Leaked Documents Reveal How Google Search Gatekeeps the Internet (gizmodo.com)
from 0nekoneko7@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 12:05
https://lemmy.world/post/16092814

#technology

threaded - newest

autotldr@lemmings.world on 02 Jun 12:10 next collapse

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Bringing the right webpage to your computer is no passive task as thousands of editorial decisions are made on your behalf by a secretive group of Googlers.

Several SEO experts tell Gizmodo the leak lists 14,000 ranking features which, at the very least, lay a blueprint for how Google organizes everything on the web.

Google has previously denied that it uses some of these ranking features in Search, but the company confirmed these documents are real, albeit, in its telling, imperfect.

“We would caution against making inaccurate assumptions about Search based on out-of-context, outdated, or incomplete information,” a Google spokesperson said in an email to Gizmodo.

King and Fishkin also noticed the ‘isCovidLocalAuthority” and “isElectionAuthority” in their writeups of the leak, both pointing out the importance of search engines in elevating quality information.

“It’s a non-statement that doesn’t address the leak, provides no value, and might well have been written by an AI trained on the past decade’s most soulless corporate messaging.”


The original article contains 1,476 words, the summary contains 162 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

_sideffect@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 14:06 next collapse

We all need to stop using this as our default search engine

Fredselfish@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 14:40 collapse

What do you suggest? Because even Mozilla uses Google for its search.

BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee on 02 Jun 14:44 next collapse

I really like startpage, but I’m pretty sure it’s just Google with some tweaks

KeefChief13@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 15:13 next collapse

Duck duck?

space@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Jun 09:05 collapse

Which is just bing with a few extra editorial changes that aren’t really transparent.

KeefChief13@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 13:49 collapse

What do you use?

space@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Jun 14:42 next collapse

Only recently started using searngx. I would love to see more search engines implement their own indexing and ranking, instead of relying on other engines.

But I am aware that making a good search engine is hard. Even with all their flaws, google and Bing still have the best results, which is why most other engines rely on their results.

space@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Jun 14:44 collapse

I also wanted to mention that DDG doesn’t really say what editorial changes they make to the results. I would like to see more transparency.

granolabar@kbin.melroy.org on 02 Jun 15:53 next collapse

Well since google is the whale, anything but google would work to reduce their market power.

ieatpwns@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 16:00 next collapse

Why don’t you google it? /s

Fredselfish@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 21:04 collapse

Lol absolutely it’s the only way.

BobaFett26@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 17:17 next collapse

Kagi.

Zrybew@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 23:36 collapse

Bruh, it asks for login. No thanks.

1984@lemmy.today on 02 Jun 17:35 next collapse

Kagi… It’s so good you forget Google.

And what do you mean “even mozilla”… There are money deals between these Google and mozilla. Google pays mozilla a lot of money to set Google as default search.

uranibaba@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 00:18 next collapse

It is so good that when I use Google on someone else’s computer, I’m surprised at how bad Google has become.

Salix@sh.itjust.works on 03 Jun 03:59 collapse

It’s a paid service, so it’d be a bad default for a web browser. Not saying it’s a bad search engine; saying that it’s a bad search engine default for the every day folk who just installed a web browser.

Scolding7300@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 05:40 next collapse

Hopefully they’ll do a freemium service at some point like Proton does

1984@lemmy.today on 03 Jun 05:47 collapse

I agree. I would recommend duckduckgo for a free search engine.

AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee on 02 Jun 17:47 next collapse

If you don’t mind having to occasionally refresh the page due to search engine timeout, a public Searxng metasearch engine. I use one just to straight up bypass having to go to any specific search engine. Also allows me to see results from both gøøg|e and b*ng without having to go to either.

Fredselfish@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 21:03 collapse

Thanks sound interesting.

a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Jun 10:01 collapse

searx.space has a listing with responsetime for the sites.

i use www.gruble.de, has worked without issue for the last month or so.

Napain@lemmy.ml on 02 Jun 21:16 next collapse

startpage, had the Best results for me in the last couple of months, much better then google. and the anonymous view feature is handy and neat

Mongostein@lemmy.ca on 02 Jun 21:48 next collapse

searx.neocities.org

Right click the address bar to add it to your search bar

auzas_1337@lemmy.zip on 03 Jun 10:41 collapse

I’ve been using Searx for a couple of weeks now. It seems to be working well.

aCosmicWave@lemm.ee on 02 Jun 22:41 next collapse

I know Lemmy likes to hate on AI, but my default search engine is perplexity.ai and it’s great

gt5@lemm.ee on 03 Jun 02:43 next collapse

You are part of the problem

NikkiDimes@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 02:45 collapse

According to Perplexity, that’s just Google Search with some OpenAI sprinkled on top… So yeah, I’m gonna hate on it lol.

aCosmicWave@lemm.ee on 03 Jun 12:36 collapse

What I like about it is that it’s trained on lots of different sources (including, but not limited to Google, and Bing search results). It then strips out the ads, SEO blog spam, and other nonsense and tries to return the most relevant info for my query. It is leagues better than pure Google. Also, it uses its own LLM unrelated to OpenAI.

A bit unfortunate that I got downvoted for having an opinion and sharing it.

RunawayFixer@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 09:27 next collapse

I’m using qwant as my default now. It does well for most searches, but for map related things I still use google.

AncientMariner@lemm.ee on 03 Jun 10:01 next collapse

As the default as it pays for web development. You can change this to DuckDuckGo in settings and I strongly recommend that you do.

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 03 Jun 13:25 collapse

i’m using a mix of ddg startpage and occasionally yandex, and its been good so far.

if you have more good suggestions drop em here.

MajorHavoc@programming.dev on 02 Jun 14:54 next collapse

Annoying stuff, but I’ve suspected for awhile.

My personal blog is life changing, but y’all will never find it, at this rate. /Sarcasm

More seriously, a decade ago my personal blog was the number one article on the Internet for like 3 deeply esoteric technical topics. Neat.

At some point, that stopped happening. I didn’t give it serious thought, because those articles were never meant for anything but my personal reference, anyway.

But it made me wonder what was going on with the algorithms.

On one hand, I figure people can just go to stack overflow. Except, I don’t participate in SO, because they’re a bunch of tossers. But then, I figure someone else can just copy my write-up into Stack Overflow. Except, no one does, anymore, probably because they can’t find my blog either.

Again, my blog is mostly useless shit. So maybe the algorithm was just doing it’s job. But I’ve wondered for awhile if the Internet wasn’t just plain better a decade ago when search actually worked.

Whose blogs was I missing out on? Now I find stuff like that through Mastodon, but it still isn’t targeted topical search, yet.

I need to get in on that web ring action going on.

rotmulaaginskyrim@programming.dev on 02 Jun 15:08 next collapse

wondering if your blog comes up in search.marginalia.nu?

MajorHavoc@programming.dev on 02 Jun 21:33 collapse

None of the most obvious searches I tried came up with my blog, but I did find some better resources (to me, than my blog, which admittedly I don’t care to find since there’s nothing new there for me…) on blogs that it did find. It looks like it’s doing the kind of search I used to rely on. Pretty cool!

IllNess@infosec.pub on 02 Jun 15:29 next collapse

Was your blog mobile friendly?

MajorHavoc@programming.dev on 02 Jun 16:40 collapse

I like to think I kept on top of that, yeah.

IllNess@infosec.pub on 03 Jun 02:27 collapse

That’s good. I asked because Google wiped out all non-mobile search results for mobile devices. This happened in 2015 so I was thinking the timeline kinda matches.

Kimano@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 15:30 next collapse

Yeah, honestly it would be fascinating if you wanted to go search for the specific terms that you think should bring that up, and then compare how deep your blog is in the results on a bunch of different web search pages.

pineapplelover@lemm.ee on 03 Jun 06:10 collapse

When I look up the name of my blog, it shows up. Unlikely for it to come up if people look up just the title I think. Maybe I’ll give it a try

xenomor@lemmy.world on 02 Jun 16:35 next collapse

The time has long passed whereby we need to remove Google as the effective governing authority of the internet. As with most things online, a good idea ballooned into a net negative for nearly everyone else. This fact was obvious decades ago. There needs to be actual competition and government need to reassert itself as more than a rubber stamp for business growth.

JustZ@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 08:26 collapse

Proclaimed Xenomor, as he addressed the federation.

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 Jun 18:07 next collapse

The excellent podcast “Search Engine” has a couple recent episodes covering this, the history of Google and how it became the core of the internet, and their bullshit AI shenanigans. Highly recommend.

InFerNo@lemmy.ml on 02 Jun 22:52 next collapse

I’m not familiar with podcasts. Where can i find these?

Cethin@lemmy.zip on 02 Jun 23:26 next collapse

There’s a lot of places to listen to them. I just search “search engine podcast” and a bunch of places show up.

JustZ@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 08:23 collapse

“Waiter, come, taste the soup.”

m.youtube.com/watch?v=C31H3OULMmo

PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks on 03 Jun 08:24 collapse

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://m.piped.video/watch?v=C31H3OULMmo

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Jun 01:38 next collapse

Do you have an iPhone or an Android device? Folks usually access them on phones! They’re just basically audio stories, fictional or nonfiction, informational or INCREDIBLY STUPID, but hilarious.

If that sounds fun, I can recommend some things!

Mir@programming.dev on 03 Jun 01:41 collapse

Please do

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Jun 01:54 collapse

I’d you’re on Android, you have an app called Android Podcasts. If you’re on an iPhone, I highly recommend the free app Overcast because it’s infinitely better than Apple Podcasts.

What kinda stuff are you interested in? My podcast list is mostly comprised of non-annoying true crime, interesting tech stuff, and the dumbest comedy garbage I’ve ever heard (and I very much love how dumb it is.)

VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 03 Jun 04:53 next collapse

you have an app called android podcasts

Never heard of that. There’s Google Podcasts, but Google discontinued it recently. I’d personally recommend AntennaPod, but there’s other alternatives as well.

zatanas@lemm.ee on 03 Jun 06:51 next collapse

+1 for AntennaPod!

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 04 Jun 05:34 collapse

Thank you! I was misinformed. I had the first two android phones but switched to iPhones after my partner got theirs, and because phones stopped having physical keyboards, I hated the way Android typed. It’s better now but with a stock system I’m more into privacy now. I’ll keep AntennaPod in mind for reccos in the future!

manmachine@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 08:38 collapse

Overcast because it’s infinitely better than Apple Podcasts

Hmm interesting, I use Apple Podcasts and have no issues with the app. What does Overcast do better in your opinion?

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Jun 20:35 collapse

I loved Apple Podcasts until a few years (maybe almost a decade ago…) when they really wonked up the interface. I tried a couple different applications, but ended up on Overcast. It has a fantastic interface and gosh darn LOUDNESS EQUALIZATION (“Voice Boost”, they calls it) so podcasts that have both quiet and loud parts or aren’t mastered well are actually listenable in like, a car.

I’ve seen Apple podcats recently and it got better! But I still think overcast is vastly superior.

manmachine@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 23:13 collapse

I see. Thanks for the details!

JustZ@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 08:22 collapse

This is a joke right, you’re waiting for someone to tell you to “Google it?”

Well done.

warrenson@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 08:55 collapse

+1 for Google recently killing their podcast app.

CaptSneeze@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 09:40 collapse

Do you know which specific episodes?

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 03 Jun 20:54 collapse

Absolutely! “How to survive the media apocalypse (part 2)” is a deep dive, you don’t need to listen to the first episode (but the first part is also very interesting!)

Also “How much glue should you put in your pizza?” is a follow-up to the aforementioned episode!

CaptSneeze@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 21:51 collapse

Great, thanks!

aramova@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 00:15 next collapse

It still burns me that a McKinsey shrill runs it now.

barsoap@lemm.ee on 03 Jun 09:31 collapse

I don’t think those rankings themselves are the problem, at least not the ones mentioned in the article, the issue is a lack of transparency and configurability.

“isLocalCovidAuthority” makes a hell a lot of sense but if it gets boosted to the front then google should say “We are prioritising this result because we deem it trustworthy source of relevant information”: If you make an editorial decision, actually stand by it.

“isSmallPersonalSite” also makes sense, but what about giving users the choice of prioritising or deprioritising it instead of making it for them?

far_university1990@feddit.de on 03 Jun 11:12 collapse

money