Re:Googling for answers costs you time
by iainmerrick on Monday July 03, 2023 @04:03AM
(#36570125)
Are there really 10 different explanations?
I’ve seen “they’re long so there’s more space for ads” and “they’re long so you spend more time there so it doesn’t get penalised by google”, and to me those are pretty closely related.
Re:Googling for answers costs you time
by sam_bristow on Monday July 03, 2023 @04:10AM
(#36570169)
There's also the "recipes aren't copyrightable, but the fluff about grandma baking cookies is" explanation.
Re:Googling for answers costs you time
by BugsJustFindMe on Monday July 03, 2023 @08:12AM
(#36571788)
I see that one a lot and it doesn't hold up to scrutiny because copyright on grandma isn't how recipe websites make their money.
I've also seen "the recipe itself isn't copyrightable, so they add prose/filler that is".
But why would staying long on a web site correctly indicate the page provided the answer? Is you spent a short amount it could also indicate you found what you were looking for, and off you went.
Re:Googling for answers costs you time
by makeitdouble on Monday July 03, 2023 @05:13AM
(#36570568)
That's the neat part: it doesn't!
It's a situation where Google doesn't benefit much more from it being the actual answer, and the site doesn't either.
In the long run it could have an impact on the user perception, that could be nullified by the page still staying ranked higher than the competiting pages and the user finding nowhere else better.
And how would google know if you didn't make another request
Google Analytics or Google Chrome telemetry.
It happened when Google Penguin was rolled out, because Penguin’s claimed focus was on better content itself to combat backlink spam practices that abused PageRank descendants.
It sort of worked but there were entire valuable websites with great content (but according to Penguin comprised of non-rich content) that were dropped pages deep into the search results. Recipe websites were among these.
There exist reams of articles on how to fix your content to get Penguin to like it, and the buried recipe nonsense started exactly at the same time.
Spending time on the page should actually be a great proxy for usefulness on recipe websites. If it's a long page of introduction and anecdotes, maybe it took me three minutes instead of one to reject it as unpromising. If it's the recipe I actually used, however, that tab is going to be open for the next thirty minutes or more.