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> Blogs ... show up easily in search results if a post matches a relevant query.

No, they don't. This comes down to two main changes in how Google operates: 1) Google no longer respects search operators so that users can get fine-grained results, and 2) Google has chosen to progressively delist old content, even if many blog posts from the early millennium remain just as relevant today because no one has posted at length on the subject in the years since.

Thus, people are unable to find a great deal of content through Google even if they search for the exact strings which appear in those posts. You might see some blogs in search results, but they are a miniscule representation of the whole blog ecosystem.

Not that I don't believe you, but that just hasn't been my experience with Google at all, and I use it extensively for research tracking down fairly obscure sources with presumably close-to-zero traffic by putting in quoted sentence fragments.

Do you have an example of a website that is linked to from other sites (so Google can find it) where a quoted search for a unique sentence fragment from it doesn't list it as a result?

I've just never heard authoritatively of Google removing old content from results, especially since it seems antithetical to the company's mission of organizing all the world's information. And seeing how so much of the value of search (and purchasing and content and so much else) is in the "long tail", it seems like it would be an extremely counterproductive strategy.

This blog post [1] has at least two anecdotal examples. Also see the corresponding HN discussion [2].

[1]: http://stop.zona-m.net/2018/01/indeed-it-seems-that-google-i...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19604135

Ah yes I remember that one, thanks for finding that.

Giving the article and comments a quick-rebrowse, it honestly seems extremely circumstantial -- that they're mostly explainable due to content moving, URL's without any links pointing to them, etc. -- generally stuff that can be identified and fixed in Search Console for your site.

It hardly looks like any confirmable trend or policy, not even remotely. Just Google doing its best to rank the most useful search results with the heuristics it has, but not excluding anything it's able to find. And jumping to the conclusion that any de-ranking has to do with age is pure speculation.

So unfortunately I just don't see any real evidence to support the up-comment assertion that Google delists content due to its age. And again, it flies in the face of its business model which is to return useful results so it can show advertising next to them. There's no plausible business motive here.

I don’t have a source right now, but what the previous poster said is precisely true. The span of time google will actually search for has been consistently shrinking. I had a very frustrating one not long ago, where I bookmarked a post and could not for the love of god find it again using google, even with an exact quote that produced 0 results. That’s what led me onto researching about how bad the situation is and reaching similar conclusions.

You’ll also notice that you can’t really navigate to “page 13” of a google search anymore. Despite “xx million results”, they only display the top hundreds or so.

Blogs and forums are so deranged that you have to either know the domain and use that on the search, or use multiple keywords like “forum” or something specific to surface them. The only blogs you’ll ever see naturally surfacing are hosted in Medium, WP and “noticed” by bots because they were linked from reddit, Pinterest or some other aggregator.

I'm not so sure, my blog shows up as the first result for the following terms in Google, while it doesn't even show up for the first few pages in DuckDuckGo. It seems to suggest that Google prioritizes blogs.

[0]: https://google.com/search?q=ghost+blog+latex [1]: https://google.com/search?q=disable+networkd

[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ghost+blog+latex [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=disable+systemd+networkd

Your post is from 2018, not very old and on a very niche topic. Look for the “google is forgetting the old web” article.

Google 100% removes viable entries from their index. I have a blog and I can see via the Google Search Console [1] that several of my posts are marked as "Crawled - currently not indexed". Meaning, Google was led to the page via my sitemap.xml or some other source, crawled it, and then chose not to include it in their search index. It's very discouraging, particularly when it happens to posts that, personally, I'm quite fond of [2]. If it matters, Google has recorded 1,085 clicks from their search results to my blog, in general, over the course of the past 3 months.

[1] https://search.google.com/u/2/search-console/

[2] https://blog.michaelscepaniak.com/how-to-find-choose-and-boo... https://blog.michaelscepaniak.com/i-am-retired-kinda

> 1) Google no longer respects search operators so that users can get fine-grained results

They do. Search for "javascript vscode" and "javascript -vscode" completely different results.

Today Google kinda, sorta respects minus signs. You are right that you can often get a different set of results by including one. However, Google does not strictly interpret those operators anymore, which you can verify for yourself by trying to search for exact strings in pages from a range of times.

That is an odd example. You are comparing the search for js with the search of js vscode.

Everyday I run into a Google hell. Tonight I was trying to find info on how Github uses let's encrypt for https on custom domains. The only thing that comes up are questions about how to enable it.

I switched my default search to duckduckgo. I always thought DDG would never catch Google, but never realized Google would make their results so useless as to make DDG competitive. (Sorry DDG, I love you.)

No, I wanted to get results which doesn't mention vscode and it worked just fine. Try "pandas" and "pandas -python"

If on some rare occasions I don't find what I want in Google, I just assume either my mental model is broken or the topic doesn't exists. I also try other engines in same cases, but when I'm that lost it doesn't help, I change something else.

Yesterday I was trying to find code examples using the d3 join() and each() functions. I tried searching "join(" "each(", but apparently Google completely removes parenthesis, even when inside quotes. Github's code search does the same thing :-(

Essentially the author is longing for a day before social media existed, but the world has changed fast - and that's ok.

The medium has diversified away from just blogs, but the amount mediums and creators has exploded.

Many of those people who used to blog on Blogspot have moved on to YouTube, TikTok Twitter, Instagram, Medium, WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, and more.

So the whole premise is bunk. "Blogs" in their 2005 term may have changed. But the amount of people publishing 280+ character content on Twitter, Instagram (as video or image descriptions), and all others is more than ever.

Instagram and YouTube are where many of the eyeballs are.

The author longs for self-expression in blog format, the self-expression is there more than ever, just not in the one strict format that existed that way for a brief moment.

People publishing blogs were not “creators”. They were ordinary people publishing their personal, not-fashionable, unfiltered ramblings. That’s what we lost. It’s obvious that with the growth of internet access “variety” has grown exponentially, but it’s the same kind of variety you get from supermarket products, not real life experiences.

> just not in the one strict format

It’s exactly the other way around. 95% of all “content” on the platforms you mentioned looks the same today. The goal is now success, not sharing for the sake of sharing, and that severely limits how much you express yourself.

That last point is wrong, it doesn’t make any sense, for example, Banksy. He’s not sharing for the sake of sharing and he has no trouble expressing himself, even pissing off the governments of the world more often than not

This is about Instagram/YouTube, I don’t see where banksy fits the comparison.

People have been spreading their opinion to the masses forever. It was not born with YouTube. I don’t understand why you’re not getting it.

Author's point about blogs is that Twitter, Instagram, etc aren't blogs and that's what he wants. Author's failure is that he is wrong, as blogs do still exist, including the Blogger service.

Part of it is where the eyeballs are, and part of it is what the content creators are using.

Blogs were written and read on computers. Now people consume, and increasingly produce, on phones. Hence blogs (long-form text) -> social media (short-form text) -> vlogs (long-form video) -> tiktok (short-form video)

Yep I'm also very confused when I hear people talk about how blogs and rss readers are dead. I get more articles in my rss reader each day than I can keep up with and always have to go pare down my subscriptions. There is so much stuff to read out there.

Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one to think this. I have a blog on blogspot (formerly blogger), and I had to go check it to make sure it wasn't wiped... definitely still there lol.

Not sure what this author is talking about.

It’s not something most people care about anymore, and it was nice when it was.

More people in total care about it now than ever before. It's just not as large of a percentage of the overall web as it was.

So longer form blogging on a unique site [yourname.com or wordpress.yourname.com] didn't grow as quickly as posting pics on Titter/IG/Snap etc...

That makes sense to me, most people aren't putting effort into writing.

My 2000s Blogger sites are all still live. I've ported some of those posts to other sites, but most just live over at Blogger.

Great! You can do the test yourself: pick a few quotes from those old posts and try to find them with a google search.

I found (possibly) this guy's blog by googling 'passthejoe blog'. I don't think it was the Blogger blog they were talking about, though so I made another search with (presumably) their real name and word blog. Bang,there it is. Picked one post from 2011 and searched its opening line "I’m no Backports guru, though I’d like to become one" (with quotes). The post came up as the second search result.

The question is do the posts come up for searches around the topic their cover, not that the domain is discoverable.

Could give examples how finding blogs is easy and "lots of lists out there of people's favorites"?

Here's a huge list of front-end related blogs: https://github.com/impressivewebs/frontend-feeds

This is not discovering. This is drowning in content.

If i were looking for front end blogs, I'd say: Thanks, but I'll rely on some aggregator instead.

You asked for an example, this person gave you one, and you scoffed at it and moved the goal posts. I don't think you were asking in good faith...

I think he mean the general trend of the internet talking, writing or ranking something about blogs is generally dwindled, replaced by social media account. You can find 'Top 10 Beauty guru Youtuber' or 'Top Tiktok rising stars' everywhere on the internet, media and websites post about it, promote it, in easy to read format, interesting writeup, with spectacular pictures in said article. The attention and money was pours into creating that, to make people 'discover' interesting creator.

but ranking blogs? It's more like personal attempt nowadays(e.g. your list) and not really the main focus of internet anymore.

I wasn't the person who replied with that list, I was just sticking up for that person. It really grinds my gears when someone asks for something, seemingly in good faith, and then proceeds to treat a person who goes out their way to answer them uncharitably.

The request was examples of people compiling blogs on a subject, and an example of that was given.

I don't get the point you guys are making. Yes, BuzzFeed style lists of "best blogs" don't exist. So what? There are plenty of blogs and plenty of ways to discover them.