The top Google result for 'blockchain' is a scam ad

http://i.imgur.com/rGgj0aX.png

by svenfaw • 10 years ago

70 41 10 years ago

i.imgur.com

Mendenhall7• 10 years ago

In my personal experience google search has gotten vastly worse in last 6 or so years. It seems like 5 paid ads then about 10 posts from sources that are just popular websites that cover the "topic" but arent really what you are looking for.

It seems like years ago I could find information consistantly from obscure websites just by using combos of words, but now I cant even get to those sites with same words or even close.

Paid scam ads like this is another reason I dont use google anymore.They obviously dont really care how bad those paid ads are.

colinbartlett• 10 years ago

I still use Google, I just block the ads.

johndifool• 10 years ago

"this is another reason I dont use google anymore"

What are the alternatives? I am trying that too but can't find s...t using duckduckgo and the gang.

rsl7• 10 years ago

What can't you find?

leonatan• 10 years ago

DuckDuckGo seems to do just fine for me.

Mendenhall7• 10 years ago

I would be curios to that as well, I currently use duckduckgo the most. I have been getting more and more used to how it searches so I have become better with it. I still don't find it as good as the old google, but I honestly cant find what im looking for easily on google anymore.

I usually am researching obscure rare things that only a few websites in the world are talking about and before I could easily find it just by using the combo of key words in google. Now in my experience forget that, it will focus on one key word and give you every huge website that has used it in some article etc.

I lack the knowledge about the algorithms etc that they use, but as far as someone who searched a lot of things and used to enjoy googles actual search engine I just personally find its moving backwards.

Sorry I couldn't be more help :) If you have any good suggestions let me know!

sudojudo2• 10 years ago

DuckDuckGo (Bing) and Startpage (Google) work fine for me 90% of the time. To keep things mixed up, my new browser tabs use Startpage, while DDG is the homepage. The !bang syntax at DDG can be especially handy, and Startpage provides a proxy for every link. Both search engines allow you to set up a personal URL, or cookie, with your custom settings (appearance/features/privacy/etc.). Simple and handy, not a giant Orwellian beast that's tracking my every move.

Like others have said, Google doesn't seem all that great these days (better flush that browser cache before searching!). The 10% of the time that the others don't provide adequate results, Google doesn't either. I've gone from instantly hopping over to Google when the alts don't provide good results, to adjusting my terms a few times before finally trying Google.

Google still works best when I want to buy something, which isn't surprising.

jpalomaki• 10 years ago

I tend to open obvious scam ads to new browser tab. Site owner gets a few cents, scammer looses some money.

hartator• 10 years ago

Google uses CTR to rank the quality of ads. You might be helping them actually.

jeffmould• 10 years ago

Couldn't agree more. The quality of results has dropped significantly, to where often the best results are 2 or 3 pages deep in results. I don't blame it on the ads, but something is definitely amiss in their algorithm that is allowing low quality results, outdated, or unrelated results to rank high. To me the results seem to take a drastic turn about the same time that Matt left the spam team in 2014/2015. I don't know if there is a relation or not, but just seems odd.

fullshark• 10 years ago

I wonder if the Internet is getting worse. As in the magazine/news content one used to get for free that search helped index has gotten much worse as standards have been eroded in the quest for click bait.

basch• 10 years ago

it does feel to me as if the pollution/clickbait is crowding out the results I want.

google also seemed to be using my previous searches as a factor which made results much worse, because I google a lot.

balls187• 10 years ago

#1 and #2 results for pretty much all my searches these days is Wikipedia or Amazon.

Mendenhall7• 10 years ago

Yes this too!! I forgot about that but that's a huge issue for me as well.

heavymark• 10 years ago

That's exactly while I use an adblocker, so I don't ever have to see those google ads which are rarely relevant but rather just results from people with money to spend. Where is the organic results which are on top when you have an adblocker enabled are still high quality in general, except of course certain topics like searching for skin care products or such where the results are all junk because those industries have so much money to create fake websites.

callesgg• 10 years ago

My first is for Blockchain.info

or accenture.com with ad block off. Google searches are personalized. I think it is fair to assume there is some personalization in the AD results as well.

markbao• 10 years ago

It leads to a page that has a bad screenshot of blockchain.info and the only button that works is the Login button. Crazy how Google didn't screen this out.

Google's ad report page: https://support.google.com/adwords/troubleshooter/4578507

galfarragem• 10 years ago

The top Google result for 'blockchain' is a scam ad

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