Is Google getting Wooorse?

[Aleph(0)]

Most of you probably know of "Dave" from EEVblog and YouTube "fame."

You mean smiling Dave on every other post? I used to know him well but since I hooked up with Ublock Origin he doesn't come around no more!

Jpanhalt sry if I sounded totally daft! So I just had my _Dave's_ mixed up! I thought you meant _Smiling Dave_

Who shows up at _PI position_ in threads to guests visiting this site


But after actually bothering to think on it I get that you were referring to _Manic Dave_

Who I say is a vry smart guy but I don't envy his BP! So anyhow I'd say sry for the confusion but I was prolly the only one confused and anyway it was all my fault !

 

[jpanhalt]

Yes, the Dave who speaks Australian. Frankly, at my age, I have a hard time understanding some British and Australian folk. I can at least understand most of what Dave says.

His tear down of the Rigol DS1054Z, discussion of 50Ω termination, and a few other things are not too bad once you get past his voice. Of course, YouTube is a profit center for him, but he is a lot better than some of his competition IMHO.

 

[tcmtech]

Yes, the Dave who speaks Australian. Frankly, at my age, I have a hard time understanding some British and Australian folk. I can at least understand most of what Dave says.

I feel the same way about some of the british and English YT channel people. It bewilders me that a person can have a commanding range and depth of the english vocabulary that could make HP and Alph(O) vocabularies look like that of simpletons yet at the same time speak in such a way that makes drunkards sound articulate.

This guy is a perfect example of that.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC72vWiZdUN_Y2OC2RgJ-dvA

(The puppet guy Vs news people and the like is hilarious. )

 

[large_ghostman]

No one has mentioned penguin,AMP and HTTPS !

These are the main issues you see. Google has a new (well ok i think its 18 months - 2 years old) algorythm out, alot of older site got hit by it. Older school SEO actually goes against you in the search algorythm, so many of the older sites are run by people who paid for SEO when the site was built, it is now 'wrong' kind of SEO.

Then you get AMP, Accelerated Mobile Pages. This is really nasty, we have responsive designs and those work well, already a big enough pain to design a responsive site!! But AMP is a google product, i am REALLY anti this, its no business of a search engine how i present a site. I refuse point blank to conform to the way a search engine wants me to layout a site! They should fit the site not the other way around.

The difference between being responsive, and conforming to the AMP standard is all google favored. Its mainly to make indexing much easier and cheaper for them, its also much quicker for them to index if everyone uses the same 'FORM'.

Lastly google have stated that sometime this year they are going to adjust ranking, they will virtually ignore non HTTPS sites!! I think this is some kind of deal they have done with governments etc for favorable tax incentives. Not really sure why, google say its to make life harder for hackers and better protection for online shoppers. But again since when was it a indexers job to tell people how they should do things? To me google is like a upperty receptionist that sleeps with the boss, too much say in too many places for all the wrong reasons.

But if you think general searches are bad..........try searching videos, you would think there is only one video platform (You Tube), but there are many! Google owns you tube so the vast majority of returned results are all you tube. Whats really bad is, i have some videos I published with another platform, i can directly input the titles and google comes up with NO returned results, i look at the back end and google does regularly visit the videos. But it does not index them in searches!

Google stopped being your friend a while back, most didnt notice. Wait 12 more months and many the sites you know now wont show up at all.

 

[unclejed613]

i use https://duckduckgo.com like ixquick, it doesn't track you. second, you get all the results of a search, third, all results are in order of keyword relevance. like any search engine, quality of results are proportional to your Searchmeister index (how well you choose keywords or phrases for the search).

 

[large_ghostman]

I been thinking about that, especially the key word thing. All the keyword and SEO tools for web owners are google based. When you write content now your score is affected by how you write, seems unfair to be virtually pushed down a path you might not want to go.

I might give the Duck a go, I use it in the other side but not on this side. You watch ranks change as soon as AMP is fully implemented. Shame Amazon didnt hold its ground and refuse to become AMP compliant, wonder what it cost for them to switch.

 

[atferrari]

i use https://duckduckgo.com like ixquick, it doesn't track you.

Myself I also used to repeat that, but how do we know that it is actually true?

 

[large_ghostman]

Myself I also used to repeat that, but how do we know that it is actually true?

Because if it did you would get targeted adds

 

[tcmtech]

So what are the most unbiased search engines these days?

I'm about fed up with google for the same reason as everyone else and it becoming harder and harder to find what I am looking for even when I know full well what sites and pages should be popping up for exact searches I use.

As is any items I shop for at all, even if they are a few days between purchases, I now have to bookmark so that when I go looking for them again I don't have to spend 10 -20 minutes of paging through loads of irrelevant nonsense to find the correct online dealers and that never used to be an issue with google a year or more ago.

 

[large_ghostman]

Oddly enough i sometimes use Torr for the normal web, the search results seem cleaner

 

[thomas1992]

I use torr most of the time, as he said ABOVE its clearner

 

[fourtytwo]

I have not used google for years as I object in principle to tracking, pop-ups and in particular re-ordering results according to payments, thats not what I call a search engine, it's an advertising engine also collecting your personal information that they hope to sell, same goes for there cr*ppy browser!

I Used to be a fan of dogpile but in recent years gave that up in favour of duck duck but I still use an add blocker and any stupid site that comes up with some missive like turn your blocker off never gets visited again.

 

[unclejed613]

another thing you can do on the clearweb is block certain requests for browser window size, etc.. in the browser. on some web sites, you will see notifications come up "this website requested location data from the browser, send location data?" and i always answer no. or i will get a warning that the website tried to collect the browser window size. these security settings are in the browser's "about:config" page, and there's info on the web about using the browser settings to block requests that might be used to profile your computer or you.

 

[large_ghostman]

Both responsive websites and AMP compliant websites have to know browser size. Once google makes AMP compulsory browsers will have to get rid of the ability to disable this. Might be one reason google is pushing AMP with such aggression.

Like many things, the public were asleep at the wheel when google started to take the web over. no one thought it was bad they wanted to know this or that because they told you it helped you, now they do little to hide the fact they target you for cash.

 

[ronsimpson]

 

[unclejed613]

i fooled google/youtubes profiling once... i had a machine that i used only to watch youtube videos, and more specifically videos about cold war history and declassified nuke testing films. after about a month i started getting targeted ads asking if i wanted to take college courses to improve my CIA career.... that was good for a chuckle or two... i should have taken a screen shot of that...

 

[unclejed613]

View attachment 111151

what did you get for results?

 

[ronsimpson]

i started getting targeted ads asking if i wanted to

I get adds about hair loss and for old men that can't get it up.
Every other add is about memory ...... memory ..... what was I talking bout? Oh yes; on my phone when I take a picture of something with in 1/2 hour I start getting adds on my computer for that product. These computers are really good. If you call that good.

 

[large_ghostman]

I get adds for hair care and ladies who visit , i also get offered courses on how to forget the night before

 

[large_ghostman]

mine