
Show HN: Googling a sentence yields copycat sites and poor results in general - HoppedUpMenace
Take the following sentence for example, searched in google with quotation marks included:<p>&quot;Booster seats, car seats and seat belts are equally effective at saving the lives of children&quot;<p>This is a sentence that originated (as far as I know) from here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.montana.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;17359&#x2F;msu-studies-investigate-effectiveness-of-booster-seats" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.montana.edu&#x2F;news&#x2F;17359&#x2F;msu-studies-investigate-ef...</a>.<p>The first page of results contains various websites that, on the surface, contain the quoted sentence but on closer inspection, contains the entire original content from montana.edu verbatim. Additionally, the first 5 results are from sciencedaily.com, with different titles for each result and were created (supposedly) over the past 10 years or so.<p>Now if you go to the second page of results, the majority of results are now sciencedaily.com but by exploring the links, you find the phrase is embedded as a link to articles first shown as results on the first page of google search results.<p>I thought this was interesting so I attempted to look up what might be another widely copied type of sentence across websites to see what other articles are copy and pasted everywhere, example from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.activistpost.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;22-medical-studies-that-show-vaccines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.activistpost.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;09&#x2F;22-medical-studies-that...</a>:<p>&quot;The vaccine-autism debate has been going on for years. It has been a tale of shifting beliefs as child vaccination rates remain high&quot;<p>In this case, searching this sentence, quotes included, yielded results as before highlighting the sentence in almost every result that I found but the article itself was not copy and pasted verbatim as before.<p>In any case, thought this might be interesting to share. Perhaps this show the futility or limitations of searching this type of content or it may also show how many websites are merely reposting noteworthy content in order to generate clicks or mislead people into thinking their website is legitimate when it comes to scientific data or studies.
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tivert
Anecdotally, I'm finding it's becoming much harder to Google article titles
for me when I'm trying to pull up an article on my phone to share. The top few
hits are usually copycat sites.

I wonder if Google's gotten too comfortable in its dominant position, so it's
not troubled when its search quality slips.

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chewz
My guess is Google makes better ROI on copycat sites (the reason for their
existence beeing linking and displaying adds - both fields dominated by
Google). So it isn't accidental it is direct result of Google's policy.

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ThJ
Google is kind of showing signs of becoming more like AltaVista towards the
end of its life. It's not quite as bad yet, but I feel increasingly frustrated
when I'm searching for things, and that wasn't the case 5-7 years ago. You
often have to scroll past junk to find the good stuff. I do think they're
resting on their laurels somewhat.

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ezekg
Interestingly, almost all of the results below the fold given here [0] result
in being redirected to a writing service or a blank page.

Maybe this is a new type of SEO "growth hack"?

[0]:
[https://www.google.com/search?ei=nJRbW9PgFMfEswX8tpDgCQ&q=%2...](https://www.google.com/search?ei=nJRbW9PgFMfEswX8tpDgCQ&q=%22The+vaccine-
autism+debate+has+been+going+on+for+years.+It+has+been+a+tale+of+shifting+beliefs+as+child+vaccination+rates+remain+high%22&oq=%22The+vaccine-
autism+debate+has+been+going+on+for+years.+It+has+been+a+tale+of+shifting+beliefs+as+child+vaccination+rates+remain+high%22)

