Oh, is that why so many blogs seem to be bloated with filler content for what could have been a page? I always thought it was because those writers are hired guns with a word count to hit, but gaming the engagement metrics makes a lot of sense.

This might be a blind spot for Google because the longer you stay on any given webpage, the better it is for them, since 50% of all webpages have ads served by Google or one of their subsidiaries.

I wonder if this will be Google’s downfall one day. Some AI enabled competitor will come up with a search engine that delivers exactly what you’re looking for instead of the most engaging content.

> I wonder if this will be Google’s downfall one day. Some AI enabled competitor will come up with a search engine that delivers exactly what you’re looking for instead of the most engaging content.

A search engine that consistently delivers English language Wikipedia as the first link for any query that has a related term on it is a search engine I'd switch to today. Google used to be like that, with a Wiki link in the top 3 results for pretty much anything I searched for. These days, I'm happy if it'll be on the first page, and this is the first time after dropping "verbatim search" that I felt Google search engine to significantly decline in quality.

Tried duck duck go? In my experience it’s better for getting to Wikipedia for stuff like you describe

Years ago; didn't stick to it. I guess it's time to try it again, thanks for the reminder!

It's seemed to get a lot better in the past 6-12 months.

I switched on my phone only and it’s been a much better experience.

No AMP either.

I use DuckDuckGo for the exact reason. And sometimes when I'm sure I need a wiki for a keyword, I search for keyword !w and it takes me directly to the wiki page.

That is assuming

1 That Wikipedia does have the best answer (problematic for YMYL searches)

2 The searchers intent is informational queries - not much point in showing Wikipedia for a "buy" query

RE 1. I can't imagine any YMYL search for which Wikipedia isn't an order of magnitude better result than content marketing garbage that currently occupies the top spots. Sure, the official website of the relevant government or organization would be best, but Wikipedia is almost always second best, and currently neither of those are the most likely results to get.

I know in theory Wikipedia isn't trustworthy, but in practice, it is good enough, and its form does a lot of work here. Most entries are structured to be information-dense and fluff-free (unlike the content marketing crap), and they cite their sources (unlike both content marketing crap and many official government sources). This overall makes it one of the most useful resources for generic health queries.

RE 2. I wouldn't complain if I was doing "buy" queries. I don't do those often anyway (for similar reasons I don't use shops for product discovery[0]).

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19643059

You mean, like Duck Duck Go?

There's a Chrome extension to fix that: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter

> It is born out of my frustration in having to scroll through a prolix life story before getting to the recipe card that I really want to check out.

The article addresses this issue and suggests the opposite is true:

> In 2019, what do most of the top-ranked blogs have in common? They skip filler introductions, keep their paragraphs short, and get to the point.

Maybe those approaches of needlessly long text with irrelevatn backstories are simply outdated?

It could be both: that the top-ranked recipes are content-dense with no filler, but the recipe space is just so HUGE so anyone else in the long tail HAS to intro their recipe with an entire article in order to even have a chance at breaking through.