| 1) How would you be able to detect that Google quality is slipping away? 2) There was a German research that it degraded [1]. I do not remember by how many percents it got worse, but how would you be able to tell that search engine is worse by 8% year by year? 3) Internet just got worse. There are walled gardens everywhere. Access to data has been more restricted for people who do not want to create accounts. Internet is not so tough for people who do not care about their privacy. It is not necessarily that Google search became worse 4) There always been spam, but it just got worse 5) Corporations are becoming more greedy. I have read about SEOs complaining that what has been previously not allowed, now is. Malvertising is more common 6) If Google focuses on big media companies, then small sites do not have revenue. Small sites are closed, and we have Internet without traffic for personal sites. Internet is getting boring if search focuses on big media companies. 7) Google is focusing on 'content', not on 'quality' content. Therefore what is 'new' is more important. Therefore you will be less likely to find a good article from 2011 8) Personal sites are hard to quantify. How would you be able that small domain with one good article is reliable? You don't. That is why Google prefers vice, or bbc news. It is just easier. There are more investor money there, etc. etc. 9) DYI projects, or game formus are tricky. They may contain Nintendo stuff, they may contain ROM files, or other untrustworthy comments. It is easier for search engines to ditch such sites altogether. 10) I am running a web crawler that indexes domains [2]. Let me assign you a task. Find interesting domains about "Amiga" using google search. How many domains you will find? I have more than 200 domains. Sure "Amiga" is a niche keyword, however that makes me wonder if I am just as inexperienced with Google search, or if Google in fact is a Potemkin Village for folks living in Matrix. Links: [1] https://mashable.com/article/google-search-low-quality-resea... [2] https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database |