this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Honestly the biggest issue is all the garbage websites using SEO to try to be at the top of the results without having actual meaningful content.
It seems like whenever I search for a problem, a bunch of websites come up with pages dedicated to that exact issue, but all of fixes are generic and don't actually help. And that whole website will be filled with pages like that, pages that claim to have solutions for specific problems but lack any content of substance. Add in paywalls to access sites, that lawsuit to have google remove the "view image button" from image results, and websites like Pinterest that require an account before you can view anything. People were relying on content from websites like reddit to get actual real answers to searches, and now reddit is looking at getting itself removed from google search as well.
I don't think it's that Google is specifically getting worse, but rather that the internet is becoming an increasingly unhelpful place where everyone is competing to sell you answers and drive clicks.
Google creates that problem though by continuing to use a ranking algorithm that promotes that type of content. It's been an issue for many years and they don't change it
I'm sure it's a bit of a cat and mouse game, the algorithm was designed to get accurate results, they can't just change it completely to avoid SEO abusers without losing out on real results too. And even if they did change it, SEO abusers would just change to match resulting in the same issue with worse non-abuser results.
For all of google's search issues, they're still the best search engine when it comes to results (outside of a few topics that are censored by google but not other search engines). I use DDG most of the time, but it's bing-powered results are just straight up worse most of the time, especially on technical or more complicated topics. The fact that Google is still the best search engine tells me they're not being lazy with their search algorithms, but that there's a bigger reason why they can't just filter out SEO abuse.