How much of it is Google getting worse and how much of it is garbage websites hyperoptimizing for SEO? Practically all news websites are chock full of ads. There's tons of filler websites that just copy/paste text from Wikipedia, etc. Of course, Google could do a better job, but it's codependent evolution.
It's Google's prioritization with ads and preferred sites taking priority even over those SEO-optimized sites.
Google would much prefer to be the sole source of your traffic instead of pushing you to other sites. Google's business is advertising. Why would they want to lose that traffic?
Check this article about the Google MUM announcement, which basically says the same thing:
"MUM is part of Google’s long-term shift away from ranked search results and toward the creation of AI algorithms that can answer user questions faster—often without ever clicking a link or leaving Google’s results page. (Think, for example, of the “knowledge panels” that now appear at the top of many search results pages and display an answer from a website so you don’t have to visit the site yourself.) This shift promises to reduce the amount of work it takes to find information through Google. But it’s not clear that this is a problem in need of a solution." [0]
The Google of today is not the Google of 2008. Google in 2008 was a search engine. Today it's an advertising business that would much prefer you not leave Google properties.
> This shift promises to reduce the amount of work it takes to find information through Google. But it’s not clear that this is a problem in need of a solution.
Getting people useful information faster is the problem in need of a solution when you're Google. There isn't a point where that problem is solved; organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful is an unbounded goal.
FWIW I upvoted you upthread to try and counter the inexplicable downvotes; to me the points you made are uncontroversial and almost self-evident. (shrug)
Garbage websites hyperoptimizing for SEO have existed since the late 90s. I agree with the GP, the issue I have seen over the deterioration of search in the past 5-10 years is specifically a result of their business model:
1. Any remotely commercial search has an entire first page of ads, organic results are pushed way down.
2. Google has made it difference between ads and search results as minimal as possible. I long for the days of the early 00s of big yellow boxes.
3. On many pages the amount of content Google stuffs in at the top before you get to actual search results gets more annoying every year.
Honestly, I wish I had a button that made Google result pages look like they did 15 years ago.
I feel like the main problem I have with Google results is that they never surface anything interesting or old. There are a lot of searches where it returns nothing useful, but if you add "reddit" it becomes useful.
Besides that, they haven't fought SEO enough on image search, since Pinterest took it over for years.
How much of it is Google getting worse and how much of it is garbage websites hyperoptimizing for SEO?
Those are the same thing. If garbage websites can game their way up the search listing then Google is failing.
This is a simple problem of competition. Google doesn't have any, so they don't need to provide a good product. They can optimize for ad placement and revenue instead of search quality because users perceive that they have no real choice but to use Google. If another search engine manages to get some real market share Google results will get much better again.
Idk in the sense I feel that google has been doing better in fighting SEO in over time. I used to get crap results, but then again I was less experienced and did not use ads blockers
