guessing they aren't going to say how its implemented.
True. I was watching a special on early food brands and franchising. It was funny how I don't know Duncan Hines as anything other than a brand as opposed to a food critic/guide.It always has been.
Doesn't sound like it. Wirecutter is not a third party, it's a division of the NYT.Would this include Wirecutter on NYTimes?
That's only been happening for a few thousand years...Interesting how ‘reputation’ has been monetized, traded, brokered, and (ultimately) enshittified.
I'd been meaning to move off Google for search for a while now, but the AI spam was what finally got me to jump.Hope they get rid of 'AI overview' and 'questions' next. Scrolling past SEO spam is bad enough, scrolling past a full page of AI word salad and then the SEO spam is a bridge too far.
Honestly? I think the only thing that would work is human curation. The problem is it would take lots of people, lots of work to curate a meaningful amount of stuff. I don't know how it would work either, because a static list wouldn't work as information changes fast, and variable queries might not always fit the content. But some Wikipedia like project where community comes to collaborate and work on rankings.I wonder if it’s even possible to make a search engine as good as early-2000s Google anymore. The problem is analogous to Goodhart’s law, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
As soon as the SEO world figures out how a new search algorithm works, the inevitable decline begins again, and the challenge to create a useful algorithm becomes that much harder.
Username checks out…Google is doing something that doesn't immediately make me angry? I'm feeling deeply confused.
This. So much this. There’s a reason I use uBlacklist in my browsers. At least I don’t have to see Pinterest and Wirecutter crap show up in results anymore.Would this include Wirecutter on NYTimes?
I will say… my experience with paid search on Kagi has been pretty good so far.I'd been meaning to move off Google for search for a while now, but the AI spam was what finally got me to jump.
Agreed. This is more about putting the boot into some annoying, and worse still, freeloading, competitors than it is about the deenshittification of Google search. After all Google have more than enough fresh and steaming crap to fill their own nest.all true, but google doesn't suck because of SEO. Google sucks because they don't care about good search anymore. They optimize to sell ads and push their products.
His book was very similar to Zagat, in having just short blurbs about each restaurant. And started the same way -- in both cases, the reviews were originally compiled by a husband/wife team just to give to friends. The difference is that Zagat was originally about fine dining in NYC and Duncan Hines was compiling recommendations from decades as a traveling salesman around the whole country.True. I was watching a special on early food brands and franchising. It was funny how I don't know Duncan Hines as anything other than a brand as opposed to a food critic/guide.
When I was young, and of a radical age, there were many Conservatives to admire, while probably disagreeing with. Now I am old, and of a conservative age, there is nothing left in the movement which even arises to the level of ratbag. So Forbes having taken the same nose dive is hardly surprising.The surprising thing to me is that Forbes (which used to be a reasonably written business magazine, although leaning to far right politics), would sully its name and reputation with this sort of crap.
Makes me wonder if Forbes management cares about their reputation any more.
Food brands are rife with examples; I was thinking more about the tendency of people like Constantine to execute people and have their existence erased from all records because they represented parts of his history inconvenient to his ambitions.True. I was watching a special on early food brands and franchising. It was funny how I don't know Duncan Hines as anything other than a brand as opposed to a food critic/guide.
Definitely a breath of fresh air here as well. Turns out when you pay for the service there isn’t a need to sell you as the product.I will say… my experience with paid search on Kagi has been pretty good so far.
The SEO reordering does not affect more established kinds of third-party content, like wire service reports, syndication, or well-marked sponsored content....
If you're using a good search engine like Kagi you can easily block specific sites as I have done with forbes. It's worse than useless! Though Kagi also surfaces it a lot less than Google does in the first place. ( Whoops, looking up I see other people have mentioned Kagi, but this is specific to your request. )Blocking Forbes entirely would be useful. Too many people believe it’s a news organization.
It doesn’t seem like Google is even trying. There are so many ways they could handle it, even just by downranking domains that abuse the systemI wonder if it’s even possible to make a search engine as good as early-2000s Google anymore. The problem is analogous to Goodhart’s law, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
As soon as the SEO world figures out how a new search algorithm works, the inevitable decline begins again, and the challenge to create a useful algorithm becomes that much harder.
SEO is not the cause, only a symptom of the underlying problem. Google, the company, is also a symptom. The underlying problem is that by now the entire Internet with very few exceptions (e.g. Wikipedia) revolves around the business model of being advertising-financed. Google can not solve this problem, because the entire company relies on ad revenue. If they tried to seriously fight the problem, they would only kill themselves. The only way to fight this is to offer subscriptions (like Ars does), be donation-financed (like Wikipedia), collect payment directly from the viewer per visit (only theoretical - I know of no site that has managed to make this business model work), or remain a tiny hobby project.SEO has broken the internet. Google sucks now. This won't fix things, but at least it's good Google is kinda acknowledging the problem.
I don’t need it for myself, I need it for others to stop telling me that “Forbes says X” when it’s actually some dipshit with a Forbes site saying it.If you're using a good search engine like Kagi you can easily block specific sites as I have done with forbes. It's worse than useless! Though Kagi also surfaces it a lot less than Google does in the first place. ( Whoops, looking up I see other people have mentioned Kagi, but this is specific to your request. )
Google used to let you do this too (block known bad sites), but then they decided serving up shitty results and not letting you block them was the way to go because it meant more ad clicks. I really have to wonder why they're even bothering with this fix, actually, since when have they cared about good search results again? Since Prabahkar got moved to his new executive position? Since their search has become an open running joke and oops that might be a problem for stockholder value?
Yeah, I had to tell Google News that I'm not interested in Jamie Diamond because any time he said anything an article would show up in my news feed about it.Forbes is horrific at this kind of seo abuse and others. I've seen Google news pick up some variation of "news" posts that go like:
Big company (msft/samsung/apple) update decision. Millions of customers must xyz.
And:
Famous person (gates, Musk, fink) says blah, will trigger collapse / skyrocket of bitcoin/currency/stock.
It's clearly nonsense spam. I hope that gets tackled next.
I wonder if it’s even possible to make a search engine as good as early-2000s Google anymore. The problem is analogous to Goodhart’s law, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
As soon as the SEO world figures out how a new search algorithm works, the inevitable decline begins again, and the challenge to create a useful algorithm becomes that much harder.
Yes... and no. It's one of those "it depends" problems. When you're a certified monopolist and your primary market is also advertising, "well it's their website, they can do what they want" no longer is an excuse even under lax US trust enforcement.You can. But Google is under no obligation to take your brand into account when ranking. After all, it’s their search result.
Ideally, search index should be win-win-win. The consumer wins because they find something relevant, the site wins as their relevant content is found and Google wins because the house always wins. That balance was gone with SEO, and this change removes a small part of SEO spam. So, nice.
Google News is still promoting Twitter content despite that site just being a Nazi support group, and still promoting sites associated with fake stories, even when those same stories are debunked in their fact-check section.Forbes is horrific at this kind of seo abuse and others. I've seen Google news pick up some variation of "news" posts that go like:
Big company (msft/samsung/apple) update decision. Millions of customers must xyz.
And:
Famous person (gates, Musk, fink) says blah, will trigger collapse / skyrocket of bitcoin/currency/stock.
It's clearly nonsense spam. I hope that gets tackled next.
This is deliberate by google. You get 10% of your first page of search results as actual search results, the rest is SEO, AI, and other shit derived from acronymed software. Your 10% is right at the bottom of page 1. This is the current state of google's program, started with zest in 2019, to nowadays be an advertising provider first and not a search-engine-first provider. (RIP Google 1996-2019).This is a positive step that’s taken way too long to implement but the bigger problem is the spammy, no-name, AI-generated content farms that do the same thing as Forbes but lack the reputation abuse aspect
They fill up the first page of search results and don’t provide any real value
the unfair, exploitative nature of attempting to take advantage of the host sites' ranking signals
Yep. Their search sucks. I don't use it since it is terrible. If enough others quit they will change how it works. I am actually happy to hear of this change and perhaps I'll try it again since this is actually a potential improvement.SEO has broken the internet. Google sucks now. This won't fix things, but at least it's good Google is kinda acknowledging the problem.