Google will modify its search algorithms to handle clickbait | The Google

Google is adjusting search results in an effort to prioritize “content by people, for people” and combat the clickbait scourge, the company says.

Danny Sullivan said, from Google, said in a blog post. “Many of us have experienced the frustration of visiting a webpage that appears to contain what we are looking for, but does not live up to our expectations. The content may not contain the stats you want, or may not appear to have been created by someone or even by them.”

So-called “SEO spam,” content written explicitly for the purpose of appearing at the top of search engine results pages, has long been a thorn in the side of companies like Google. To address it, the company is releasing a “helpful content update” next week.

The update covers a number of tweaks to the company’s ranking algorithms that attempt to identify content “that appears primarily to rank well in search engines rather than helping or informing people”. Google says that in tests, the update has made special improvements to searches related to online education, arts, entertainment, shopping, and technology.

In one example, Sullivan says, searching for a recent movie can sometimes turn up articles that simply collect comments from other sites; Now, “You’ll see more results with unique and original information, so you’re more likely to read something you haven’t seen before.”

There are winners and losers from such changes of course, and online publishers may fear that their content strategies will see them stuck in the net. In its advice on “content creators,” Google points out that some of the signals it will use to reduce search results are whether or not a website has a primary goal or focus, and whether there is an “existing or intended audience” that will find the content useful if they go directly to the page.

The “hammer” will be used freely. “Any content – not just useless content – on sites that have been determined to have relatively large amounts of generally unhelpful content is unlikely to perform well in search, assuming there is other content elsewhere in the web that is better served to display” , says Google. “For this reason, removing useless content can help your other content rank.”

In recent months, Google has launched a concerted effort to combat perceptions that the company’s search products have gotten worse over time. titles like “It’s not just you, Google search is really getting worse” And the “Google search just got worse. This is the trick people have found to get around itBlame the company’s growing desire to provide structured results, paid ads and links to other Google services over simple web links, as well as the constant cat-and-mouse game with SEO spam, and suggest focusing on sites like Reddit to find helpful answers on inquiries.

Navneet Alang, writing for the Toronto Star, She described the process as “a kind of vicious circle”. He wrote: “Google has been endlessly improving search to try to predict what people want, but in response, entire industries are polluting search results by giving people a cheap, copycat of what they want.”