Recent Comments on Search Engine Roundtable

Hani Nour commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

GOOG: The Guy Who Killed Yahoo Search is Now Running Google's Prabhakar Raghavan, the head of Google Search, used to be the head of search at Yahoo from 2005 to 2012. And let me tell you, it's not a pretty story. During his time at Yahoo, the company's search market share PLUMMETED from 30.4% to 13.4%. Yeah, you read that right - it was a FREE FALL. And it's not like he was just a bystander, he was in charge of research and development for Yahoo's search and ads products. But wait, it gets better. Under his leadership, Yahoo's search market share DECLINED FOR 9 CONSECUTIVE MONTHS. And to top it all off, Yahoo had its LARGEST LAYOFFS IN CORPORATE HISTORY at the time, cutting nearly 2,000 jobs. Is this a risk to GOOG long-term healthy growth? Have they started prioritizing short-term ad revenue over user experience, flooding search results with spam and ads to inflate earnings? Are we seeing a repeat of Yahoo's mistakes?

Comment ID #6444680314 04/25/2024 10:04 pm

Bobby commented on How Prabhakar Raghavan Killed Google Search; Report

I was watching CNBC Snuffy and the asset manager concluded strong ad revenue for Google and online advertising. There's no blogger in the world experiencing strong ad revenue. It's all part of these Gustavo Fring tricks.

Comment ID #6444679231 04/25/2024 10:04 pm

mark commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Google is evil. Very easy explanation.

Comment ID #6444677171 04/25/2024 10:04 pm

mark commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Literal websites that have spammed Linkedin articles and AI Generated spam is now ranking in front of our site lol. Not only has Google not cleaned up the spam, but apparently, it's ranking it above my site. Just a sign that you will be stomped if you play by the rules, thanks Google!

Comment ID #6444676987 04/25/2024 10:04 pm

snuffy commented on How Prabhakar Raghavan Killed Google Search; Report

The bosses at Google and their stockholders are celebrating huge tonight. Today they reported earnings. They issued their first ever dividend to stockholders, authorized the buy-back of $70 billion in stock. They have $108 billion in cash / equivalents. The stock shot up by 15% in after-hours trading. Dividends to Brin will be $146 Million, and to Page will be $78 Million. Don't gimme a thumbs down.... just reporting the news.

Comment ID #6444668534 04/25/2024 10:04 pm

GoogleHatesMe commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Why would it matter? Earnings report is last quarter.

Comment ID #6444667900 04/25/2024 10:04 pm

John A. User commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Times your bill by "4 million" and you'll get an idea of how much it'll cost to run AI. 4 million on the assumption that every house has an average of just over four occupants.

Comment ID #6444666423 04/25/2024 10:04 pm

Bobby commented on How Prabhakar Raghavan Killed Google Search; Report

Yeah, but I meant literally.

Comment ID #6444659819 04/25/2024 09:04 pm

Pope GeminAI the Woke commented on How Prabhakar Raghavan Killed Google Search; Report

From the Hacker News thread: "he argued against the other search leads that Google should use less machine-learning, or at least contain it as much as possible, so that ranking stays debuggable and understandable by human search engineers" Yes. That is exactly what it seems like. So much AI that engineers cannot debug the system anymore.

Comment ID #6444657229 04/25/2024 09:04 pm

Barry Schwartz commented on How Prabhakar Raghavan Killed Google Search; Report

It was very easy.

Comment ID #6444656187 04/25/2024 09:04 pm

Pope GeminAI the Woke commented on How Prabhakar Raghavan Killed Google Search; Report

Good on you for publishing this Barry. Cannot have been an easy decision.

Comment ID #6444655011 04/25/2024 09:04 pm

mckjudochop commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

You know what's really neat? Not only are the majority of us effected by this but we are also seeing a huge downturn in the US economy and peoples spending habits. There are a ton of mom & pop e-com sites that did really well before all of this. I bet a ton of half awake SEOs on fivver are raking in the "fix." https://media3.giphy.com/media/bjJ99WcOi73X2/giphy-downsized-small.mp4

Comment ID #6444649504 04/25/2024 09:04 pm

Ekees SEO commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Netherlands. I am one of the 18 million electricity users ;)

Comment ID #6444649371 04/25/2024 09:04 pm

JaneDoe commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Maybe you've missed literally everyone in SEO talking about Ed Zitron's illuminating piece on our good friend Prabhakar Raghavan, but absolutely nobody "won't admit" that Google is wreaking havoc with their algorithms. Welcome to the party, because that's all anybody talks about here, just Google's mix of evil and incompetence, and we all get to speculate on what particular cocktail of those 2 things are the cause of the shitshow we're seeing in any given update.

Comment ID #6444619209 04/25/2024 08:04 pm

John A. User commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Subsidies stink but that takes the biscuit as the cost is passed onto consumers who can't afford. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o0rAvZtM7w

Comment ID #6444616932 04/25/2024 08:04 pm

Quetzal commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

That's the problem. Rolling back means reducing ads and reducing profit. As much as I wish it might happen, no Google manager who wants a career is going to die on that hill. The genie is out of the bottle.

Comment ID #6444610496 04/25/2024 08:04 pm

Tommaso Lenci commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

My Google Discover traffic has practically collapsed since Friday the 19th. Let's hope it's not a bug as happened in October 2023 because the latter lasted almost 25 days before they fixed it

Comment ID #6444609149 04/25/2024 08:04 pm

David Addison commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

This evening Apr 25, 2024, GOOG reports quarterly earnings. I'm going to predict that we see algo stability starting within 48 hours of the quarterly report. Are disruptive updates corelated to poor earnings and the earnings reports? Is GOOG 'forcing' business to spend money on advertising by wreaking havoc to the SERPS?

Comment ID #6444608764 04/25/2024 08:04 pm

UncleKrusty commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

At least a portion of their electric bills will be subsidized by others paying higher rates. Here's a 2018 story https://www.foxnews.com/tech/are-you-paying-amazons-electricity-bills about electric customers picking up the tab for a $172 million underground line for an Amazon datacenter. The electricity rates Amazon, Google, Meta, etc. pay are much less than most I'm sure. And where these new AI datacenters get built will be subsidized as well with taxpayers covering the tab for the infrastructure to support the new buildings which will also have property tax abatements.

Comment ID #6444601062 04/25/2024 08:04 pm

John A. User commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

AI is expensive, it uses the same amount of energy as Holland or Belgium, I forget which. Those countries with populations of 17/11 million respectively. Can you imagine how much electricity those countries need and the total electricity bill. They are going to have to make some serious wonga (cash) just for the electricity. No wonder the investors are spooking, all the profit is going into their electricity bills. If all these big companies keep using AI and robots (amazon) then they might be a backlash and people might turn off them (hopefully).

Comment ID #6444585086 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

Maybe? commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Dragonfly. That's the answer for all of this.

Comment ID #6444579033 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

Maybe? commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

They just implimented or are in the process of implimenting Dragonfly. Do some research on Googles Dragonfly algorithm. It's the censorship algo (social credit scores) that was built for China that Google claims was never finished or implimented. I do a lot of ecomm and product developement. That means trips to China in the relatively recent past, going back to 2007. I can't even contact my reps there anymore. It's like they vanished. Google's new US system is acting very similar to what they built for China when it was being pushed. I was there at the time.

Comment ID #6444576001 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

UncleKrusty commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

I haven't seen a Google algo update benefit me for years. IMO the purpose of these updates is to coverup another money grab. Problem is there isn't a lot of meat left on the bone so we notice. As far as AI goes, we're just getting started in the AI wars with companies aligning their resources. Meta was hammered by Wall Street, and I suspect Google may get hammered too if they invest to heavily in AI. Story "Meta’s stock plunges 15% on ‘aggressive’ AI spending plans" at: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/25/investing/meta-stock-plunges-ai-spending/index.html

Comment ID #6444572728 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

just_saying commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Yeah, it's also the greed of upper management that renders Google AI so useless. Why is ChatGPT better? Is it because of Google's greed too? Doesn't Google have so much money that they could hire a developer army to build something better than ChatGPT? Well, no, they can't. There isn't an existing developer team that can compete with OpenAI; there is nothing they can't do unless they hire every OpenAI developer. The key point about the search engine is that they had a working algorithm, but they tried to replace it with this useless HCU thing. They are too prideful to admit they are wrong, nor do they know how to tweak/fix this mess.

Comment ID #6444567210 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

Ran Damme commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Seems the best way forward is to create sh*t sites LOL

Comment ID #6444565925 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

Quetzal commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Devil's advocate: they can be both. They can be maximizing profits but too incompetent to do it in such a way that the victim doesn't notice. For what it's worth, I've always been squarely in the incompetence/behind the scenes power struggles camp. But it's undeniable, with receipts, that there are also people in positions of power at Google trying to bleed the patient dry. It's a big organization with very different values across different teams. I seem to recall that the all-hands Search Team meeting the other day involved something like 25,000 staff. And that's just the Search Team. I have no idea how many are in the ad teams and so on. Sometimes that creative tension might work cohesively. Right now it appears to be creating chaos. Update: The 25,000 full-time employees figure was <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/23/google-search-boss-raghavan-warns-employees-of-new-operating-reality.html">described</a> as "Google’s knowledge and information organization." I don't know specifically which teams that includes.

Comment ID #6444564267 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

John A. User commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

I get the impression someone is trying to Short Google stock in the hope of making money when they rollback and be everyone's friend again.

Comment ID #6444561136 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

UncleKrusty commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

A proper search engine to them is a profitable search engine. From what I see in sales, Bing is getting more traffic which is why I'm seeing more sales from them. Other data suggests Bing is also benefiting from Google's loss in users: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1da6ab1c3f419bd0ac4a1de62d0f6bef484c95d83bee922e2b6912059fefc137.gif Barry's post "Report: How Prabhakar Raghavan Killed Google Search" https://www.seroundtable.com/how-man-killed-google-search-report-37281.html also helps explain the current state of Google (tunnel vision focused on profits).<blockquote>A day later, Gomes emailed Fox and Thakur an email he intended to send to Raghavan. He led by saying he was “annoyed both personally and on behalf of the search team.” in a long email, he explained how one might increase engagement with Google Search, but specifically added that they could “increase queries quite easily in the short term in user negative ways,” like turning off spell correction, turning off ranking improvements, or placing refinements — effectively labels — all over the page, adding that it was “possible that there are trade offs here between different kinds of user negativity caused by engagement hacking,” and that he was “deeply deeply uncomfortable with this.” He also added that this was the reason he didn’t believe that queries were a good metric to measure search and that the best defense about the weakness of queries was to create “compelling user experiences that make users want to come back.”</blockquote> As you see, the problem is not Google's code but upper management's greed.

Comment ID #6444558878 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

John A. User commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Correctomundo dude... Good idea about when the update is over is June 2029.

Comment ID #6444553132 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

John A. User commented on Google March Core Update Still Rolling Out & Heated Fluctuations Continue

Bing just tries to be a clone of Google. Whatever Google does, BiNG does too so wants the point in swapping one crappy engine with another. Take the instance a few weeks ago, Google decided not to show caches anymore and then what did Bing do. Google does image theft and look what the other images do. If Bing wants to be noticed, they need to do what I said above and be DIFFERENT.

Comment ID #6444552299 04/25/2024 07:04 pm

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