Google, please do something with your ads and SEO-spam

Michael Dubakov
2 min readNov 25, 2022

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I used to love Google. Now I don’t. I used to enjoy search for new information and explore some new topic in Google. Now I don’t. I’m on the verge of switching to another search engine.

Yesterday I dug into remote work. I searched for various info, primarily I wanted to find exact remote companies practices from real practitioners. This is a typical screen in Google for any relatively generic search request.

Screen 1. Ads

On the first screen I see only ads and some glimpse of hope in the footer.

I have to scroll down.

Screen 2. SEO-optimized bullshit

No hope. All these articles are not good enough. All are generic, and I have a feeling most of them were written by people with zero experience in remote work. I got very little interesting info from them.

I have to scroll down.

Screen 3. More SEO-optimized crap

More SEO-optimized articles, maybe HBR was relatively OK.

I have to scroll down.

Screen 4. More Ads

Final screen has more ads. Is it me? Maybe in some poor country with GDP < 1K per person I will see less ads? Not sure there is VPN for South Sudan…

Next page…

It appeared to be very hard to find good resources about remote work. Google is filled with generic, non-concrete, SEO-oriented bullshit. I had to dig this piece of crap for an hour to find some rare gems. Most gems I found on HN. My rant is over. Hug me, please.

P.S. HN discussion thread

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Michael Dubakov

Fibery founder https://fibery.io. I write about systems, software development and products.