How Google is killing independent sites like ours - HouseFresh
housefresh.com
And why you shouldn’t trust product reviews from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google.

Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline.

We know that at the end of the day, Google will reward us if our readers find our articles useful.

Or that’s what we thought.

You might have noticed that no matter what you google, there’s always a selection of the same publishers showing up at the top of the results.

  • Remy Rose@lemmy.oneEnglish
    131·
    10 months ago

    This is so depressing… I’d been seeing it in effect but I didn’t know all the context. We need more and better alternative search engines, like Stract.

    EDIT: Actually, are any of the searXNG instances including Stract yet?

      • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
        2·
        10 months ago

        I tried it, but it’s not good.

        1. I searched for best motorcycle and got lists of best motorcycle accessories.
        2. Then I searched for best motorcycle twisties, and got one gem of a website about some nice roads in WA but the rest of the results were unrelated to roads.
        3. Then I searched for best motorcycle twisties in my state, but got “best mountain bike trails,” and some more unrelated sites including a site about porn sites.

        If I’m getting porn-adjacent websites when I search for the best twisty roads I’m never gonna use your search engine no matter how much I hate the alternatives.