[slig]

Seriously how hard must be to flag duplicated content from GitHub, Wikipedia and Stack Overflow? Seriously, last week I had a query that returned the exact same content three times on the same page: the first result was a GH issue, and the other two were spam websites with the same content from GH. Google used to be good at flagging and downranking duplicated content, but now they don't even care, it's a shame.

[davidatbu]

I'm always amazed at such comments that trivialise the challenges of fighting spam and SEO while being the most dominant search engine by far (which means spam and SEO targets you by far).

If it is so easy, why don't you build a dominant search engine that manages to complete avoid the "totally easy" spam you talk about?

If perhaps, you have extensive experience in the anti-spam section of a dominant search engine (or some similar position), I'd give your comment more weight. Do you have such experience?

[GeorgeWBasic]

What exactly is difficult about detecting direct copies of just those three sites? Because that's what's out there: exact copies. If Google isn't filtering those out, it's because they don't want to.

[davidatbu]

Google Search is most likely an incredibly complex engineering feat with many moving parts.

Unless you provide me with your qualifications and/or previous experience that would lend credence to your claim, I will view your claim as one from an armchair critic/engineer.

[slig]

They used to be good at it, now they seem bad. How can that be? How hard is to not show three exact copies of the same result for the same query on the first page?

And yes, I'm being "an armchair critic/engineer", like everyone else criticizing Google or any other big company that seems to be getting worse at what they excelled.

[davidatbu]

To be clear, I am not labeling your commentary armchair criticism because you are supposing that spam on Google is more prevalent in recent times, but because you are so confidently asserting that it is easy to fight spam at the scale and quality Google is operating at.

Since you haven't provided any qualifications/past experience, I am not convinced at all that it's as easy as you say it is.

[slig]

Fair enough.

[shepherdjerred]

It’s not easy, but it’s hard to believe that a company with Googles resources and dominance can’t build a good solution.

[davidatbu]

The only constant in my journey in comp sci is my underestimation of how much time and effort things take, so I guess I may be trying to compensate for that.

Incidentally, if anyone has insight into how to improve that aspect of my job, that would be much appreciated!