The difference between Google and Bing in this case is consistent with something I’ve noticed lately, which is that Google seems to be forgetting a lot of old stuff. Maybe it’s because the company is deprecating http in deference to https.
Source: Doc Searls: Google vs. Bing.
Okay there are a lot of “IF’s” in here. IF this is really about depreciating http sites and IF this is permanent. But…
- It directly effects the Indieweb. One thing that running Indieseek has shown me is a lot of legacy Web 1.0 sites are still http and will likely never change. Second: a lot of active blogs and other busy, creative Indieweb websites are still http.
- This makes it even harder for Indieweb sites to get traffic from Google.
- Google is once again warping the web for their own purposes.
- It shows that Google isn’t about quality, it’s about newness and popularity.
- It shows the need for decentralized search.
I think this validates what we’re doing here at Indieseek. So remember, in case some mook at your favorite search engine flips a switch and shitcans all the Indieweb sites we’re here for you, we got your back.
When one search engine controls 90% of search change can happen that quick. This may be a temporary blip, but the lesson holds: make sure you are listed in more than just one search engine.
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@bradenslen Tim Bray wrote about this “old stuff” problem with Google back in January and I see in the comments that others had been writing about it before that. It’s not clear why, but there’s strong anecdotal evidence to suggest Google really is forgetting old stuff, at least until prodded by a mass of searches for it.
@smokey Nice find. It’s interesting, Google has had few technical weaknesses up till now, perhaps they are having a mid-life crisis?
@bradenslen Perhaps they’ve finally reached that point at which they’re too big to succeed?
@smokey It happens. The advertising part of the company has taken over. It’s now about milking profit and reports for the next quarter, not technical excellence.
The whole developing a China search engine thing was disturbing.
If you’re still running non-encrypted http sites in 2018, you deserve to be dropped off the internet until you get on top of your game. We’ve learned all about drag net data gathering and storage years ago.
If you host a website, your readers deserve to read it without giving up their privacy to intelligence services, internet service providers, and ad-networks. Https facilitates this.
Today, https is free (letsencrypt.org) and simple to deploy. There is no reason not to use it.
Hi None, thanks for stopping by. So no consideration is to be given to the quality of the content of a website?