[gambiting]

Google results have for a while stopped having anything to do with the actual search query. In the past they were magical, like Google could almost read your mind and guess exactly what you mean, but nowadays you can type in the exact search string, and still have the first page of results where Google just ommited half of the string to give you sponsored content. Like even for simple "C# <name of class>" why are the first few results for pages that sell programming courses?????

It's gone to absolute shitter and it's just not worth using outside of a very narrow set of circumstances(when you actually do want to buy something I guess?)

[hda111]

Seems like the SEO people have successfully reverse engineered Google‘s algorithms.

[stevenicr]

I must disagree with this notion.

For one, google now encourages and helps SEO - it's no longer a taboo term that leads to lifetime blacklisting - so google is publicly explaining and apologizing sometimes to SEO's (and others who listen/watch/read john mueller and co)

secondly in reference to the bad results and SEOs ruined google - um no. Google ruined google. Google went to war against SEO and disappeared much of the good on the web as collateral damage.

Google also got creative with ranking things based on things that push youtube up and other google properties for many results - as well as news type publications - which means for many queries it's now pay to play - pay adwords to rank 1st page or lose 90%+ visibility. And many good sites can't afford to pay per click to be on the first page.

Google is giving you results it wants you to think are 'good' - which has been pushing many of the results we actually want far and away. (Which interestingly sends more traffic to google properties adding to their value, and forces other to pay for adwords or not be seen by most in the world)

in my humble, and yet biased, and not very broadly researched (fairly focused), opinion.

[Guest42]

That’s an interesting point. Was this passively intentional from Google? What methods could be used to generate more accurate results? How accurate do they want the results?

[nicce]

If the business model would be somehow changed to non-ad based, then there might motivation for the change.

[thfuran]

Everyone selling something would still have strong incentive to SEO themselves to the top.

[nicce]

You could filter those sites manually by yourself, if that is the only negative point.

[thfuran]

In a non-ad-funded internet, that would entail filtering out very nearly every result.

[anaganisk]

Or google, they’re just interested in making more money