[raincole]

Have you read the article this thread is about?

To summarize it: Google reverted an algorithm that detected SEO spams in 2019.

(Note that I never work for Google and I don't know whether it's true or not. It's just what this article says.)

[baryphonic]

I wasn't responding to the article; I was responding to the claim that Google's results are bad because of all the SEO. It's a claim I've heard from Google apologists including some people I know at Google. I think it's nonsense both for the reasons I stated and for the reasons enumerated in the article.

[eitland]

You are totally correct I think.

This isn't about what is possible.

It is about Google not wanting to say goodbye to the sweet dollars from spammy sites.

Otherwise making the probably number one requested feature, a personal block list, wouldn't have been impossible for a company with so many bright minds.

I mean: little bootstrapped Kagi had it either from the beginning or at least since shortly after they launched.

People always think they lost against SEO spam. But my main reason for quitting as soon as an alternative showed up was because they started to overrule my searches and search for what they thought I wanted to search for.

For a while I kept it at bay by using doublequotes and verbatim but none of those have worked reliably for a decade now.

That isn't SEO spam. That is poor engineering or "we know better than you" attitude.

[kelseydh]

Google's search results are just bad. For example, search: "Does Quebec have an NHL team?"

The results suggest that Quebec does not have an NHL team, because it confuses the province of Quebec with Quebec City. Montreal, in Quebec, has the Montreal Canadiens and this isn't mentioned in the search results at all.