The time has long passed whereby we need to remove Google as the effective governing authority of the internet. As with most things online, a good idea ballooned into a net negative for nearly everyone else. This fact was obvious decades ago. There needs to be actual competition and government need to reassert itself as more than a rubber stamp for business growth.
Annoying stuff, but I’ve suspected for awhile.
My personal blog is life changing, but y’all will never find it, at this rate. /Sarcasm
More seriously, a decade ago my personal blog was the number one article on the Internet for like 3 deeply esoteric technical topics. Neat.
At some point, that stopped happening. I didn’t give it serious thought, because those articles were never meant for anything but my personal reference, anyway.
But it made me wonder what was going on with the algorithms.
On one hand, I figure people can just go to stack overflow. Except, I don’t participate in SO, because they’re a bunch of tossers. But then, I figure someone else can just copy my write-up into Stack Overflow. Except, no one does, anymore, probably because they can’t find my blog either.
Again, my blog is mostly useless shit. So maybe the algorithm was just doing it’s job. But I’ve wondered for awhile if the Internet wasn’t just plain better a decade ago when search actually worked.
Whose blogs was I missing out on? Now I find stuff like that through Mastodon, but it still isn’t targeted topical search, yet.
I need to get in on that web ring action going on.
wondering if your blog comes up in https://search.marginalia.nu/?
None of the most obvious searches I tried came up with my blog, but I did find some better resources (to me, than my blog, which admittedly I don’t care to find since there’s nothing new there for me…) on blogs that it did find. It looks like it’s doing the kind of search I used to rely on. Pretty cool!
Yeah, honestly it would be fascinating if you wanted to go search for the specific terms that you think should bring that up, and then compare how deep your blog is in the results on a bunch of different web search pages.
Was your blog mobile friendly?
I like to think I kept on top of that, yeah.
That’s good. I asked because Google wiped out all non-mobile search results for mobile devices. This happened in 2015 so I was thinking the timeline kinda matches.
When I look up the name of my blog, it shows up. Unlikely for it to come up if people look up just the title I think. Maybe I’ll give it a try
The excellent podcast “Search Engine” has a couple recent episodes covering this, the history of Google and how it became the core of the internet, and their bullshit AI shenanigans. Highly recommend.
I’m not familiar with podcasts. Where can i find these?
Do you have an iPhone or an Android device? Folks usually access them on phones! They’re just basically audio stories, fictional or nonfiction, informational or INCREDIBLY STUPID, but hilarious.
If that sounds fun, I can recommend some things!
Please do
I’d you’re on Android, you have an app called Android Podcasts. If you’re on an iPhone, I highly recommend the free app Overcast because it’s infinitely better than Apple Podcasts.
What kinda stuff are you interested in? My podcast list is mostly comprised of non-annoying true crime, interesting tech stuff, and the dumbest comedy garbage I’ve ever heard (and I very much love how dumb it is.)
you have an app called android podcasts
Never heard of that. There’s Google Podcasts, but Google discontinued it recently. I’d personally recommend AntennaPod, but there’s other alternatives as well.
+1 for AntennaPod!
Thank you! I was misinformed. I had the first two android phones but switched to iPhones after my partner got theirs, and because phones stopped having physical keyboards, I hated the way Android typed. It’s better now but with a stock system I’m more into privacy now. I’ll keep AntennaPod in mind for reccos in the future!
Sorry for some reason I didn’t see your reply before.
History, tech, tv seris (Fantasy, Sci Fi, etc)… These are the things that I think might work in a podcast format, do you have any recommendation?
Absolutely!
History, Behind the Bastards is hilarious and mortifying. Start with “Oskar Dirlwanger: The Worst Nazi”.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History is more serious with LOOONG episodes. Painfotainment is definitely a great one to start with.
Tech, Darknet Diaries is the greatest. Tons of excellent stories about infosec, opsec, and pentesting. Start with Gollumfun… or Welcome to Video if you wanna be absolutely mortified.
“Search Engine” is another great tech podcast that goes further than just tech. Start with “Should this creepy search engine actually exist?”
Sounds exteremly interesting! Thank you so much, that should elevate the boredem from my commute
Overcast because it’s infinitely better than Apple Podcasts
Hmm interesting, I use Apple Podcasts and have no issues with the app. What does Overcast do better in your opinion?
I loved Apple Podcasts until a few years (maybe almost a decade ago…) when they really wonked up the interface. I tried a couple different applications, but ended up on Overcast. It has a fantastic interface and gosh darn LOUDNESS EQUALIZATION (“Voice Boost”, they calls it) so podcasts that have both quiet and loud parts or aren’t mastered well are actually listenable in like, a car.
I’ve seen Apple podcats recently and it got better! But I still think overcast is vastly superior.
I see. Thanks for the details!
There’s a lot of places to listen to them. I just search “search engine podcast” and a bunch of places show up.
Do you know which specific episodes?
Absolutely! “How to survive the media apocalypse (part 2)” is a deep dive, you don’t need to listen to the first episode (but the first part is also very interesting!)
Also “How much glue should you put in your pizza?” is a follow-up to the aforementioned episode!
Great, thanks!
It still burns me that a McKinsey shrill runs it now.
I don’t think those rankings themselves are the problem, at least not the ones mentioned in the article, the issue is a lack of transparency and configurability.
“isLocalCovidAuthority” makes a hell a lot of sense but if it gets boosted to the front then google should say “We are prioritising this result because we deem it trustworthy source of relevant information”: If you make an editorial decision, actually stand by it.
“isSmallPersonalSite” also makes sense, but what about giving users the choice of prioritising or deprioritising it instead of making it for them?
money
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Bringing the right webpage to your computer is no passive task as thousands of editorial decisions are made on your behalf by a secretive group of Googlers.
Several SEO experts tell Gizmodo the leak lists 14,000 ranking features which, at the very least, lay a blueprint for how Google organizes everything on the web.
Google has previously denied that it uses some of these ranking features in Search, but the company confirmed these documents are real, albeit, in its telling, imperfect.
“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information,” a Google spokesperson said in an email to Gizmodo.
King and Fishkin also noticed the ‘isCovidLocalAuthority” and “isElectionAuthority” in their writeups of the leak, both pointing out the importance of search engines in elevating quality information.
“It’s a non-statement that doesn’t address the leak, provides no value, and might well have been written by an AI trained on the past decade’s most soulless corporate messaging.”
The original article contains 1,476 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
