this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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1412
The Verge shows how Google search is useless (www.theverge.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
193 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Verge published this spam article about the "best printers of 2024" to demonstrate how terrible Google's search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search "best printer" on Google.

I love a good, informative troll.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Sigh. So many things in the world are like this. It’s not a bad idea, in theory, to favor more recent pages in search results. Finding 4 year old information is often not what you want. But in practice, when everyone knows this bias exists, they just fiddle with their pages daily to try to fool the algorithm. It must be aggravating to be Google, because as smart as they are, the entire world is engaged in an unending and ruthless quest to game their results for personal gain.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yup, and that's why we shouldn't have one dominant search engine, but a few that all do things differently. That way gaming the system is a lot more difficult. But I guess that's not the world we live in, because everyone wants to use "the best," which means "the best" will eventually degrade due to everyone gaming it.