CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
The “content pruning” is being done for SEO purposes.
SEO is ruining the internet. Give me results for a search, let me choose the sort order optionally. Bring back Boolean operators, or at least make AND and OR work again.
Ah, the corporate enshittification of search.
I feel like shitty sites getting too good at SEO has largely made google useless. That's why you had to append "Reddit" to get any useful info that wasn't from some SEO scamsite.
spoiler
asdfasdfsadfasfasdf
Google: "No"
I'd settle with making "verbatim" search the default without having to switch to it every time.
I'm sick of searching for three specific nouns and getting results back that only has maybe one of them
Red Ventures, a private equity-backed marketing firm that owns CNET
Ah, there's yer problem.
The new Google Search results:
"Here's some ads and some AI generated crap. Take it or leave it. P.S. you smell."
I've been trying out Kagi lately, a paid search engine. Not sure whether I'll stick with it or not. I do like it though. I've been so tired of pages of pages of ads and nothing else in Google. I've had this inexplicable feeling for years that there's gotta be more internet out there than the ad-ridden SEO hellscape Google shovels on you.
So far I am happy with Brave Search, but I completely agree with the sentiment. I think that any ad-based business stops worrying about end-users once they reach a certain size and they only way to avoid this is by ensuring that customers can vote with their wallet.
I'll have to give Brave a look, thanks for the recommendation. And agreed. In general, I've been making more of a concerted effort lately to get away from things that are supported via ads. Either making use of open source software when convenient, or moving to paid services. I just hate that insidious feeling of constantly being advertised to.
I've been using kagi and am loving it so far. My only problem is that it's forcing me to recognize how often I use search. I'm already almost at my 1000 searches and I still have 15 days left 😭
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In the memo, CNET says that so-called content pruning “sends a signal to Google that says CNET is fresh, relevant and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results.” Stories slated to be “deprecated” are archived using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and authors are alerted at least 10 days in advance, according to the memo.
These metrics include page views, backlink profiles and the amount of time that has passed since the last update,” the memo reads.
A comparison between Wayback Machine archives from 2021 and CNET’s own on-site article counter shows that hundreds — and in some cases, thousands — of stories have disappeared from each year stretching back to the mid-1990s.
Red Ventures, a private equity-backed marketing firm that owns CNET, didn’t immediately respond to questions about the exact number of stories that have been removed.
Red Ventures has applied a ruthless SEO strategy to its slate of outlets, which also includes The Points Guy, Healthline, and Bankrate.
In the wake of that revelation and resulting errors on AI-generated stories, Red Ventures temporarily paused the content and overhauled its AI policy.
That's really disappointing honestly, I "grew up" reading CNET; I don't read it much anymore, but the articles they're deleting are likely the ones that initially got me up to speed with technology.
Meanwhile google isn't even worth using anymore...