> farath.com was first indexed by Google more than 10 years ago

This seems pretty suspicious? Is it reporting the first time Google crawled the main domain farath.com? How is that relevant information?

This is the first time it crawled the domain at all. It's been a website since at least 2008[0], but was recently re-registered in 2020[1].

0: https://web.archive.org/web/20080607010730/http://www.farath...

1: https://who.is/whois/farath.com

Thats weird. I noticed no ads on this farath.com site. Are they going to monetize the email subscriptions somehow? How are they making money off of this?

This is a great example of why "Google sucks!!11" is mainly FUD. Let's say you're looking for the SO link, which is #2 for Google. Let's compare:

Google ("code that protects users from accidentally invoking the script when they didn't intend to")

Link: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22code+that+protects+users+...

SO - #2

Bing ("code that protects users from accidentally invoking the script when they didn't intend to")

Link: https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22code+that+protects+users+fr...

SO - #2

Brave Search

Link: https://search.brave.com/search?q=%22code+that+protects+user...

SO - Not on page

You.com

Link: https://you.com/search?q=%22code%20that%20protects%20users%2...

SO - Doesn't load

DuckDuckGo:

Link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22code+that+protects+users+from+a...

SO - #2 (seems to depend on refresh)

Basically they're all the same. Google is faster, but the order of the results is identical.

If you did a large scale analysis in this manner I doubt Google would lose.

I'm not sure it's a good example, really. It's an "exact phrase search" with quotes, which doesn't happen much in real life.

It was helpful solely to show what some of these leech sites are.

Searching for (without quotes): What does if __name__ == "__main__": do?

Is probably a better test of which search engine has better results for the real-life query. Google might still win, but it should do a better job of screening out the spammy sites. It used to be better at this.

All the search engines have seen massive increases in SEO and consequently, spam. Do you believe Google et al isn’t working on it?

It’s obviously a very difficult problem.

I believe they've become more complacent since there is no competitive pressure, yes.

I doubt it. If their results become noticeably worse than Bing (and therefore DDG) results, people will start to switch. But Bing is having the same problems with the crap sites.

So they at least have to keep their quality even with the competition for the average person (HN readers are not the average person).

That matches what I said, really. "Better than current-day Bing" is a much lower bar than they used to shoot for.

Bing has always been very comparable to Google. Especially in certain niches. For example bing was better for social in 2010:

https://www.eweek.com/news/microsoft-bing-beat-google-in-soc...

I don't know, a lot of people have claimed this but no one has any proof.

What would proof be? Over a period of time, they have clearly de-prioritized organic search results by pushing them down the page with ads, widgets, and so on. They used to engage more directly with content producers. Matt Cutts was often called the "Head of Web Spam". When he left, they dissolved his role and spread it around to several other people.

Your claim regarding deprioritized search results for example - where’s the proof?

If what you are saying is true it should be trivial to give sample queries so we can test across all search engines and see if it’s true.

"Deprioritized" means moved down the fold of the page. Like, for example, the 3-4 ads at the top that used to not be there. And various other widgets that used to not be there. Ads in SERPS started out in the right hand sidebar only. Such that organic results were at the top. They were slowly moved down over time by a slow rollout of more ads and widgets. There are many queries now with ZERO organic results above the page fold.

None of this is in dispute, so I don't feel compelled to dredge up old screenshots or examples.

Comparing the page layout to competitors isn't especially helpful when Google has 90%+ market share in search. Google is defining the standard for others.

Why don't you give any examples of these queries? There's no point in comparing to say, 2008 Google, there are many of orders of magnitudes more sites. You can't expect old algorithms to keep up. The main thing that matters is how long it takes to find what you're looking for.

Can't say I really get your point. You're willing to complain and go on this long tirade, but not to give a single query example? The one you gave in your original post was already debunked easily enough. You're saying these things as if they are a fact - I disagree with you, it is in dispute. If we're going to just take random claims are facts, then I'll say Google's results are better than ever.

Google's market share isn't really relevant. It's very easy to just use Bing or any other search engine. I actually use Bing half of the time since it offers rewards.

I didn't give any query to be debunked. I gave an example of a query to see the copycat sites. It does that just fine. Re-read it with some benefit of the doubt maybe? Your rant seems to be based on the idea that my upthread post was something that it wasn't. I did note that one copycat site was ranking above SO, but that was secondary.

As for a query with a shit ton of ads and widgets? Try vegas hotels, or anything else with lots of widgets and ads. The travel space has a lot of them.

All I’m saying is that claims should have proof

Would you please make your substantive points without degenerating into the flamewar style? You did it repeatedly in this thread, and worse each time. That's the opposite of the direction we want things to go here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Proof of what? That google didn't used to have ads above organic results? That they added more and more over time? That some queries (vegas hotels) have no organic results above the fold? Those are all common knowledge. Burden of proof of the opposite would be on you.

I don't happen to have a historical screenshot history of SERP results specific to StackOverflow copycats, no. I'll concede that.

> Burden of proof of the opposite would be on you.

What, lol. I'm not making any claims. You're the one saying Google is becoming complacent. I'm asking for proof of this, lol.

>> I believe they've become more complacent since there is no competitive pressure, yes.

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN; especially not the tit-for-tat kind where two users butt heads and get their horns entangled.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have noticed that Google and Bing seem to present results which link to sites like stackoverflow.com where the questions and solutions are absolute FUD.

I think someone or an entity has been engaged in a consertive effort to manipulate the results if its not something more nefarious in Google and Bing's domain.

Very few entities have the resources to do this either, its not something a ragtag band of goat herders could, thats for sure!

In my experience, the you.com apps and overall search results aren't affected by SEO the same way that some of the other engines are, which is why I think their results work for me

Just tried your search in both Google and Duck Duck Go. On Google first page spam copies are ~80% of the links, on DDG maybe 40%. Not good, but much better than Google.

I tried you.com[1]. The first few results seem quite relevant. Best part is that you can actually personalize the weights to assign to your search (your very own bubble)

https://you.com/search?q=code%20that%20protects%20users%20fr...

This isn't the same search. The parent post had quotes around the phrase. You.com returns identical copy-cat results if you do the same search.

To be fair, not sure what other results we'd expect if we're going to search for a specific, plagiarized phrase.

Edit: actually, upon review, you.com does indeed give one extra useful result within the top three. So one point to gryffindor.

>To be fair, not sure what other results we'd expect if we're going to search for a specific, plagiarized phrase.

Yeah, I posted an exact search solely so people could see examples of the copycat sites. It's not a good example of a real life query in any way, and not useful for comparisons. It is interesting that Google puts one of the copycats above SO though.

I saw you.com displays some Code Complete snippets but the lines are too short and doesn't get the language highlighting, which make it harder to read. Nice try anyway.