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Tell HN: Annoyed by Google spammy results, any alternatives? (medium's paywall)

5 points by santiagobasulto ↗ HN
How is Google gotten so bad lately? There are these sites that are pulling these simple tricks of serving the whole content when detecting their crawler in the User-Agent.

Medium is one example. They have GREAT SEO, they're always in the first 5 results, but when you open the post is always behind the paywall.

I could use something like 12ft.io, but that's not the point. What surprises me is that Google is serving ME a pretty bad result, and they don't know/care.

7 comments

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compressedgas
This wouldn't be so much of a problem if at the same time the amount of results Google gives per search hadn't shrunk to 200 at most.
eimrine
> There are these sites that are pulling these simple tricks of serving the whole content when detecting their crawler in the User-Agent.

Is it possible to game this behaviour for outsmarting Medium's paywall?

carlosjobim
You assume that paywalled content is undesired by everybody because you don't want it.

If it's the best content for the query, search engines should give it high rankings, even though there is a paywall. Because you can access it if you want, by paying.

A best search engine right now is Kagi, if you want to switch from Google. It is a paid service.

ipaddr
A paywall article is part of the private internet. No need to index inside of the walled garden.

If you gave #1 position to a paywall article most will click away causing rankings to drop.

carlosjobim
> No need to index inside of the walled garden.

What do you mean? Of course it should be indexed as well. Some people want that information and are willing to pay.

ipaddr
Then use the search functionality the walled garden provides. Don't mix content only few have access to and expect all to use.
carlosjobim
Everybody has access to the content if they pay. When I use a search engine I want the best possible results, and if some of them are paid I want them to be there as well.