“We’ve ignored all the meaningful terms you were searching for. Now here’s a bunch of pinterest and quora spam.”
Half the time I look at a website or article it is just AI generated crap anyway. Oh you want a product review? Here are a half dozen articles that have summarised the Amazon reviews of an item, with no first hand experience.
Google “Best vacuum cleaner”
Top 6 hits: “We evaluated the 5 brands that paid us the most and found that they all suck up your dirt. We can’t really speak ill of any of them because this is an ad and we signed a contract. Please use our embedded links so we can have more money.”
What’s worse is most of what comes up isn’t even a hands on review, it’s literally someone doing what I just did, which is type “vacuum cleaner” into Amazon and see what came up. Then they give it reviews based on the bullshit in the description.
I want a review from someone who sees these everyday and has a deep hatred of every vacuum in existence. He’s the one who knows that such and such used to be good until they replaced this part with plastic because they have a new CEO, and now it’s no better than a dirt devil.
At least with vacuums however, there’s a few guys out there with carpet swathes, children, and dogs at home that get to take vacuums from work and do youtube tests with them. Unfortunately they usually don’t try to game the algorithm so they’re pretty deep in there.
The internet is unsearchable at this point. I feel like 99% of websites are fronts.
What’s been pissing me off for years now is googling a specific company and getting a wall of advertisements for their competitors first. So. Dirty.
What are “SEO spam tactics”? I would google, but am afraid of that now.
I think I just figured it out, Search Engine Optimization?
Yes. Google popularized it and now it has ruined Google search.
It really winds me up how results that match every search term aren’t prioritised any more. I often search for very specific pieces of hardware, and it’s been a nightmare since the late 2010s. You now have to pore over each result to check that it’s 100% what you’re are looking for.
SEO exacerbates the problem, but I’d say the root cause is the algorithm itself.
Have you tried putting your search between " " ? It usually helps improve my results.
That used to work, but these days seems to do little other than sightly change the order of the same useless results.
Search engine protocol:
Ignore first few results (ads)
Ignore next few results (bullshit spam comparison farms)
Ignore really annoying site you think is ok but is a usability nightmare
Ignore subsection of reddit links
Find 0-1 useful links on first page
Regret
The sad thing is the Reddit Links probably contain the most useful answers that google will show you
