<story><title>In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click</title><url>https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-searches-ended-without-a-click/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dmart</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t believe for a second that Google&amp;#x27;s algorithms are unable to identify and remove content marketing blogspam from the results. It must be profitable somehow for the majority of search results to be utterly useless.</text></item><item><author>ratww</author><text>Yep, this is Content Marketing. People use SEO tools to gauge how good a blog post is going to rank, and the current sweet spot seems to be around 1000 words, so they end up filling it with fluff. Some of those are even machine generated.&lt;p&gt;The answer to the &amp;quot;can cats eat X&amp;quot;, of course, can&amp;#x27;t be at the beginning or at the end. The reason is that the user must stay a long time and read the text, otherwise Google punishes the website for having a more than acceptable &amp;quot;bounce rate&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Putting the answer in the title (what has been dubbed &amp;quot;Anti-clickbait&amp;quot;) also makes the site &amp;quot;less clickable&amp;quot; and will make it drop from the results. Trust me, I tried.&lt;p&gt;This is why we can&amp;#x27;t have nice things.</text></item><item><author>dundarious</author><text>I have a cat that is always ravenous for anything edible, even if it&amp;#x27;s not exactly typical cat fare, e.g., my leftover salad, berries, etc. Trying to search for &amp;quot;can cats eat X&amp;quot; after he manages to get a few sneaky morsels is almost pointless. There are so many spammy sites for every value of X, and I have no idea if it&amp;#x27;s a sophisticated problem to systematically exclude this type of useless content, but Google&amp;#x27;s top results are chock-full of sites that all seem to follow the format below, where the question is not answered at all:&lt;p&gt;Is it safe for cats to eat X?&lt;p&gt;Cats are mischievous and we love them.&lt;p&gt;X is not typical cat food. Let&amp;#x27;s go over some background on X before we answer the question.&lt;p&gt;Cats are obligate carnivores.&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading, make sure to subscribe or buy these products!</text></item><item><author>fossuser</author><text>When I search Google now I mostly get spam.&lt;p&gt;“Product vs. Product” -&amp;gt; list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads.&lt;p&gt;“Product Review” -&amp;gt; same as above, spam.&lt;p&gt;“Product referral code” -&amp;gt; sites with spam and no codes.&lt;p&gt;Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful.&lt;p&gt;Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occasionally you get a useful blog.&lt;p&gt;General knowledge is Wikipedia, news is axios.&lt;p&gt;Amazon for most purchases (except for products that have their own brand and sites that are at risk of being faked). Etsy for boutique stuff.&lt;p&gt;Most of the rest of the web is junk.&lt;p&gt;I think we could probably go back to curated 90s era web portals and have a better experience.</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional.&lt;p&gt;There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I&amp;#x27;m certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing &amp;#x2F; Semantic Search drove this decline.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lordgrenville</author><text>&amp;gt; I don&amp;#x27;t believe for a second that Google&amp;#x27;s algorithms are unable to identify and remove content marketing blogspam.&lt;p&gt;Easy for me to believe. They have to use some formula, and as soon as they change it, well, there&amp;#x27;s a massive industry dedicated to getting around it. If their algorithm is just &amp;quot;filter out what&amp;#x27;s useless&amp;quot;, that&amp;#x27;s AGI.</text></comment>
<story><title>In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click</title><url>https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-searches-ended-without-a-click/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dmart</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t believe for a second that Google&amp;#x27;s algorithms are unable to identify and remove content marketing blogspam from the results. It must be profitable somehow for the majority of search results to be utterly useless.</text></item><item><author>ratww</author><text>Yep, this is Content Marketing. People use SEO tools to gauge how good a blog post is going to rank, and the current sweet spot seems to be around 1000 words, so they end up filling it with fluff. Some of those are even machine generated.&lt;p&gt;The answer to the &amp;quot;can cats eat X&amp;quot;, of course, can&amp;#x27;t be at the beginning or at the end. The reason is that the user must stay a long time and read the text, otherwise Google punishes the website for having a more than acceptable &amp;quot;bounce rate&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Putting the answer in the title (what has been dubbed &amp;quot;Anti-clickbait&amp;quot;) also makes the site &amp;quot;less clickable&amp;quot; and will make it drop from the results. Trust me, I tried.&lt;p&gt;This is why we can&amp;#x27;t have nice things.</text></item><item><author>dundarious</author><text>I have a cat that is always ravenous for anything edible, even if it&amp;#x27;s not exactly typical cat fare, e.g., my leftover salad, berries, etc. Trying to search for &amp;quot;can cats eat X&amp;quot; after he manages to get a few sneaky morsels is almost pointless. There are so many spammy sites for every value of X, and I have no idea if it&amp;#x27;s a sophisticated problem to systematically exclude this type of useless content, but Google&amp;#x27;s top results are chock-full of sites that all seem to follow the format below, where the question is not answered at all:&lt;p&gt;Is it safe for cats to eat X?&lt;p&gt;Cats are mischievous and we love them.&lt;p&gt;X is not typical cat food. Let&amp;#x27;s go over some background on X before we answer the question.&lt;p&gt;Cats are obligate carnivores.&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading, make sure to subscribe or buy these products!</text></item><item><author>fossuser</author><text>When I search Google now I mostly get spam.&lt;p&gt;“Product vs. Product” -&amp;gt; list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads.&lt;p&gt;“Product Review” -&amp;gt; same as above, spam.&lt;p&gt;“Product referral code” -&amp;gt; sites with spam and no codes.&lt;p&gt;Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful.&lt;p&gt;Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occasionally you get a useful blog.&lt;p&gt;General knowledge is Wikipedia, news is axios.&lt;p&gt;Amazon for most purchases (except for products that have their own brand and sites that are at risk of being faked). Etsy for boutique stuff.&lt;p&gt;Most of the rest of the web is junk.&lt;p&gt;I think we could probably go back to curated 90s era web portals and have a better experience.</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional.&lt;p&gt;There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I&amp;#x27;m certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing &amp;#x2F; Semantic Search drove this decline.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samatman</author><text>The point of content marketing blogspam is to pester the reader with AdWords and the occasional affiliate link.&lt;p&gt;Old-school useful content is rarely monetized, just someone sharing their passion for something. Occasional affiliate link, with the obligatory apologetic &amp;quot;hey web servers cost money, so I included some affiliate links here!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The uselessness is just a side effect of Google directing you toward paying customers.</text></comment>