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A comment on Robots.txt for the NYT has a specific exclusion for an 1996 news article. Parent comment

Re:Robots.txt for the NYT has a specific exclusion for an 19... by TeMPOraL on Monday March 29, 2021 @04:29AM (#26618877)
Except when it isn't. I don't know if I'm uniquely bad at web search these days, but Google seems to do the exact opposite of what I want. I.e. when I need some solid information about a piece of technology or knowledge, it'll spam me with content marketing bullshit published last week. But when I need something recent - like a current opinion on some software alternatives, or installation instructions, all I get are results from 5+ years ago.
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Re:Robots.txt for the NYT has a specific exclusion for an 19... by masklinn on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:26AM (#26621186)
I don’t know if we’re both in that case and Google has simply moved away from how we learned to coerce it (and other search engines) over the years, our habits now yielding negative returns unbeknownst to us, but I find myself in a similar situation.

Month after month, year after year, search results get worse, and harder to sift through. At this point, google is mostly a way to find wiki articles despite typos (because Wikipedia’s search is bad and can’t handle typos).

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Re:Robots.txt for the NYT has a specific exclusion for an 19... by int_19h on Monday March 29, 2021 @10:45AM (#26622449)
Google has definitely changed in the past few years. I've noticed that it ignores quotes when it feels like it, and is very aggressive at "synonymous" substitutions (which in many cases aren't - e.g. I've seen it replace "FreeBSD" with "Linux"). It's making it harder and harder to make queries for something specific.
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Re:Robots.txt for the NYT has a specific exclusion for an 19... by Isthatablackgsd on Monday March 29, 2021 @11:10AM (#26622885)
I thought I am the only one! Last week, I was trying to find something with the quotes and it completely ignore it. It took me a few queries to find what I am looking for.
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Re:Robots.txt for the NYT has a specific exclusion for an 19... by bbarnett on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @05:21AM (#26645099)
Use verbatim, as per my comment up thread.
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Re:Robots.txt for the NYT has a specific exclusion for an 19... by anoncake on Monday March 29, 2021 @06:02AM (#26619501)
<outlandish conspiracy theory>

Google does this to make every tech worker not working for Google, and thus Google's competition, less productive.

</outlandish conspiracy theory>

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Re:Robots.txt for the NYT has a specific exclusion for an 19... by felipemnoa on Monday March 29, 2021 @09:29AM (#26621214)
Or maybe the google AI has a funny side. Right now it's probably laughing its ass off reading teMPOral's comment.
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