Google’s Algorithm Updates Are Devastating For Some Sites

[Cristiano]

Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

Over the last two years, a series of updates to Google Search amount to a dramatic upheaval to the Internet's most powerful tool, complete with an unprecedented AI feature.

www.bbc.com

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

It is disturbing how much power Google really has. ...I'm sure it will take a while to fully scope out what impact this has. ...and I still think google should have been broken up years ago.

...and I got mixed feelings about how reddit is apparently benefiting from this so much.

 

[Couldbe Yue]

Reddit and Quora rank highly now because they're filled with natural language questions and answers, which saves the companies money and time trying to search out actual authoritative sites (wikipedia doesn't rank as high for some reason). Also, companies can pay google to rank higher and google will no longer tell you it's a paid placement - whether this actually impacts on rankings for authoritative information is yet to be seen but I would be surprised if it didn't.
The big problem is a lot of the answers are wrong. The big boys don't care as they really just want to be almost right and first to market.
Google's AI should be avoided when you really need correct answers and should be treated as entertainment for the next few years. Same with all of the search engines, ChatGPT etc and Alexa, google and siri.

 

[Noodles]

.
Google's AI should be avoided when you really need correct answers and should be treated as entertainment for the next few years. Same with all of the search engines, ChatGPT etc and Alexa, google and siri.

Nah, it's cool, I asked Google AI and it said I should listen to it always!

Also people should consume rocks daily.

 

[Soen Eber]

Nah, it's cool, I asked Google AI and it said I should listen to it always!

Also people should consume rocks daily.

And to ask your doctor or pharmacist if you discover you are missing your sixth finger.

 

[Free]

And to ask your doctor or pharmacist if you discover you are missing your sixth finger.

The one on my third hand?

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Also people should consume rocks daily.

I do! See your doctor for prescription rocks. Thanks, Google.

 

[Free]

See your doctor for prescription rocks.

Pumiceuticals?

 

[Essence Lumin]

Rocks are made from liquid
Rocks are made from gas
Rocks aren't made from paper mache
Rocks are made to last

 

[Noodles]

The one on my third hand?

The secret hand, that pokes out of your back elbow.

 

[Noodles]

I do! See your doctor for prescription rocks. Thanks, Google.

Are Vitamins technically rocks?

 

[Free]

The secret hand, that pokes out of your back elbow.

No, that's my 5th hand.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Are Vitamins technically rocks?

Some are, also the one everyone forgets...table salt.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Are Vitamins technically rocks?

Minerals.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Google's main problem is that for its search engine to work it needs an OPEN internet. But nowadays big chunks of contetnt are behind walled gardens like e.g. Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and paywalls where most are not really friendly to indexing bots. Some people call these data silos.The valuable content is there and vidisble to human beings, but not Google's spider bots. At best these silos are having a nice, littie showcase for the bot but that's it.

Since the importance of data silos has risen a lot, Google is now missing a lot of valuable content for its index, because it simply does not see it.

This is why "Ask reddit" became such a thing, because nowadays for many questions people want an answer to Reddit is the first go to get a meaningful answer instead of Google. At Reddit the crowd intelligence is at work, and of course the people there got better access to these silos than Google has.

This is also why Google now prioritises Reddits so much, in order to improve their importance again.

The newest entry to that game though are LLMs. Putting ChatGPT on Bing was really a blow to Google, because it improved a lot of things for many. It is also the reason why Google was trying to implement something similar so quickly, in order to appease their investors. Doesn't matter that the results are shitty, it only matters something is in place upon which Google can now build upon.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Google's main problem is that for its search engine to work it needs an OPEN internet. But nowadays big chunks of contetnt are behind walled gardens like e.g. Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and paywalls where most are not really friendly to indexing bots.

Small correction - google owns youtube so shouldn't have a problem there.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Yup, anyway for Bing.com Youtube is just another data silo. Not that Bing matters... much, but it is how it is.

 

[Noodles]

Google's main problem is that for its search engine to work it needs an OPEN internet. But nowadays big chunks of contetnt are behind walled gardens like e.g. Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and paywalls where most are not really friendly to indexing bots. Some people call these data silos.The valuable content is there and vidisble to human beings, but not Google's spider bots. At best these silos are having a nice, littie showcase for the bot but that's it.

I feel like this was a bit (not entirely) self inflicted. They were and are not the only RSS source in town, but killing Google Reader was a big blow to RSS, which hurt and killed a lot of the less siloed internet.

They also folded "Blog Search" into the news tab, which means small content makers are now competing with big new orgs.

Plus they changed Google shopping from being a silo of retail search, pulled out of the core search, to being all paid ads, with the shopping search just being in the core search.

Basically, they took several steps that killed blogs, which was a lot of the non siloed content.

All this was around the time they were pushing their own silo with Google+

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Yes, Google was the first major browser creator to remove RSS, but nobody blackmailed/demanded Mozilla to follow suit.

That's for me one of the major problems of Firefox - Mozilla is too much working on being a Chrome copycat and has mostly lost its own identity. No wonder Firefox barely matters nowadays.