zlacker

>>pabs3+(OP)
> Nobody really expects to be able to find anything of value in a Google search now

This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet.

Deliberately removing yourself from Google is fine for the author who is more concerned about taking an ideological stance than they are about being discoverable, but removing yourself from Google is terribly bad advice for anyone who wants to help people find their content.

Many people do use Google to find content and people, even if you don't.

>>Aurorn+Nm
>This is a categorically false premise

This is accurate, somewhat. A lot of people do expect to find things of value when the use Google to search.

But people who are more technical know it's a bit of a faff and bother to get Google to spit out what you're actually looking for, outside of "who is Chloe Grace Moretz" or something equally banal.

And Google-the-Company does treat the Internet like it is their corporate property. Alphabet won't change unless it's made to do so.

>>deltar+Ey
I'm not sure that I agree.

My brother tried to set me up with a girl last week. She has a pretty uncommon name. Googled her. Found... a lot of stuff.

I have a VERY common name. Think multiple (relatively) famous people (photographers, US Medal of Honor winner, enough lawyers to choke a court system for DECADES), but if you google my name and the city I live in (1,000,000+ people), my LinkedIn is like the second result.

For everyone saying that Google has gotten worse over the time they've been using it, these two use cases (which are pretty challenging) do really still work.

>>distor+NJ
And did you Google yourself on a clean computer?

>>Wirele+1O
Tried this test three ways - from my wifi, on my phone's LTE connection, and via a VPN that my family uses, all in private windows to prevent Google using my local cache.

All found my LinkedIn in the top 2 slots.

It seems pretty stable to me? How could I make this cleaner?

>>distor+kR
That sounds pretty thorough for the purpose. I think the parent's point was just that if you naively Google yourself without doing anything special, your own results will tend to percolate to the top more so than if a random person were to Google you.

>>ghaff+2V
Based on the rants I've gotten from barbers, taxi drivers and the like when I've told them what I'm working om, there does indeed seem like there is a widespread dissatisfaction with capital G.

>>margin+nB1
Yeah - but that's a different problem. How many barbers are there in your city? How many taxi drivers?

Now - how should Google satisfy all of those people?

I'll confess that I don't have the answer here. But if you're trying to look up "barber ${my_city}" or "taxi ${my_city}", and there are more than one page of results, everyone but the top 10 (top 20? how many results per page are there on google these days?) is going to be unhappy.

Unless there are 20 (or 40?) or fewer barbers in your city, more than half the barbers are going to be unhappy with google. It sucks, but when x people are clamoring for y resources, x - y people will be unhappy. And if y is significantly smaller than x, a significant amount of people are going to be unhappy.