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.