hear anything good about what went down? (btw, love the Altavista reference - was pretty frustrating to search 30 (egad!) years ago, but i sometimes miss the NEAR operator it had!)
Hah ya, I loved Altavista and Lycos :). I'll even throw in some Ask Jeeves!
Ya basically Google told them nothing is going to change any time soon. Maybe 3 core updates from now, but their systems are slow on the uptake and it is not clear if they have the will to fix it.
Thanks for all the details, and the great links. This line from the last one seems to sum it up best: “It was then I realized this wasn’t our funeral, it was Google’s.”
All of this makes me remember the movie "Idiocracy". Forbes became a giant Costco and Reddit is full of electrolytes. And we, the humans, are just becoming more and more stupid. All of this thanks to Google.
> I’d love to see a partner program where Google has website owners embed code on their websites to pull in anonymous data about engagement so they can better reward good websites. I HATE spam and SEO spam, and I think this could help fix the problem. Google has something similar on YouTube, given their control of that platform, and I think this could work by helping them identify who wants to build a better web.
Easy to fake. You can just change the client-side code. Or if Google is scanning for that, you can easily generate some fake traffic. I can get you any number of highly engaged users for $1000
I used to do a fair bit of work finding financial fraud within affiliate systems and other charges. It is def achievable if you have the data coming in to figure out what is fake. Don't believe anyone who says otherwise :)
Is it hard? Yes. But we are on earth to do hard things :)
btw, if you work for Google, feel free to email me, happy to brainstorm how this system could work. YouTube has done similar behind the scenes and their system is working great. Maybe Google Search can talk to people at YouTube and learn some things :)
Maybe. I think it depends on how large the incentives are.
I imagine that you can always red-team the fake users, and work around any detection mechanism you may find
Unless there's a purchase, of course. That can't be faked. But I'm not sure how Google could detect whether a purchase has taken place in a scalable way. Maybe unless you tell them what your post-purchase webpage is?
Oh well I'm only spitballing. I'm sure there's a lot I don't know in this field
I mean people now are doing cell phones to mimic real traffic in the black hat world. So it will be a challenge, but its just the cost of returning good search results. I mean they can give up as well if they want, I am sure Bing and ChatGPT would love to take it over.
Thanks for taking the time, you are certainly articulate enough. This is not the first article I've read like this ... today even, from authors I respect. It's clear big G is crumbling. I've worked on the web since a time when Yahoo was freshly beaten by Google for best in search. I couldn't recommend Firefox and Google to my friends fast enough.
But time changes everything, and these kinds of things are cyclical for sure. I'm interested in why you chose Kagi over, say, DuckDuckGo ? My default is Perplexity. And yes - I recommend it to every one who will listen as THE alternative to Google. Even if Perplexity doesn't come out on top of the new search wars, I do believe a service similar to theirs at least will.
Answer the question, solve the problem, show the user the whatever they are looking for ... and you'll have a good product. Funny ... that's what Google's goal was a couple decades ago. Pretty sure they have some other priorities now.
I liked that Kagi let me block/elevate certain websites in the results, and the results seemed great. I didn't even try DDG as Kagi seemed fantastic.
I've used Perplexity a little, but my worry is they don't cite sources enough and instead pull website's content into their UX which doesn't help the web. I'l try them again soon and see if they improved, as I wish they would do more to help the web. ChatGPT's new search feature was launched yesterday and seems much better at that.
Ya, I am curious what things look like in 12 to 18 months at Google, weird world :)
This is outside my normal posts, but I felt it was important as the web is being destroyed. And I am frustrated as Google is really shitting the bed.
Over Oct 28th and 29th, Google has invited content creators to a summit. I am hoping somethign positive comes out of it:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-creator-summit-38196.html
Cross your fingers...
hear anything good about what went down? (btw, love the Altavista reference - was pretty frustrating to search 30 (egad!) years ago, but i sometimes miss the NEAR operator it had!)
Hah ya, I loved Altavista and Lycos :). I'll even throw in some Ask Jeeves!
Ya basically Google told them nothing is going to change any time soon. Maybe 3 core updates from now, but their systems are slow on the uptake and it is not clear if they have the will to fix it.
Summaries here from people who went:
https://mike-hardaker.com/f/i-drank-the-kool-aid-at-the-2024-google-web-creator-summit/
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-update-coming-38323.html
https://searchengineland.com/googles-next-update-coming-soon-but-dont-expect-to-recover-lost-traffic-447873
https://x.com/charlestoncraft/status/1851467133412393319
https://twitter.com/natejhake/status/1851776985724522789
https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/tech/google-creators-event.html
https://techraptor.net/blog/google-web-creator-conversation-event-2024?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
https://goingawesomeplaces.com/google-web-creator-conversation-event-2024-retrospective/
More coming as people digest. It was a heavy event for a lot of the creators.
Thanks for all the details, and the great links. This line from the last one seems to sum it up best: “It was then I realized this wasn’t our funeral, it was Google’s.”
Ya and here is a great video with more nuance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_6FqA87Lfc
All of this makes me remember the movie "Idiocracy". Forbes became a giant Costco and Reddit is full of electrolytes. And we, the humans, are just becoming more and more stupid. All of this thanks to Google.
> I’d love to see a partner program where Google has website owners embed code on their websites to pull in anonymous data about engagement so they can better reward good websites. I HATE spam and SEO spam, and I think this could help fix the problem. Google has something similar on YouTube, given their control of that platform, and I think this could work by helping them identify who wants to build a better web.
Easy to fake. You can just change the client-side code. Or if Google is scanning for that, you can easily generate some fake traffic. I can get you any number of highly engaged users for $1000
I used to do a fair bit of work finding financial fraud within affiliate systems and other charges. It is def achievable if you have the data coming in to figure out what is fake. Don't believe anyone who says otherwise :)
Is it hard? Yes. But we are on earth to do hard things :)
btw, if you work for Google, feel free to email me, happy to brainstorm how this system could work. YouTube has done similar behind the scenes and their system is working great. Maybe Google Search can talk to people at YouTube and learn some things :)
Maybe. I think it depends on how large the incentives are.
I imagine that you can always red-team the fake users, and work around any detection mechanism you may find
Unless there's a purchase, of course. That can't be faked. But I'm not sure how Google could detect whether a purchase has taken place in a scalable way. Maybe unless you tell them what your post-purchase webpage is?
Oh well I'm only spitballing. I'm sure there's a lot I don't know in this field
I mean people now are doing cell phones to mimic real traffic in the black hat world. So it will be a challenge, but its just the cost of returning good search results. I mean they can give up as well if they want, I am sure Bing and ChatGPT would love to take it over.
Thanks for taking the time, you are certainly articulate enough. This is not the first article I've read like this ... today even, from authors I respect. It's clear big G is crumbling. I've worked on the web since a time when Yahoo was freshly beaten by Google for best in search. I couldn't recommend Firefox and Google to my friends fast enough.
But time changes everything, and these kinds of things are cyclical for sure. I'm interested in why you chose Kagi over, say, DuckDuckGo ? My default is Perplexity. And yes - I recommend it to every one who will listen as THE alternative to Google. Even if Perplexity doesn't come out on top of the new search wars, I do believe a service similar to theirs at least will.
Answer the question, solve the problem, show the user the whatever they are looking for ... and you'll have a good product. Funny ... that's what Google's goal was a couple decades ago. Pretty sure they have some other priorities now.
I liked that Kagi let me block/elevate certain websites in the results, and the results seemed great. I didn't even try DDG as Kagi seemed fantastic.
I've used Perplexity a little, but my worry is they don't cite sources enough and instead pull website's content into their UX which doesn't help the web. I'l try them again soon and see if they improved, as I wish they would do more to help the web. ChatGPT's new search feature was launched yesterday and seems much better at that.
Ya, I am curious what things look like in 12 to 18 months at Google, weird world :)
Same thing for us at https://concerty.com with traffic decreasing since march. More we improve the site, more we loose traffic :-p
I am sorry Willy :(. I am hopeful they can improve, especially as they faced increased competition from Bing and ChatGPT among others.
And another great writeup here for a website shutting down do to this:
https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/independent-ends.html