CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking
The “content pruning” is being done for SEO purposes.
I've been trying out Kagi lately, a paid search engine. Not sure whether I'll stick with it or not. I do like it though. I've been so tired of pages of pages of ads and nothing else in Google. I've had this inexplicable feeling for years that there's gotta be more internet out there than the ad-ridden SEO hellscape Google shovels on you.
I've been using kagi and am loving it so far. My only problem is that it's forcing me to recognize how often I use search. I'm already almost at my 1000 searches and I still have 15 days left 😭
So far I am happy with Brave Search, but I completely agree with the sentiment. I think that any ad-based business stops worrying about end-users once they reach a certain size and they only way to avoid this is by ensuring that customers can vote with their wallet.
I'll have to give Brave a look, thanks for the recommendation. And agreed. In general, I've been making more of a concerted effort lately to get away from things that are supported via ads. Either making use of open source software when convenient, or moving to paid services. I just hate that insidious feeling of constantly being advertised to.
SEO is ruining the internet. Give me results for a search, let me choose the sort order optionally. Bring back Boolean operators, or at least make AND and OR work again.
I'd settle with making "verbatim" search the default without having to switch to it every time.
I feel like shitty sites getting too good at SEO has largely made google useless. That's why you had to append "Reddit" to get any useful info that wasn't from some SEO scamsite.
The new Google Search results:
"Here's some ads and some AI generated crap. Take it or leave it. P.S. you smell."