- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
In February, HouseFresh managing editor Gisele Navarro called out publishers like BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone as some of the culprits that publish content about air purifiers despite a lack of expertise — but Google rewards these sites with high rankings all the same. The result is a search results page filled with SEO-first content, designed to do not much more than rank highly on Google.
In a piece published today, she says HouseFresh has “virtually disappeared” from search results: search traffic has decreased 91 percent in recent months, from around 4,000 visitors a day in October 2023 to 200 a day today.
“We lost rankings we held for months (and sometimes years) for articles that are constantly being updated and improved based on findings from our first-hand and in-depth testing, our long-term experience with the products, and feedback from our readers,” Navarro writes. “Our article [previously ranked at #2] is now buried deep beneath sponsored posts, Quora advice from 2016, best-of lists from big media sites, and no less than 64 Google Shopping product listings. Sixty. Four.”
SEO-first affiliate content is being deployed ruthlessly at countless sites.
There is no obvious editorial necessity for Forbes to write articles like “Top 20 Largest Dog Breeds” or “What Fruits Can Dogs Eat?” — until you take a look at the sidebar of these stories, which are filled with dozens of affiliate links for pet insurance that Forbes gets a kickback from every time someone signs up.
Last year, when CNET was discovered to be using artificial intelligence tools to produce dozens of stories, it was SEO-heavy “evergreen” articles it focused on first. In the cases of Sports Illustrated and USA Today’s AI content debacles, it also was product reviews that were being churned out using automation tools.
The aggressive targeting of top Google search spots — with or without AI — by big media outlets affects small sites like HouseFresh the most. A significant loss of traffic for independent publishers is often enough to shutter an outlet entirely.
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I want a search engine addon that allows blacklists, specifically ones that block every site that pumps out AI generated stories, preferably crowd-sourced. CNET would be the first one.
I’m sick of the internet at its current state, and it’s visibly getting worse day to day. I don’t even know how to search for shit and recommendations when planning to buy something.Kagi is a paid search engine. It allows you to uprank or downrank specific webpages. In that sense it’s very powerful.
I’ve heard of it but I don’t like the idea of having search queries associated with my credit card, even though they say they don’t do that.
But if you don’t pay directly for a good search engine, aren’t they forced to use ads to fund it? And then you end up with Google. Or is there a third option?
they can give an option to use anonymous forms of payment. Credit card only is aggressively anti privacy
Didn’t think this through, did I… But DDG works for now
I paid for discord nitro, didn’t stop them from adding ads.
Use a searxng instance instead.
Yeah but aren’t they getting enshitified? There was a comment a long ago saying Kagi was looking for more ways to monetize or something
Everything trends that way. Maybe if it was held by a municipality like a public trust or co-op things could be stable for longer
This is exactly why people started appending “site:www.reddit.com” to their searches. It was much easier (but not guaranteed) to find organic discussion and reviews of products.
Of course, nothing gold can stay, and this tarnish appeared by way of pigfucker Spez making Reddit worse by allowing corporations to flood the site with bots in the name of boosting MAUs for the IPO. That said, I can appreciate the position Google is in- how do you get to be a search engine of such size that your users can trust your results you deliver to them, filter out SEO spam, and have the whole system automated due to costs?
Or rather, I would appreciate that position, if Google were more interested in quality search results than in spam advertising.
I would guess you could allow people to create custom search blacklists. People could upload theirs and people would vote them up or down.
Have a look at marginalia.nu - it’s like a return to the old days
Looks like you can do it manually. Build your own Google flavor https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/134847/how-to-filter-out-a-long-list-of-sites-from-google-search
im not aware of what you want, but ceo bullshit is usually made to trick google search. any other engine will be better, even bing is unironically superior to google rn.
So you want Kagi
Paging FTC, FTC. It’s gotten near impossible to find honest reviews that aren’t driven by affiliate links anywhere. So many news outlets hocking products outright, I stopped paying attention after nyt bought wirecutter.
Then there’s shit like Forbes (from the article) writing lifestyle clickbait about pets and dogs all the while advertising pet insurance.
“who do you trust, when everyone’s a crook?” -‘revolution calling’ (queensryche)
How 16 Companies are Dominating the World’s Google Search Results (2024 Edition)
Operation Mindcrime is a gem!
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It is one of my favorites too:)
Probably the best thing about Verge covering this is simply signal boost, getting the story out to a wider audience.
Do people who don’t follow this kind of stuff realize how dog shit google results have gotten? I accidentally googled (new phone) a Costco wine earlier and all the links were marketing garbage. DDG gives me actual reviews within 5 results.
Ed Zitron has a scathing piece about that (in the podcast version he’s seething) entitled “The Man Who Killed Google Search.” Worth checking out, it contains some quality righteous anger.
Just listened to it again. Highly recommend. The short of it is more searches == more ads == more $. There’s a conflict between a great search experience (landing not on google) versus the time you spend ON Google.
Great story and just terrible outcome.
I initially thought about installing UBlacklist on Firefox and block the spam, but then I had a thought? Let us do the HouseFresh.com test on Duck Duck Go and see how far up it is?
Apparently, Housefresh.com stands behind world famous Air Purifier reviewers like:
- Best Buy
- popular mechanics
- CBSnews
- NationalGeographic
- PCMagazine
- Rollingstone
- Yahoo
- UsNews
- Forbes
- Choice
- MrGadget.com.au
- CNET
- Amazon
- TopConsumerReviews
- Bustle
- ConsumerReports
- Parents
- Health
- bhg
- thekitchn
- rd
- learnmetrics
- homedepot
- iheartdogs
- telegraph
- msn
- livestrong
- sethlui
- nytimes
- reviewed.usatoday
- popsci
- oransi
- healthline
- seattleweekly
- bestreviews
- thesprucepets
- tomsguide
- gearhungry
- consumertestedreviews
- bobvila
- prevention
- nbcnews
- nypost
- foodandwine
- consumeradvice.in
- news.com.au
- esquire
- gq
- wsj
- verywellhealth
- consumerreports
- moderncastle
- consumeranalysis
- independent.co.uk
- hollywoodreporter
- hgtv
- consumersadvocate
- thehindu
- toptenreviews
- people.com
- popsci
- money
- endadget
- businessinsider
- gearpatrol
- trustedreviews
- digitaltrends
- menshealth
- howtogeek
- techyearlab
- nymag
- livescience
- portugal(what?)
- nj
- iqair
- mashable
- billboard
- prevention
- techhive
- architecturaldigest
- huffpost
- reviewed.usatoday
- realsimple
- techradar
- wired
Well, nevermind guess. I can have either HouseFresh and literally nothing else. Or an ocean of spam, intermixed with the rare human written article that was produced by the main branch of the publisher, rather than its SEO garbage chute.
The web search is a lost cause. No wonder Kagi keeps growing in popularity.
(Also keep in mind, in that giant list? Some of those websites are so GOOD at their Air Purifying review job that they get to be featured more than once, thrice even at times)
Yeah I have been using DuckDuckGo for about a decade. I noticed a drop in quality as soon as the Microsoft Bing partnership. Now it is mostly just a Bing clone. Which is really sad. They were really good and really cared about consumers privacy. I have been moving over to Startpage but have yet to do a full read up on its policies and do a full test of the quality of the search results. Though so far I am quietly optimistic.
Web today is three companies in a trenchcoat. It is bit sad that the innovation of late 90’s has almost disappeared. I do hope Fediverse/ActivityPub would create this next version of free web, which is impossible for companies to control.
You could find stuff, it was often a very tedious process though. You searched for: thing XYZ doesn’t work and found a lot of of forums with posts of people who had the same problem and with a bit of luck you found a two years old entry with an answer that actually worked for you. Now it’s 20 results from the company that created the product you have a problem with but offers no solution at all.
Might try this
I’m using a French search engine called Qwant. I find it gives very good results.
Just gave it a quick test drive it and it’s pretty promising, thanks for the tip.
Not bad eh?
Not until I searched for “restaurant town name” and got as results tripadvisor.com, tripadvisor.co.uk, tripadvisor.ch, tripadvisor.fr *5, … ;)
But in another search it did way better than duckduckgo. So it’s not perfect, but definitely good enough to try as main search for a while :)
Well fair enough lol. It is a lot tidier though for news search!
Merci, je vais l’essayer
Really need to start using DuckDcukGo exclusively
Duck Duck Go is also complete trash these days, just in different ways.
Another alternatives
Kagi Searx Startpage
Wha?? Duckduckgo is great. I love it. Get to know their bangs. https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
yeah I tried it and it was incredibly lacking. Any advice on alternatives?
I sadly have none. I suffer with DDG and Google and my life is hell.
Same bro, same, for simple shit I usually end up using Perplexity to avoid the garbage articles.
I’ve been using kagi for a couple months and it’s great. The AI shit is pretty prominent, but optional, so your experience will vary depending on your tolerance for that stuff. Also it’s not free lol.
For my purposes I find it worth the money
I’ve been using Qwant and been loving it.
looks interesting, thanks
Seems like a combination of building a proper webring and then setting YaCY loose on it is probably the path forward.
Make a search on Bing, then make a search on DuckDcukGo. Compare the results. You’ll find out that DuckDcukGo is just a front end for another site that provides links to business affiliates.
Well damn what engine search CAN I use then?
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I’ve been using Kagi for a few months and I’m liking it so far.
A search engine that specifically requires an account is pretty sus
How else are you supposed to pay for it?
We need Yahoo back. Just a bunch of categories, where anyone can put their site under the right category.
Isn’t the head of Google search, Yahoo’s former head of search?
The Internet is so big nowadays that you pretty much need to have some kind of algorithm. A list of all websites in “the right category” would have way too many items in it most of which would be useless. We live in an attention economy: lots of people want as many people as possible to pay attention to them, but everyone’s attention is obviously limited.
No I don’t know how to fix this.
before:2023, choose a site, look for updated article.
