The Verge shows how Google search is useless

sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz to Technology@lemmy.world – 1401 points – Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers
theverge.com

The Verge published this spam article about the "best printers of 2024" to demonstrate how terrible Google's search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search "best printer" on Google.

I love a good, informative troll.

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The guy who wrote it is the editor-in-chief.

The guy who wrote it is the editor-in-chief.

Yep. I mentioned that in my comment...

or just an editor-in-chief really frustrated

Could you elaborate on your point?

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

He’s the one that would be doing the review. It isn’t about trying to “sneak in” AI content

It isn’t about trying to “sneak in” AI content

But he says right in the article that he's including AI content at the bottom of the article, to pad it out.

an article partially generated by AI, because after the buttons I am going to include a bunch of AI-generated copy from Google’s Gemini in order to pad this thing out.

My point is if he's being honest and that's the true reason, or just being sneaky and trying to slip in AI content into a human written article.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Well if he announces it, I'm not sure how it's being sneaky and slipping it in. But either way, what would that achieve?

But either way, what would that achieve?

Us being more acceptive of, and not belligerent to, AI written articles.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Nilay Patel - the editor in chief is anti-AI especially when it comes to article content. He doesn't allow anyone at the company to use generated content except when they are writing an article about AI and even then only to demonstrate a point - e.g. "here's a comparison of two LLMs with the same prompt". It was also his decision to stop AI's from crawling any content on their website.

He used AI to pad the article because that's what real spam articles do. It had nothing to do with acceptance.

He used AI to pad the article because that’s what real spam articles do. It had nothing to do with acceptance.

That was a stated goal, yes, but if that sort of tactic is done again and again, at some point, people will push back less against AI in reviews. Toad in a slow boiling pot sort of thing.

Again, tongue-in-cheek. Don't overanalyze it, no need to defend, I'm just stating that was a possibility in the back of my mind, but not most likely what's really going on.

Relax, everything is fine. It's just conversation.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

The thing is that the AI text is atrocious and vapid. It takes up a lot of space and says

"Laser printers are better in every way minus full color than inkjets, but are bigger and more expensive than inkjet printers."

The trick is that AI took 12 paragraphs and using a list incorrectly to do it instead of a sentence. And the editor calls it out for that.

It’s a gag, I promise. He’s talked about it on their podcast