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Comment by p4bl0

3 days ago

That's cool if they can make it work.

I don't understand how Google's indexing work anymore. I've had some website very well indexed for years and years which suddenly disappeared from the index with no explanation, even on the Search Console ("visited, not indexed"). Simple blog entries, lightweight pages, no JavaScript, no ads, no bad practices, https enabled, informative content that is linked from elsewhere including well indexed websites (some entries even performed well on Reddit). At the same time, for the past few years I've found Google search to be a less and less reliable tool because the results are less often what I need.

Anyway, let's hope this new policy can improve things a little.

22 comments

p4bl0

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SoftTalker  3 days ago

> no ads

There's yer problem....

Google isn't interested in helping people find pages with no ads.

csomar  3 days ago

This relates to Chrome, not to search. In regard to search, they have taken a new direction that I don't think is going to change any time soon. Some time in the last 2 years, they started removing any thing that doesn't get significant natural traffic (ie: have a 30 year old user manual for something odd that people only search for once in a while? -> removed). Last few months, I noticed that they will not index anything that seems broad (ie: if similar content exists, they won't index it regardless of your page authority).

Basically, they are turning search into Tiktok. If you try to make a search, you'll notice that now they give precedence to AI overview, Youtube, News stories, Maps, Products, etc. Anything but content.

tl;dr: content is dead in Google search.

  • rbits  3 days ago

    > This relates to Chrome, not to search.

    To me, it appears to relate to search

    > Pages that are engaging in back button hijacking may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site's performance in Google Search results.

    • csomar  3 days ago

      Good point. Chrome has a “feature” where if your website is google-flagged, it’ll display a danger alert when visiting it. For some reason I confused that with this.

      3 replies →

  • gunapologist99  2 days ago

    I'm actually surprised when I hear someone technical say they still use Google Search (the search product specifically - they still reign supreme with Maps, etc). I used to love it, but that was quite a long time ago.

    I personally use Brave Search and perplexity for those very rare instances when brave search doesn't instantly find what I am looking for. Literally the only thing I (rarely) miss from google is super-deep support for boolean search operators, but then I just tag a !g (exactly like DDG's brilliant bangs) on the end and that works. (I also tried Kagi and did like it, but didn't find compelling differences over Brave Search, especially compared to brave search's excellent and free AI.)

    • eks391  2 days ago

      As I read your comment, I was thinking "Really? Is it that surprising?" Then I remembered you said "someone technical", and no longer am surprised. Although I work with some technical people, I'm also surrounded by fools. Just the other day, I watched someone at work open a new tab to Google search, type "Google" and then click on Google search in the results, bringing them to the same page they had just left. With how quickly they did it, I can only imagine it is muscle memory and they haven't noticed yet that their new tab is Google search, or that this is better somehow.