Google partial blackholing of Bitcointalk?

[DaveF]

It has been discussed on other forums that part of the issue is forums like this themselves.

If I search for how to do something with my car, instead of winding up on a forum, I get links to other sites. Blogs, youtube, medium posts. Almost like G is penalizing forums.
And lets face it, that might be a people problem, they are thinking don't TELL me how to reset the oil warning light, give me a 1 minute video.

Since G does give links that have been clicked more times more weight in a search (or at least they did) it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. Nobody clicks on the 10 step how to, so it gets buried, then you can't even find it. Just the videos on how to do it.

If more people search for something about BTC and wind up clicking on github, or medium, or wherever then links here become harder to find.

-Dave

[dkbit98]

Starting today on August 3rd google is again allowing crypto and bitcoin advertisement so my speculation is that this may also have a positive effect on bitcointalk forum.
This only applies for US customers for now, and works only for products like crypto exchanges and wallets that are registered with FinCEN or a federal/state chartered bank.
I am not sure if this applies on forums like bitcointalk but we can monitor situation and see if something changes in next few weeks.
Source: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/10688110?hl=en&ref_topic=29265

Note that I totally stopped using google search and I am using alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo, Qwant and Brave search that I started testing recently.

[Welsh]

Some update on the situation.

Since this thread was made, I've switched from Google (which I've used basically since its inception) to DuckDuckGo, which was sometimes better, sometimes worse.
Today I've been searching (with DuckDuckGo) for something I knew it's on bitcointalk, still DuckDuckGo didn't find it for me.

Generally, DuckDuckGo isn't as good at indexing, and finding what your searching for, and sometimes you have to revert to using Google or another search engine. However, if you can avoid that, and find it manually its a much better improvement in terms of privacy. Also, I've used DuckDuckGo for a long time, it used to be absolutely awful a few years ago, and it was hard to keep using it despite the obvious benefits to privacy, but nowadays its much better, and returns the expected results about 90% of the time. Google in terms of indexing, and technical searching is better, but I expect DuckDuckGo to keep getting better, and be much more closer to Google given enough time.

This only applies for US customers for now, and works only for products like crypto exchanges and wallets that are registered with FinCEN or a federal/state chartered bank.

I haven't read too much into it because it doesn't really apply to me much, but I assume by the way you phrased it that this is offering an incentive to those that are following the Know Your Customer (KYC) guidelines. So, might not have any effect on the forum.

[NeuroticFish]

Generally, DuckDuckGo isn't as good at indexing, and finding what your searching for, and sometimes you have to revert to using Google or another search engine. However, if you can avoid that, and find it manually its a much better improvement in terms of privacy. Also, I've used DuckDuckGo for a long time, it used to be absolutely awful a few years ago, and it was hard to keep using it despite the obvious benefits to privacy, but nowadays its much better, and returns the expected results about 90% of the time. Google in terms of indexing, and technical searching is better, but I expect DuckDuckGo to keep getting better, and be much more closer to Google given enough time.

While I agree completely that Google is not good for privacy, I'd say that my statement was not about how good, bad or evil google (and its search) is, it was more to bring the news that Bitcointalk gets indexed a bit better again. And since most users do search with Google, this should be a good news.

[Welsh]

While I agree completely that Google is not good for privacy, I'd say that my statement was not about how good, bad or evil google (and its search) is, it was more to bring the news that Bitcointalk gets indexed a bit better again. And since most users do search with Google, this should be a good news.

Definitely. The majority of the users registering, and landing on this forum would have been directed here via word of mouth or through Google. I can't deny that. My angle of my reply was that alternatives to Google are becoming better, and therefore we should see more, and more users using different search engines in then next couple of years, so targeting each search engine for ranking is important. Although, I'm not going to deny that Google will likely have the monopoly on searches for quite some time.

[UserU]

Starting today on August 3rd google is again allowing crypto and bitcoin advertisement so my speculation is that this may also have a positive effect on bitcointalk forum.
This only applies for US customers for now, and works only for products like crypto exchanges and wallets that are registered with FinCEN or a federal/state chartered bank.
I am not sure if this applies on forums like bitcointalk but we can monitor situation and see if something changes in next few weeks.
Source: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/10688110?hl=en&ref_topic=29265

I doubt this forum would be affected since it's not offering any services that's under Google's scrutiny such as licensed exchanges.

[gmaxwell]

Aside,  I noticed today that *this* thread is now among the google censored threads as well.

[examplens]

Aside,  I noticed today that *this* thread is now among the google censored threads as well.

Google recently (15. Aug) had a core update, as far as I've seen, it brought quite a mess and serious problems to many people from the SEO industry. Of course, they already have the usual uniform explanation of what all the changes are about.

“Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”Aug 15, 2024

[dkbit98]

Aside,  I noticed today that *this* thread is now among the google censored threads as well.

Nothing strange with this, g00gle is becoming worse every day, but I also tried using Brave search and I couldn't find this topic, so they are probably using g00gle results also.
I wanted to test with several alternative search engines and this topic was on first result for most of them.
This map can show connection between many search engines:
https://www.searchenginemap.com/

Google recently (15. Aug) had a core update, as far as I've seen, it brought quite a mess and serious problems to many people from the SEO industry. Of course, they already have the usual uniform explanation of what all the changes are about.

Ten years ago I could actually find what I want with g00gle search, now I can mostly find only what they want me to find...

[Accardo]

Aside,  I noticed today that *this* thread is now among the google censored threads as well.

Nothing strange with this, g00gle is becoming worse every day, but I also tried using Brave search and I couldn't find this topic, so they are probably using g00gle results also.
I wanted to test with several alternative search engines and this topic was on first result for most of them.
This map can show connection between many search engines:
https://www.searchenginemap.com/

Google recently (15. Aug) had a core update, as far as I've seen, it brought quite a mess and serious problems to many people from the SEO industry. Of course, they already have the usual uniform explanation of what all the changes are about.

Ten years ago I could actually find what I want with g00gle search, now I can mostly find only what they want me to find...

I don't know, but this thread is on Google search. Location matters in Google search, and google works according to the laws of your country. The governments of different countries ask Google for too many adjustments to search results. It's clear that what is on this wikipedia post still happens. Where google and the government resolve what should be censored according to the laws of the nation.

As for the updates, they're always trying to outsmart blackhat SEO masters who work hard to beat their algorithm. It's a marketing battle going on and the grass will suffer it when two elephants fight.

[NeuroticFish]

I don't know, but this thread is on Google search. Location matters

Also it matters a lot what you are searching for. And since I expect somebody would more likely search for info, not for the title of the topic, I've done some experiments with google, duckduckgo, startpage and gibiru.

Code:

"a large number of my old posts are no longer discoverable via google" site:bitcointalk.org

Code:

a large number of my old posts are no longer discoverable via google bitcointalk

The first one was not found no matter what. The second was found by Google and Startpage. Not as first result, but still.


The thing is that the expected way of searching (I'd expect this means with site:bitcointalk.org) is still not working properly.
And while we do have now great ways to search (thanks to TryNinja), the outsiders may easily miss bitcointalk in favor of other sites.

[Accardo]

I don't know, but this thread is on Google search. Location matters

Also it matters a lot what you are searching for. And since I expect somebody would more likely search for info, not for the title of the topic, I've done some experiments with google, duckduckgo, startpage and gibiru.

Code:

"a large number of my old posts are no longer discoverable via google" site:bitcointalk.org

Code:

a large number of my old posts are no longer discoverable via google bitcointalk

The first one was not found no matter what. The second was found by Google and Startpage. Not as first result, but still.


The thing is that the expected way of searching (I'd expect this means with site:bitcointalk.org) is still not working properly.
And while we do have now great ways to search (thanks to TryNinja), the outsiders may easily miss bitcointalk in favor of other sites.

The forum is doing fine on search engines, especially Google. I see it ranking on Google's first page on most bitcoin and gambling keywords. Outsiders will get to find the forum when searching for information contained here. I don't think the Google algorithm will stop ranking a thread with too many informative comments or replies. And that's one characteristic of the forum that ranks it on the first pages of search engines.

[ChiBitCTy]

Google being Google.

I posted here in Meta (2022) about how YouTube (google owned if anyone wasn’t aware) censors the hell out of Bitcoin stuff but especially the forum.  You literally can’t come close to mentioning this forum without your post being deleted shortly after.  “Bitcointalk” “btalk”  “Btc forum” “btalk forum” etc, are all censored heavily. Yet they let scam bots run wild.

Greg, any way around this? I try to promote the forum on there often, but obviously it’s not easy. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5410672.msg60793711#msg60793711

[Stablexcoin]

It is not just Google search engine alone but it happens in almost all of Google's services. Including Google mail, Google Sheets, and other services. If you try accessing your old emails that have been up to 8 years or 10 years ago, I do not think you can find all of them especially when the Google account has been inactive for a very long time. Google will think such a user has abandoned the account or it may have been demise. So what they do is they delete the account from their record.

Othe services like facebook have adopted this method and they now delete old accounts that are not active. The reason for this is so that they would have enough space in their back for full functionality for the active users. Keeping those inactive accounts makes space in their cloud.

[LoyceV]

If you try accessing your old emails that have been up to 8 years or 10 years ago, I do not think you can find all of them especially when the Google account has been inactive for a very long time. Google will think such a user has abandoned the account or it may have been demise. So what they do is they delete the account from their record.

They actually sent an email about that a while back. The inactivity period is now 2 years. That's different from what's going on with their search engine, and I can't blame them for removing inactive accounts.

[Troytech]

If you try accessing your old emails that have been up to 8 years or 10 years ago, I do not think you can find all of them especially when the Google account has been inactive for a very long time. Google will think such a user has abandoned the account or it may have been demise. So what they do is they delete the account from their record.

They actually sent an email about that a while back. The inactivity period is now 2 years. That's different from what's going on with their search engine, and I can't blame them for removing inactive accounts.

Most persons had lost their google account and find it difficult to access their google account with several tries but failed at the end. What if such things start happening in the forum where Theymos permit inactive bitcointalk account to be deleted from the forum entirely. Would you be comfortable with it?

The reason why i asked this question is because things happens along the line and people tend to be inactive in their social account or business account so i dont se a reason why 2 years would be the time period. 5 years or a decade is better.

[LoyceV]

What if such things start happening in the forum where Theymos permit inactive bitcointalk account to be deleted from the forum entirely. Would you be comfortable with it?

That's a dumb comparison. Google stores up to 15 GB of user data. A forum barely stores any data that isn't public, deleting the public data would be like deleting part of the forum.