I agree with ryanhuff. Recently I spent time searching for camera reviews - smaller, entry-level ones where there's less press. About 70% of the sites I got were these dumb contentless websites plastered with camera ads and affliate links (to stores like Amazon and Adorama). That's well and good, but after a couple of tries I began to be really pissed off at the lack of useful information.
I see the same issues while searching for certain bits of news. Earlier today I ran a search for Spain's loss to Switzerland (soccer, in the World Cup). Amongst the top results was a small section dedicated to Google News. Two of the three on display led me to ugly blogs, plastered with ads, that had essentially copied content from other news organizations and reposted them.
My point: somebody searching for actual angel cake recipes will be greatly annoyed every time they come across Mahalo's (content-less) pages. Sure, some of their pages have content, and are probably useful - but at what cost? I wish Google will address this, and soon.
I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat.
There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it.
A lot of people switched from Altavista (remember them?) to Google overnight - because of better search results. They can do it again.
> I wish anybody would address it, and if they did, I would switch all my searching to them in a heartbeat.
Honest question, because I'm a recent DDG convert (and I'm not exactly an "early adopter" of anything) ... what do you think of its search results for this?
A DDG search of "camera reviews" gave http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ for its top hit, and the site actually seems pretty useful to me.
Dpreview is a great site. So - yes, I'm going to go check DDG out soon. Thanks, thaumaturgy.
PS: Whether or not DDG returns the specific Dpreview site for a specific camera model is still up in the air, I suppose. But I'll remember DDG as an alternative the next time Google results are getting in my way.
"There is no doubt in my mind that search quality has gone downhill in the years since Google first came on air, and these pseudo-sites have a lot to do with it."
Wait...what? Come on, you don't honestly believe that, do you? Google's algo is a huge step up from the days when you can stuff your meta keywords to get up to the top of the previous SE's.
It's in Google's best interest to find the best content to return for given keywords. Now best to techies implies high quality, unbiased, trusted content. Good to an SEO implies highly optimized, well targeted content. Good to Google is high converting, ad-serving and user-clicking worthy content.
It's not as simple as serving perfect, good quality content for Google. They have an ad network to cater to first, searchers come second.
That MFA sites are wrecking Google's search quality or that they're not? You seem to push both points in the one post which is even more confusing given "Wait...what? Come on, you don't honestly believe that, do you?"
They have an ad network to cater to first, searchers come second.
I'd like to think that isn't true. But if it was, my point stands - as a searcher, I am willing to go somewhere where the searchers come first. Search is not a lock-in. Changing search engines is almost painless.
I see the same issues while searching for certain bits of news. Earlier today I ran a search for Spain's loss to Switzerland (soccer, in the World Cup). Amongst the top results was a small section dedicated to Google News. Two of the three on display led me to ugly blogs, plastered with ads, that had essentially copied content from other news organizations and reposted them.
My point: somebody searching for actual angel cake recipes will be greatly annoyed every time they come across Mahalo's (content-less) pages. Sure, some of their pages have content, and are probably useful - but at what cost? I wish Google will address this, and soon.