That weird “really?” moment when you are looking for more info on a particular thing and the most cited article on the web is the one you curated and host.
@Munish Haha, I wish! I really need to add more context to the article and currently struggling to find stuff. Looks like I have to ask the British Library(!).
@purisubzi @Munish I’ve often suspected that Google and the other main search engines tend to favour basic information on a topic, to push the “general knowledge” to the top and make it harder to go deeper into the subject. Even when you get more resourceful and ingenious with advanced search — particular compinations of words etc — it often doesn’t seem to help. Maybe that’s an indication that the more esoteric information simply hasn’t been put online, but I often feel that Google is designedly suppressing results that are less likely to appeal to a broad range of searchers, and that this becomes self-reinforcing!
There’s also the problem that the web is becoming more and more homogenized, partly because of SEO. A few days ago, I wanted to search for information about a film that hasn’t been released yet. I found dozens (hundreds? maybe thousands) of sites all reproducing or paraphrasing the press release, with nothing further of substance. In substance, they all said the same thing, i.e. nothing much.
@artkavanagh You are correct. The topic I am currently writing/expanding is quite obscure -- railways related to the Raj in the late 19th/early 20th century. I wasn't expecting a huge swathe of results, but still I was surprised that even academic papers and other literature wasn't surfaced. And the less said about SEO and its dumbing down effects, the better. These days, I often find myself searching directly on sites like Stack Exchange and Reddit for information.
@purisubzi Not sure if you’ve connected with @wrenman. He’s quite the trains aficionado but in the US. Although I think you’re work might be more academic.
@purisubzi That happened to me last week, and it was a thing I wrote almost 15 years ago on a topic I researched on the fly. It always just seems bizarre.
@artkavanagh you are right. It is like when a new product comes out and everything you see is the same in context, just a different delivery. This is why I always say to my family and friends, do not believe everything you see online.