Comment by foobarian
7 months ago
Search engines worked a lot better when the internet had a higher SNR in the link graph. Nowadays it's an ocean of SEO sewage and no search engine can do a good job. It's not that Google ruined search by showing ads; it has genuinely become a harder problem. There is not much that can be done except set up a federated darknet where any commercial activity is banned; otherwise, the incentives are all wrong.
The SEO spam domains could be blocked or de-prioritized by google. However, these SEO links generate significant income for Google via advertising.
When OKRs are tied to revenue, no executive is going to sign off on a change that reduces it
Even worse, besides spam domains there are countless legit enterprises that like to be at the top of results that create bad incentives.
Imagine the community manages to set up a walled off non-commercial web that gains enough popularity to be interesting to advertisers. Who would be in charge of such a thing? And what would they do when Coca Cola showed up at the front door with ten million dollars in a briefcase? Federated would not be much better, they just need to pay the most influential nodes.