[madoublet]

Google search is broken and it has fundamentally broken the web. Every search now is just pages and pages of content farms. If I can tell a content farm within a few seconds of loading a page, surely Google can as well. So, unless this new "page experience ranking" blocks content farms, then I am not sure how it will be better for end users.

[Method-X]

Can you give me an example of a search that produces content farm results? I mainly search for technical docs and such so perhaps I’m not seeing it as much because of that.

[madoublet]

Technical docs seem to be pretty safe for now. But, any popular search produces a lot of web farms: recipes, how-to articles, best of, etc.

[bagacrap]

Why does google have to explicitly block these sites? No doubt all those garbage, ad-strewn recipe sites rank low on user experience metrics. So if there were a better recipe site out there, Google would show it to you. It seems they (recipe sites) are simply having a hard time monetizing without being uber annoying.

[madoublet]

They certainly don't. They are a private company and can do whatever they want. But, Google was much better before content farms. You could find unique, original content by actual people. Google could easily fix this by devaluing sites that mass produce content. But they don't and we are left with the mess we have today.

[dazc]

The problem being there is no incentive to be not a content farm.

Few people are going to spend their time giving away knowledge for free.

I am not defending Google, just being pragmatic.

[madoublet]

Exactly. Google enables these content farms making it more difficult for actual people to make money from their knowledge. It is a mess with an easy solution.