• forgotmylastusername@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Am I the only one that’s noticed how reddit has been fucking with web crawlers? They insert newer comments into older posts so the crawlers pick up false results.

    A few years back they started injecting a “related posts” box into pages. What that does is multiply the amount of results a crawler will pick up. But all those are false results. There’s only one true search result which is the original comment/post. Some times I find myself sifting though the search engine results to find the actual original post. The rest are completely worthless, off topic, reddit posts littering the search index.

    I know all this blackout stuff hurts now. I see it as necessary for the platform to lose its status as the “front page of the internet”. Reddit turned evil a long time ago. It’s long past time it be deposed of.

    • MigratingApe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I couldn’t understand how those changes back then crippling the user experience were “better” in any way, this explains a lot!

    • Griseowulfin@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      That explains why the search page quotes a comment that doesn’t exist on the post. That always confused me. It’s insane how dependent on searching with “reddit” appended on the end of the search term I am. I have qualms as to how this’ll bode for search engines if reddit loses interest or goes under.