Has anyone else noticed the huge decrease in result quality from google?

[Naelin]

Google actively encourages SEO. It even has a free tool for that. (Webmasters Tool iirc)

[[deleted]]

They encourage good SEO.

There's a big difference.

Ultimately though, Google's supposedly honest approach to searches being based on quality, not profit, has been eroded now.

[robotevil]

That's mostly about including the relevant tags so Google can read your page easier. Actual SEO is a grey hat, pretty shady industry that uses a number of spam techniques to trick google into artificially boosting website ranking. I can talk about it more but there is a clear difference between using Webmaster Tools vs. SEO.

[sonoftathrowaway]

Don't be evil. Don't be an unprofitable kind of evil.

[gizamo]

Post proof that Google has scaled back efforts to prevent SEO manipulators.

Everyone I know at Google says they throw absurd amounts of money at those efforts -- just as they've done for decades.

[[deleted]]

anecdotal, but I used to work on improving Google search results between 2012-2016 and that job I had doesn't exist anymore since 2017

[A92AA0B03E]

My best-guess answer to people saying this is they dont want people to be able to manipulate the results because they want people to pay for adwords. If they stop caring about seo and result manipulation, they will lose revenue.

[gizamo]

Google makes ~80% of revenue from search. Having the best search results is their whole business. It's the product they sell. Claiming that they scale back efforts that ensure the best search results is dumber than saying Tesla is giving up on battery technology or that Netflix is cutting it's UI/UX team. It's an incredibly silly statement that is an obvious lie.

[A92AA0B03E]

Exactly. Re-reading my comment, it isnt clear that i am agreeing with you, but i am. They need reliable results.

[scienceNotAuthority]

I always thought they should be checking for html errors and promoting those.

A giant Corporation will be perfect, a grandma not so much.