Are the employees at Google working on Search aware of how bad search results have become in the past year or two? Literally almost everyone I know, inside and outside of tech, has noticed a significant downgrade in quality from Google search results. And a lot of it is due to artificially inflated SEO techniques.

We've been diligently working to improve the results through things like our helpful content system, and that work is continuing. You can read about some of it in a recent post here (and it also describes the Perspectives feature that's live on mobile): https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-perspectiv...

It's great that you responded to the question. Is there a reason you didn't answer it, though?

Because politics, not solutions, drive big tech.

Or because talking smack about your employer is something 90% of this site would shirk away from.

> Are the employees at Google working on Search aware of how bad search results have become in the past year or two?

I would assume they didn't answer this because the answer is either "No" because echo chamber or "Yes" but they don't want to say that publicly.

"We've been diligently working to improve the results" was the response to the question of "Are the employees at Google working on Search aware of how bad search results have become in the past year or two?" I thought that was a clear response.

To be more explicit, yes, we're aware that there are complaints about the quality of search results. That's why we've been working in a variety of ways, as I indicated, to improve those.

We have continued to build our spam fighting systems, our core ranking systems, our systems to reward helpful content. We expanded our product reviews system to cover all types of reviews, as this explains: https://status.search.google.com/incidents/5XRfC46rorevFt8yN...

We regularly improve these systems, which we share about on this page: https://status.search.google.com/products/rGHU1u87FJnkP6W2Gw...

The work isn't stopping. You'll continue to see us revise these systems to address some of the concerns people have raised.

It was clearly a response, yes, but an answer is always better than a response. Thank you for answering!

I am of the opinion that its just internet becoming more spammy and unhelpful rather than google searching becoming bad. Every Tom and his mom seems to have a blog/website which they don't even write themselves. Most of the content on the internet is now for entertainment rather than purpose or knowledge. So, I do wonder if its just the state of the internet these days. As a layman, these days I just go directly to Wikipedia/reddit/youtube rather than searching on google.

The Internet is becoming spammy and bad because of Google's rules for ranking. The fact that Google favors newer content and longer pages with filler text is why people are making the content lower quality.

My strong impression is that in the last two years there a couple change were rolled out to search that sent it straight into the sewer - search seemed to be tweaked to crassly, crudely put any product name above anything else in the searches. But since then, it seems like quality has crept back up again. Simple product terms still get top billing but more complicated searches aren't nerfed.

So it seems the search quality team exists but gets locked on in the closet by advertising periodically.

I know you can't verify anything directly but maybe we could set a system of code for you to communicate what's really happening...

You realize they have to combat an entire fleet of marketers and writers who are trying to leverage their algorithms?

Don't kick the messenger. It's already good that someone (allegedly) from a department related to the situation could give some input. No need to dump all your frustrations on them

You are also talking to someone who is on the PR team. This term gets thrown out a lot but in this case it is factually true, you are literally talking to a shill. I mean no disrespect to Danny but you are not going to get an honest and straightforward answer out of him.

If you think I am exaggerating, try to prompt him to see if you can get him to acknowledge that Googles current systems incentivize SEO spam. See if he passes the Turing test.

Facebook doesn't have guidance telling content creators to publish conspiracy theories, but their policies are willfully optimized to promote it. Take responsibility for the results of your actions like an adult.

> Take responsibility for the results of your actions like an adult.

"your actions", give me a break. The parent commenter doesn't own Google, and you aren't forced to use the platform.

Are people on this site really convinced that an L3 Google engineer can flick the "Fix Google" switch on the search engine? I'd hope there were more technical users here.

You said L3 so I was curious. I looked up the guy's LinkedIn [0] and I honestly a L3 engineer would have a lot more context about Google's search. Danny, what do you even do?

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannysullivan/

I work for our search quality team, directly reporting to the head of that team, to help explain how search works to people outside Google and bring concerns and feedback back into team so we can look at ways to improve. I came to the position about six years ago after retiring from writing about search engines as a journalist, explaining how they work to people from 1996 onward.

That’s impressive! Congrats.

So you're PR

Yes, I believe you are correct.

Before Google, Danny Sullivan was a well respected search engine blogger/journalist. As far as I know, he isn't an engineer. There's no need to be rude.

> Are people on this site really convinced that an L3 Google engineer can flick the "Fix Google" switch on the search engine?

No, it's just when someone speaks on behalf of the company with the terms "we," they are typically addressed with "you." That doesn't mean we think they're the CEO. Are you unfamiliar with this concept? I can send you an SEO guide on it.

You're missing the point; This guy has zero power over what Google does so publicly berating him is not going to accomplish anything.

If you choose to throw yourself on a public forum doing PR for a company doing dumb things and you also insult everyone's intelligence by lying to them, people are gonna be a little rude

"choose to throw yourself"

"a company doing dumb things"

"insult everyone's intelligence"

"lying to them"

That's a little hyperbolic, don't you think? Do you even hear yourself? I fully understand Google hate but directing it at one person who is literally just doing their job (and hasn't lied to anyone despite your allegation) is childish and counterproductive. Save that for Twitter.

Danny has been here since 2008. Your account was created in 2022.

And also, "people" aren't being rude, you are. Own your actions.

No, I'm not being hyperbolic. There is one reason for the SEO algorithm to reward longer articles, and that's ad revenue. To paint it as anything else is lying. And you opened up this conversation extremely rudely with "OMG are you so dumb you think he owns Google."

How long I've been here is irrelevant.

>you opened up this conversation extremely rudely

That wasn't me. Maybe pay closer attention?

>reward longer articles

The age of articles was being discussed, not article length. Maybe pay closer attention?

Actually... you know what, never mind.

The age of the articles was discussed in the original article, but when I was speaking to this engineer, I was talking about the length of articles which is the main criticism levied against Google SEO. I'm aware you didn't read any of it

I followed the thread just fine. You accused me of being rude (it was someone else) and also accused the other commenter of lying. Neither of which are true.

You did that, not me. It's you who seem to be having a problem with understanding the thread.

We don't have a policy or any guidance saying to remove old content. That said, we absolutely recognize a responsibility to help creators understand how to succeed and what not to do in terms of Google Search. That's why we publish lots of information about this (none of which says "old content is bad." A good place to review the information we provide is from our Search Essentials page: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials

It doesn't matter if your guidance discourages it, your SEO algorithm is encouraging it. What you call "helpful" in your post is what is financially helpful to Google, not what's helpful to me.

There's no denying Google encourages long rambling nonsense over direct information

No one has demonstrated getting rid of "old" content somehow makes the rest of the site "fresh" and therefore ranks better. What's likely the case is that some people have updated content to make it more useful -- more up-to-date -- and the content being more helpful might, in turn, perform better. That's a much different thing that "if you have a lot of old content, the entire site is somehow old." And if you read the CNET memo, you'll see there's a confusion with these points.

But there's the rub, you're not making content more helpful. You're making it longer and more useless so we have to scroll down more so Google can rake in more ads. The fact that you're calling it more "helpful" is insidious. That's why garbage SEO sites are king on the internet right now. It's the same thing you guys do with Youtube, where you decreased monetization for videos under a certain length. Now every content creator is encouraged to artificially inflate the length of their video for more ads.

You're financially rewarding people for hiding information.

This is our guidance about how people should see themselves to create helpful content to succeed in Google Search: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creat...

That includes self-assessment questions, including this:

"Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't.)"

That's not telling people to write longer. Our systems are not designed to reward that. And we'll keep working to improve them.

This is the usual if a hazard isn't labeled, it isn't a hazard fallacy.

Making statements that you wish publishers wouldn't do various things, doesn't change the actual incentives that the real-world ranking algorithms create for them.

I mean, saying that you should design pages for people rather than the search engine clearly hasn't shut down the SEO industry.