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Google Will Roll Out New Updates To Reduce Low-Quality, Unoriginal Content In Search Results 51

Posted by BeauHD from the SEO-content-GTFO dept.
Google announced today that it's rolling out new Search updates over the next few weeks that will aim to make it easier for people to find high-quality content. TechCrunch reports: The new ranking improvements will work to reduce the amount of low-quality or unoriginal content that ranks high in search results. Google says that the update will especially target content that has been created primarily for ranking on search engines, known as "SEO-first" content, rather than human-first content. The company's tests have shown that the update will improve the results users find when searching for content like online educational materials, as well as arts and entertainment, shopping and tech-related content.

The new updates should help reduce the number of low-quality results from websites that have learned to game the system with content that is optimized to rank high in search results. Google says users should start to see content that is actually useful rank more prominently in search results. The company plans to refine its systems and build on these improvements over time. "If you search for information about a new movie, you might have previously encountered articles that aggregated reviews from other sites without adding perspectives beyond what's available elsewhere on the web," the company explained in a blog post. "This isn't very helpful if you're expecting to read something new. With this update, you'll see more results with unique information, so you're more likely to read something you haven't seen before."
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Google Will Roll Out New Updates To Reduce Low-Quality, Unoriginal Content In Search Results More

Google Will Roll Out New Updates To Reduce Low-Quality, Unoriginal Content In Search Results

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  • Oh, so like what.. 20 years ago?

    All the search engines are an SEO-optimized commercial nightmare, and all the search engines are poised to work against you to some degree or another. Some are more egregious than others.

    • No, they're just going to make the current crapfest they've built even worse. Currently you type in a search string and Google gives you back a set of results that often have zero occurrences of the string in them, even if you put it in quotes. Google knows better than you do what you want.

      This newly-announced change sounds like they're going to do even more of this. If Bing wasn't such a crap search engine I'd have jumped years ago when Google stopped honoring '+' and quotes.

      Yes, Microsoft's Bing. Goo

      • Google still honors quotes as if they had an implicit plus in front of them. (For the average joes who don't think about putting unary numeric operators in their search strings.)

        • Google still honors quotes as if they had an implicit plus in front of them.

          No they don't. Try it.

          (This may depend on your search terms, I pretty much automatically add quotes to search terms so I don't have to re-run the search a second time to get actual relevant results, and for at least the last 6-12 months Google has been returning results that never had the quoted search term in them).

        • No, they don't, at all. Google not only ignores quotes outright they increasingly ignore your actual search terms as well.

          Plus good like finding anything that goes against their politics, when on bing you can often get the exact thing you're looking for as the top result.

  • such content is unoriginal by default as everyone has 'one' for sale. How about the option to exclude all shopping sitea? Even when a shopping site has reviews they are usually curated shills. Finding good discussions early in the results lately needs a +forums modifier.

    • If it's not shopping sites, it's sites that will refer you to shopping sites. The internet became a giant mall and hobbyist sites that exist just to inform you are getting harder and harder to find.

  • a mouthpiece for Google press releases?

  • I got an idea for ya Google (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcmonkey ( 96054 ) on Thursday August 18, 2022 @06:38PM (#62801957) Homepage

    How about search results for the thing I searched for, not the things you think I should have searched for?

    • Re:I got an idea for ya Google (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Thursday August 18, 2022 @10:49PM (#62802539) Homepage

      Yeah, I remember that world, back when AltaVista was the biggest search engine. You got exactly what you searched for, and you always had to scroll through pages and pages of results, and refine your search terms multiple times, before you could find what you wanted, if you could find it at all. Google is easy to criticize, but if you lived during those days, you'd realize just how good Google's search results are.

      Or, try an alternative search engine today. Go to bing.com, or Yahoo.com, or Brave.com. Those sites will give you the type of search you are asking for, but probably don't want as much as you think you want it.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • You must be using a different Google than I do, because just about 100% of the time, when I search for something on Google, it gives me exactly what I want as the first or second result. Is it perfect? No. Are there edge cases that are hard to find? Yes. But I challenge you to name a search engine that does better. I for one do not want to go back to the AltaVista search methodology.

      • Annecdotally, Bing returns better results than Google for most of my searches these days. Good luck getting google to give search results from forums you don't know about. Its pretty often those are the best resources for a number of topics and they simply don't show up any more in google results unless you know to include their name in the search.

    • How about search results for the thing I searched for, not the things you think I should have searched for?

      Still ok to feed the entire first page with paid results, right? :D

  • I wonder if this will just start another SEO war. As long as ad platforms continue showing ads on these low quality content farm type sites, the incentive for an SEO war remains

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      "As long as ad platforms continue showing ads on these low quality content farm type sites, the incentive for an SEO war remains"

        The change is designed to derank --"Low-Quality, Unoriginal Content In Search Results". What they are saying is even SEO optimized unauthoritative, copied, unoriginal won't make the cut as it used to.

  • No more ads as top results in Google?

  • Good (Score:2)

    by Gabest ( 852807 )

    When I'm looking for a driver, it should not return those stupid sites. I want my quality drivers.

  • Start by rolling away the ads (Score:3)

    by MindPrison ( 864299 ) on Thursday August 18, 2022 @07:20PM (#62802045) Journal

    The most annoying thing with google nowadays is that you have to scroll past multiple pages of sponsored ADS.

    I remember when Google tried to be un-intrusive, they had 3 ads at max, often on the side, then they implemented it into the searches.
    Now it's full on pages - multiple pages, and you literally have to squint or you'll miss the actual content you're searching for.

    Searching for information on a chip? No problem 100s of manual sites want to sell you the information or source chips for you.
    Searching for user groups of synths? 100s of sellers want to sell you one before you even get to know if it's any good.
    Searching for a symptom? No problem, there are tons of U.S. medical centers ready to take your concerned calls, even if you don't live in the U.S.
    And I could go on.

    I barely use Google anymore because it's easier to just look it up in books (I never thought I'd say that in the future, but here we are).

    • You should get an extension for your browser like Ublock Origin to get rid of the sponsored ads.

    • This has been my experience with google recently as well. I often gravitate towards bing these days because it somehow returns marginally better results. The old days of Altavista and Lycos could be frustrating but it was at least comprehensive. Good luck getting google to give you more than a few pages for any search these days.

  • LinkedIN and Pinterest. Absolute garbage results.

    • LinkedIN and Pinterest. Absolute garbage results.

      +Amazon +Walmart - NEVER relevent since you've already searched one and don't care about the other.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      Yeah, I literally installed a browser plugin that removes pinterest results from Google Images searches.

      I'd like to remove *all* fraudulent results. Google used to have a policy, that if your site showed different content to Google's indexer than it showed to ordinary users, you got delisted from Google. At some point they seem to have altogether stopped enforcing that, because there are a TON of results showing up now, that if you actually click through to the page, it does not contain anything related t

  • Hey Google,
    While you're at it, can you filter out those pay walled troubleshooting solutions from Redhat.

    • > While you're at it, can you filter out those pay walled troubleshooting solutions from Redhat.

      12ft.io/url_that_lies_to_googlebot

  • Will this reduce the amount of videos from Youtube factories that post "life hacks" or "cooking tips" or similar bullshit, where none of it actually works, or is actively dangerous to people?

    I forget the name of the most (in)famous one, but holy cow they produce some lying bullshit.

    A 2 minute video of how to make melon sherbet, for example..

  • Google knows nothing. When I'm consuming on the internet in the approved manner it's precisely *because* I want "low-quality or unoriginal content". And that is exactly what the web lords provide. Praise be. Amen. When I want high quality and original content I pirate old movies and tv shows or buy used Blu-rays or DVDs and rip them.

  • Hey Google - so you want to make my search results more relevant and less filled with junk? Here's an idea - stop trying to second-guess my intentions and simply give me what I ask for. Stop spamming me with your usually-quaint and often totally fucked-up idea of what constitutes a synonym for some search term or other.

    Here's another idea - go back to strictly following search modifiers such as allintext, the minus sign, and double quotes. If I specify those operators and a page doesn't comply, I don't want

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I try to use DDG more and more, because it's probably less evil.

      You should read slashdot [slashdot.org]...

      • Yeah, DDG is evil - but I stand behind the "less" part. But thanks for the reminder. I use the DDG browser only on my phone, and using my phone to browse is an extremely rare occurrence. But now I'll look for an alternative - which is a pain, because the DDG browser sucks a little less than every other Android browser I've tried.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      I tried to like DuckDuckGo.

      But I found that I cannot. DDG is poo. It's supposed to be a search engine, but I can't use it to find what I'm looking for, it only shows me what it wants me to see, which is consistently NOT what I asked for or wanted. If I were desirous of that experience, I could use FaceBook, or turn on a television set (if they even still make them).
  • That's why actual pages with actual text are drowned out by ten or so pages of SEO'd garbage and ads, as designed. They're not about to change any of that, not as long as it'll damage their bottom line. The illusion of improvement will be there, but they'll just make using their 'service' even shittier and frustrating than it is now.
    • And that's before you consider all the 'beta' garbage in each search, like 'searches obliquely related to one or more of your search terms or their synonyms,' 'inspid questions people ask about one or more of your search terms,' 'people who aren't you who searched for things that may or may not have fuckall to do with what you searched for,' 'a massive block of local businesses whose names may or may not partially or fully include one or more terms or related terms that you're probably not looking for, but
  • SEO results suck because it is no longer a review or description of the product...it's all ad language and "click my link below to buy". The Amazon Affiliate link crowds out any actual content. Dozens of pages with the company website's description re-formatted slightly. Figure out a way to segregate the link pages and push any non Amazon affiliate link page to the top of the results.

  • Google will improve the results, but the SEO guys will find new ways to get their garbage ranked higher in the listings. I applaud Google, and wish them luck.

  • Hope this will make results more efficient and effective. https://databonker.in/google-r... [databonker.in]
  • "low-quality results from websites that have learned to game the system with content that is optimized to rank high in search results."

    Fits the description perfectly.

  • Like sites that clearly exist only to show up on the first page of results, and they have a giant list of what appears to be collated information.

  • Phone Numbers (Score:3)

    by c-A-d ( 77980 ) on Friday August 19, 2022 @03:18AM (#62802851)

    I'd like to be able to look up phone numbers of the people calling me to find out what they are, without being served results that make up random names, return results for numers with the same CO prefix, or want to sell me "results". I just want to know if it's a scammer, telemarketer, survey company, politician, or an actual legitimate caller.

  • That's their definition of quality, not yours. Everybody's trying to game the system, for their benefit, at our expense.
  • I wonder how many major news outlets will get down-modded by this. Churnalism has pretty much become the norm:

    Churnalism is a pejorative term for a form of journalism in which press releases, stories provided by news agencies, and other forms of pre-packaged material, instead of reported news, are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media. It is a portmanteau of "churn" and "journalism". Its purpose is to reduce cost by reducing original news-gathering and checking sources... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Churnalism is essentially why we have problems with fake news in the first place.

  • I've been on DuckDuckGo for years, the results aren't that much better but without the stalking.....

  • You'll get the results that paid us.

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