The answer to the "can cats eat X", of course, can't be at the beginning or at the end. The reason is that the user must stay a long time and read the text, otherwise Google punishes the website for having a more than acceptable "bounce rate".

Putting the answer in the title (what has been dubbed "Anti-clickbait") also makes the site "less clickable" and will make it drop from the results. Trust me, I tried.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Easy for me to believe. They have to use some formula, and as soon as they change it, well, there's a massive industry dedicated to getting around it. If their algorithm is just "filter out what's useless", that's AGI.

Personally, I swapped to DuckDuckGo in 2019 and have been consistently happier but Bing or whatnot is probably equally valid at this point.

I actually switched to DDG cold-turkey and didn't use !g at all. Until I couldn't solve some problem and someone in my team said "it's the first result on google", I felt pretty stupid then. Since then I've given up and just automatically stick !g whenever I'm searching anything programming related.

Full text search isn't, but ranking the results is - and more importantly there is no objectively best ranking.

[0] When I search "postgres array_agg" on DDG - something I actually had to search for today - the Postgres documentation is the 6th hit (not even visible without scrolling down!), preceded by crap like https://archive.is/7JeSe. On Google it's the 2nd hit, also preceded by what seems like SEO spam.

[1] https://github.com/wildskyf/personal-blocklist

In this case, DDG happens to have a bang shortcut for postgres which takes you directly to the search results on the PostgreSQL site if you query !postgres array_agg.

There's a surprisingly large number of these which end up making it more useful than the generic web search results page overall.

I doubt a million is going to make a dent in it. Content marketers are automatically generating this stuff, and Google has billions of users, many of which will occasionally invent a novel query.

Old-school useful content is rarely monetized, just someone sharing their passion for something. Occasional affiliate link, with the obligatory apologetic "hey web servers cost money, so I included some affiliate links here!"

The uselessness is just a side effect of Google directing you toward paying customers.

The reason Google keeps those results near the top is because it drives up the cost of AdSense, since multiple competitors are fighting for the first page of organic results with those tactics, and AdSense is a way to "cut the line".

The result for users is that the first page of most result pages is littered with advertisement, either via real AdSense or with those inane marketing blog posts.

try it here : ssh [email protected]

I'm honestly such a huge fan of the Bing widgets, every time I see a someone google search for something basic and need to dredge through all of the AdWords laden blogspam, while I know bing has a good widget in your face widget with the answer, I can't help but feel confused at all the "Bing bad Google good" rhetoric.

Some of my favorites:

Annual Weather charts: See chart with monthly breakdown of temperature & rainfall for any location along with record temps, days of rain, and configurable units; Google has something similar but it presents the first few rows of a table first, with a separate tab for charts, and then the charts don't have nearly as much data (avg hi/lo, inches of rain, hours of daylight (bing doesnt have hours of daylight, so +1 to google for that))

Random animal fact cards: Try Binging something like "marsupial", you get a beautiful hand-crafted info card. There isn't one for every animal, but it's clear thought goes into creating them and they always make me happy to see for whatever reason.

can cats eat asparagus

I tried Google search, and produces a semi-useful snippet at the top, and reasonable results afterwards. Can you share what search you ran that had very bad results?

Can cats eat asparagus? ... It is neither toxic nor dangerous for our cats to consume in very small portions, but neither is it truly beneficial to them. Cats are obligate carnivores. Unlike dogs, who can and do eat everything they can wrap their jaws around, cats tend to be much more finicky eaters.

Can Cats Eat Asparagus? - Is It Safe For Cats? - ExcitedCatsexcitedcats.com › Blog Feb 12, 2021 — Vegetables, including peas, carrots, and asparagus, are safe for most cats to eat in small quantities. However, remember that your cat isn't going ... ‎Interesting Facts About... · ‎Which Vegetables Can I... · ‎Is Asparagus Safe for Cats?

Can Cats Eat Asparagus - Cats Dogs Blogcatsdogsblog.com › can-cats-eat-asparagus Oct 18, 2020 — Although there are benefits for giving your cats asparagus, the potential risks are far much dangerous and outweigh the benefits. It is therefore not ...

Why Do Cats Like Asparagus? (And Is It Safe?)betterwithcats.net › why-do-cats-like-asparagus The short answer is that yes cats can eat asparagus in small amounts without any problems. But while asparagus is quite healthy for humans, your cat really doesn't need to eat it.

Can cats eat chocolate? Yields ovrs.com (Oakland vet), purina, webmd, thesprucepets.com (cat blog run by vets), pdsa (pet veterinary charity)...

Can cats eat grapes? Yields top-N dangerous foods for cats listicles from various sites such as pet insurance and cat food brands. A response from a veterinary trust is in the top ten.

Can cats eat paint? Yields all reputable medical sources for the first several hits.

I’m not sure I can square this with your description of ubiquitous spam swamping out useful information.

Huh, I just tried this with a bunch of stuff and the snippets for each of the top several results for each all had fairly direct yes/no answers with reasons. Don't know if I got lucky hitting the right food items, or if it's a personalization issue.

Contrary to that I tried "can cats eat salad" and got basically a yes in the first line:

"If your cat loves lettuce and greens, these can be a great source of water, bulk, and nutrients..."

It fits with the 2/3 of searches end without a click though. That was on Google's results page - I didn't have to click.

https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/toxic-a...

In addition to plants, common human drugs like alcohol, THC and caffeine are also poisonous to cats.

Also common human spices such as salt, garlic and onion can be toxic too. Cats tolerate very small quantities of these (e.g. small slice of salami), but feeding your cat a chicken with garlic sauce is probably a bad idea.