[TheKarateKid]

Are the employees at Google working on Search aware of how bad search results have become in the past year or two? Literally almost everyone I know, inside and outside of tech, has noticed a significant downgrade in quality from Google search results. And a lot of it is due to artificially inflated SEO techniques.

[dannysullivan]

We've been diligently working to improve the results through things like our helpful content system, and that work is continuing. You can read about some of it in a recent post here (and it also describes the Perspectives feature that's live on mobile): https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-perspectiv...

[pohl]

It's great that you responded to the question. Is there a reason you didn't answer it, though?

[dannysullivan]

"We've been diligently working to improve the results" was the response to the question of "Are the employees at Google working on Search aware of how bad search results have become in the past year or two?" I thought that was a clear response.

To be more explicit, yes, we're aware that there are complaints about the quality of search results. That's why we've been working in a variety of ways, as I indicated, to improve those.

We have continued to build our spam fighting systems, our core ranking systems, our systems to reward helpful content. We expanded our product reviews system to cover all types of reviews, as this explains: https://status.search.google.com/incidents/5XRfC46rorevFt8yN...

We regularly improve these systems, which we share about on this page: https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2Gw...

The work isn't stopping. You'll continue to see us revise these systems to address some of the concerns people have raised.

[pohl]

It was clearly a response, yes, but an answer is always better than a response. Thank you for answering!

[falloutx]

I am of the opinion that its just internet becoming more spammy and unhelpful rather than google searching becoming bad. Every Tom and his mom seems to have a blog/website which they don't even write themselves. Most of the content on the internet is now for entertainment rather than purpose or knowledge. So, I do wonder if its just the state of the internet these days. As a layman, these days I just go directly to Wikipedia/reddit/youtube rather than searching on google.

[TheKarateKid]

The Internet is becoming spammy and bad because of Google's rules for ranking. The fact that Google favors newer content and longer pages with filler text is why people are making the content lower quality.

[wmeredith]

> Are the employees at Google working on Search aware of how bad search results have become in the past year or two?

I would assume they didn't answer this because the answer is either "No" because echo chamber or "Yes" but they don't want to say that publicly.

[lampshades]

Because politics, not solutions, drive big tech.

[joe_the_user]

My strong impression is that in the last two years there a couple change were rolled out to search that sent it straight into the sewer - search seemed to be tweaked to crassly, crudely put any product name above anything else in the searches. But since then, it seems like quality has crept back up again. Simple product terms still get top billing but more complicated searches aren't nerfed.

So it seems the search quality team exists but gets locked on in the closet by advertising periodically.

I know you can't verify anything directly but maybe we could set a system of code for you to communicate what's really happening...

[Cheezewheel]

You are also talking to someone who is on the PR team. This term gets thrown out a lot but in this case it is factually true, you are literally talking to a shill. I mean no disrespect to Danny but you are not going to get an honest and straightforward answer out of him.

If you think I am exaggerating, try to prompt him to see if you can get him to acknowledge that Googles current systems incentivize SEO spam. See if he passes the Turing test.

[ouraf]

Don't kick the messenger. It's already good that someone (allegedly) from a department related to the situation could give some input. No need to dump all your frustrations on them

[ymolodtsov]

You realize they have to combat an entire fleet of marketers and writers who are trying to leverage their algorithms?