this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Yes. They both did.
Google came to prominence because it sidestepped the first gen SEO of keywords.
Then it became a bloated corp run by MBAs.
SEO took off and it did little to nothing as its search platform was now there to deliver eye balls to advertisers.
It’s worse than that, in Google’s current antitrust suit, the government showed that Google stopped searching for your exact text…. Instead they replace your text with the most profitable text that’s close to what you’re searching for. So you can’t actually get better results by refining your query anymore.
Meaning that Google is defrauding their users (making it look like they searched for something they didn’t give you the results for) and they defrauded AdWords clients because I paid for an ad when someone searches for X but Google manipulated a search for Y into X so that I’d have to pay more even though the user didn’t actually use my keyword.
Aaaaand we wonder why Google sucks now.
….. always the same reason that a company turns hostile to their clients….. “I’m big enough I don’t care, and I want more money, fuck you”
Wired retracted that article because the writer misunderstood the slides.
https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/
That’s interesting… I’m curious now….
They may have misinterpreted it, but now I wanna know what it REALLY is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802116
If you search for "kids clothing", when it goes to pull ads to put above the results, it fuzzes the search phrase for synonyms. So for example if TJ Maxx has purchased ads for "kidswear", that's a semantic match, so they'll show the TJ Maxx ads even though it's not one of the exact keywords they picked.
While I’m not arguing your point, it certainly appears you’re right…..
I just can’t help but feel like the original story (despite the inaccuracy) was on to something.
A few years ago when Google stopped processing quotes in the search properly, their search engine started shitting the bed HARD.
I’ve always felt that since that time they’ve been searching the wrong things. Search has gotten worse. It’s been better for finding items I want to buy, but complete dogshit for everything else. I don’t particularly buy that seo’s got a sudden unexplained boost at that time.
I don’t know, the article (despite the inaccuracies) really felt like it explained everything nicely. So the article might be wrong but…. There’s still something there Google isn’t telling us. I kinda wonder if it’s true despite the lack of evidence.
Wait quotes no longer work?
It’s not that they don’t work entirely, they just started “fuzzing “ them like normal search.
They’re no longer a hard explicit.
Probably explains why sometimes i can't seem to find what i really want
Stop the insanity, there is no need to drive into conspiracies.
Ehhhh, only a small amount is assumed. The rest is fact. And I’m fairly upfront about it.
I feel this, especially when I'm looking up technical information. I'll specifically exclude keywords and they show up in the first result.
Half the time I feel the search engine doesn't care what I'm looking for.