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Google stops letting sites like Forbes rule search for "Best CBD Gummies"

(arstechnica.com)
212 points pseudolus | 5 comments | 20 Nov 24 21:07 UTC | HN request time: 1.95s | source
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NelsonMinar ◴[20 Nov 24 23:59 UTC] No.42199494[source]▶
I'm confused about how or why this is a new policy. My memory is inside Google we were discussing this risk back in 2003, probably earlier. Search quality was on it. I just assumed they'd lost the arms race, or that the parasites' ranking was justified for other reasons that were hard to tease apart. What are they doing new now?

I think often about Mahalo, the sleazy shovel content that was spamming the web back in 2007. Google shut that down somewhat fast, although it did take several years. These days with AI and more aggressive spammers it's a losing battle. The real problem is the financial incentives that make this kind of spamming profitable in the first place.

My tiny little blog gets about 3 requests a week for someone to "pay me to run a guest article". Going rate is $50-$200 and again, my blog is tiny.

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mjr00 ◴[21 Nov 24 00:06 UTC] No.42199551[source]▶
> I'm confused about how or why this is a new policy.

My best guess is it's because they finally have a real competitor in ChatGPT.

> The real problem is the financial incentives that make this kind of spamming profitable in the first place.

Yeah, but the financial incentives exist on both ends. There's a gross symbiotic relationship between Google and SEO spammers, because Google also owns the ad network the spammers put on their page. If Google puts ad-laden SEO blogspam as the top result and a user clicks it, the user sees a bunch of ads from Google. Everyone wins: Google, the SEO spammers, and advertisers. Well, everyone except the user, but who cares about them?

My guess/hope is that ChatGPT has made someone who actually cares about the quality of search results actually step in and say things have gone too far.

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1. chipsrafferty ◴[21 Nov 24 00:26 UTC] No.42199704[source]▶
Because ChatGPT is dependent on good search when it searches the web? Or because it completes with Google when it provides a good answer without searching? Or what do you mean specifically?
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2. ryandvm ◴[21 Nov 24 00:34 UTC] No.42199754[source]▶
I would say the latter. For software dev questions, my Google searches and Stack Overflow visits have fallen off a cliff since I started paying for ChatGPT.

Ironically, I probably would have paid the same amount to Google for ad-free, old-style (accurate) Google searches, but no, they just wanted to keep cranking that ad dial up every year so that ship has sailed.

At this point, I'm enjoying watching the old guard of search scrambling to find a life jacket.

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3. thephyber ◴[21 Nov 24 04:24 UTC] No.42201102[source]▶
Stackoverflow visits fell[1] off a cliff since GPT became popular.

Google is getting destroyed by the chatbot workflow because it is no longer the start of a browser session and clickthrus (the things that earn the high sponsored link rates) are falling as more users get their queries answered faster with less effort.

[1] https://x.com/altimor/status/1853893158368928124?s=46

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4. rockskon ◴[21 Nov 24 07:51 UTC] No.42202064{3}[source]▶
Are they, though? Inaccurate info is pretty common from LLMs.
5. throwaway2037 ◴[21 Nov 24 07:54 UTC] No.42202075{3}[source]▶
StackOverflow has been dying a slow death since longer than before ChatGPT. Sure, ChatGPT is helping to accelerate it. The real data (leave aside social/community for a moment) issue with SO.com: Many answers don't age well. So, you have an answer from 8 years ago with 65 upvotes, but now the lang/lib was updated in 2023. A newer, more relevant answer is waaaaaaay down and only has one upvote. Personal note: I still pine for the old days when Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood were at the helm. They really knew how to build and sustain a vibrant community.