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Search engines performing different in regards to drug related content?

Pickledlemons

Pickledlemons

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 4, 2017
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Over the past few years I have perceived a change in the way search engines handle drug content. Has anyone else noticed this?

What I mean is... a few years ago I felt like if I had a question regarding drugs, google was almost always able to answer the question by redirecting to popular forums like bluelight and others. However lately I feel like no matter what I search in relation to drugs the same results come popping up, corporate sites that really dont know what theyre talking about, rehab, detox centres etc. I dont know if its just me but I swear actual useful information pertaining to search queries has been removed in order to push rehabs and 12 step programs and what not, perhaps due to the opioid epidemic?

I always also thinking maybe it is just because some of the forums like bluelight and drugs-forum and been performing database maintenance and therefore deleting old threads that has already answered a lot of questions that people search for on google.

Anyway not a big deal...just thought maybe somebody might have some insight into this. Also wasn't quite sure where to post... so sorry if its in the wrong place.
 
Google decided a couple of years ago to basically censor all drug info, Bluelight, drugs-forum, etc don't come up in Google searches anymore, now it's all reddit and quora and shit (they provide money to google, plus they're "not drug sites" since they're about all topics). It's bullshit. You should use duckduckgo or another non-sellout browser, but unfortunately almost everyone uses google... google has become a verb, and a noun, it's ubiquitous at this point.

That's by far the main reason why traffic at this site, and all drug forums, has gone way down in the past years. Our traffic is up from 2018, but it's far, far below our high points. The main reason is, random google searches no longer show our content. And that was a decision some people made on purpose.
 
No, if you Google search ''Bluelight'', the first link it's the encyclopedia not the forum. Because that's what this website is.
 
dalpat077 said:
I know I'm "old" now but I actually prefer the "old" forum type format as opposed to these new type of layouts. The "old" forum type format keeps things in "order". Sometimes I find when reading stuff on Quora you're jumping around so much that you eventually lose interest or cannot tie up certain comments or information to what came previously or to the main topic. Maybe it's just me.
Click to expand...

This, 100%. Classic forums like Bluelight lay the information out in an archival way. It's very easy to organize and retain information. Any time anyone posts, it just displays in that order, there isn't any of that nonsense where the most upvoted stuff gets seen and everything else is buried. In Psychedelic Drugs, we have a "PD Index" thread that has hundreds of links to various mega-threads and other threads of interest. We display the best information gathered over the years in an encyclopedic format. At reddit, in social media, etc, it's all about in the moment/short term content. It's a shame because Bluelight has been around since 1999 and we have a tremendous amount of information and great content, which is still all here, it just isn't being exposed to very many people anymore.
 
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