this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Out of the loop

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It all of a sudden became TERRIBLE and now I can't find anything? When did this happen? Why did this happen?

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[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Define "sudden".

This has been a progressively worsening problem for a good while now.

To be fair to Google, it's not entirely their fault, there's a whole industry now that's entire purpose is to fuck up the results. But even so, Google has absolutelly lost what made it useful. It's far too concerned with try to curate for you instead of just doing damn search for the words. That helps them get more bullshit and some ads in there.

[–] Chetanzi@reddthat.com 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can you explain a little what you mean by “a whole industry now that’s entire purpose is to fuck up the results”? I’ve never heard of that before and it sounds alarming to say the least

[–] Hoxton@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

I’m guessing they meant SEO - Search Engine Optimisation. It’s much more complex than this, but essentially finding high volume search terms and writing website content based around those terms so your page shows up higher organically.

It’s why recipe pages or simple how to guides have paragraphs semi related text that sounds like it was written by committee. The content needs to be human readable, otherwise Google flags it as spammy, but at the same time it only serves to drive up clicks based on those search terms.

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