Here’s an update on how three of the western search engines I’ve been watching are performing, with a site search here (site:jackyan.com).
The traffic here is still well down on 2022, I believe caused by two main things: a worsening Google that is failing to pick up PHP pages; and the collapse of the Bing index (which means Duck Duck Go, Ecosia, Neeva, Qwant, Yahoo and others are also well down). Mojeek remains the only consistent search engine.
Here’s how each looks.
Mojeek
Mojeek continues to be normal, with a spread of PHP and HTML pages for this site (a ratio of 41 to 9). There are more PHP pages, so you’d expect that the top 50 to show more PHP pages. Pretty simple.
The home page is in first place, but it’s an older version from last year. I don’t really mind because I know this isn’t as major a site as Lucire or Autocade, and naturally it’ll take a while for the spider to return here.
Also Mojeek requires a search term (in this case jackyan), which will affect what’s shown.
Google
Google, the market leader, continues to worsen. Positive marks for picking up the new pages that were put online last month, and for getting up-to-date copies of the home page and the blog home page. But it’s still 2013 in Google-land with unlinked pages in positions 4 through 12.
Google still has a big problem picking up pages in PHP even though the Javascript calls for the static and dynamic pages are similar now. However, there are three legit PHP pages in the top 50, after dropping to one a few weeks ago (and two in the last recorded blog post on this topic). But what about those pink pages in positions 42–9?
Well, they’re effectively blank. They contain no real content other than the blog template and a headline. These aren’t linked from anywhere, and are Wordpress entries created by a gallery plug-in that generated a short code for use in the published galleries on this blog.
In fact, these pages are many directories down. Based on everything I know about search engines, and what’s claimed by the search engines themselves, these pages shouldn’t even appear. Or if they were to appear, then it wouldn’t be very highly.
Google says it’s driven by content. Clearly not.
Bing
From the market leader to the market failure. At least Bing claims to have thousands of pages from this website again, after falling to between 10 and 55, although it’s only capable of displaying 50-odd. And good on them for picking up more PHP pages than HTML ones, just like Mojeek. A lot of them are newer pages, so it is a case of novelty over reference, but at least they’re showing. Only six HTML pages in the top 50—that sounds about right.
The pink ones are so very typical of Bing and its shrunken index. To pretend it has more results than it really does, Bing repeats some from page to page. What you see there are 20 repeated entries: 40 per cent. The percentage of repeats is about the same as it’s been for a long time.
Brave
PS. I originally wrote, ‘I will probably do Brave at some point now that it no longer licenses Bing for its site: searches. At first glance, it’s pretty good, and given more time I’ll do an analysis.’ Wait no more, here it is:
Excellent distribution of PHP and HTML articles, and well spread over the years. Definitely superior to Google or Bing, and giving Mojeek a good run for its money. The basic search is pretty good, too. The index feels smaller than Mojeek’s, given the number of items for Lucas that comes up for a search for Lucire. But it’s a fine start, and Bravo already has something superior to a much older Bing.
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