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How SEO Ruined the Internet

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Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#61

Post by Tomte »

mcv wrote: post #40
eitland wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems the problem with Google goes far deeper than struggling with bad SEO. - For years it has been next to impossible to get a result that is faithful to the search you actually typed in. This is not dependent on SEO spammers at all, only on Googles unwillingness to accept that not every user is equal and some of us mean exactly what we write, especially when we take the time to enclose our queries in doubl…

> "For years it has been next to impossible to get a result that is faithful to the search you actually typed in." Good lord, yes. If I type two words, I want preference for sites that contain both of them, yet the first results all have either one or the other, because surely I must be more interested in a popular site that uses only one of these, right? Google is sometimes too smart, trying to interpret exact words…

> They have a tendency to show you ads for exactly the thing you don't need anymore because you already found it

Say you searched for a TV a month ago. Now you're seeing lots of ads about TVs. Stupid Google.

But is it? A substantial fraction of those people are returning their TV because something is wrong with it. Now they are looking for another TV set.

Sure, the majority keeps their TV. But it is still profitable to target all those TV buyers, because they have self-selected into the set of people who really want a TV now, and they are willing to pay.

Reaching the fraction of those who need another one is probably[1] very lucrative.

[1] I'm sure Google has run the numbers

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#62

Post by eitland »

BostonFern wrote: post #58
eitland wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems the problem with Google goes far deeper than struggling with bad SEO. - For years it has been next to impossible to get a result that is faithful to the search you actually typed in. This is not dependent on SEO spammers at all, only on Googles unwillingness to accept that not every user is equal and some of us mean exactly what we write, especially when we take the time to enclose our queries in doubl…

You're not their customer, advertisers are, so it's only natural that the ads you see aren't personalized. That's never been the goal. It is, however, technically a potential benefit that the more exactly advertisers can target you, the more relevant ads you could be seeing, which is a wonderful sales pitch for users who are agnostic anyway, but that's not how advertising works in practice.

> You're not their customer, advertisers are,

1. I'm well aware of this

2. It doesn't contradict anything I wrote

3. I've read it so many times and seen it misapplied so many times it is getting annoying.

> so it's only natural that the ads you see aren't personalized. That's never been the goal.

I doubt it was the intent of the advertisers to waste expensive impressions on people who weren't in the target audience at all, so I'm pretty sure they expected some personalization WRT which customers gets what ads.

I also very much doubt that it was Googles intention to annoy me to the point where I trash them in public foras, I just don't think they're capable of fixing it anymore as they are way to busy "being Google", e.g. doing cool stuff while not listening to customers (I was planning to add more here, but this single example seems to summarize it well.)

I recognize I might be a bit more direct than usual here and you aren't responsible for the first 97 times I've seen this meme here but as an answer to my question it is not applicable as far as I can see an also generally that meme is just noise here at HN now.

(Anyone who is actually in todays 10000 lucky WRT the "you're not the customer" meme, feel free to prove me wrong.)

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#63

Post by krapp »

eitland wrote: post #51
krapp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you said it was happening currently, so I tried it. The problem you're complaining about doesn't actually appear to exist, at least not objectively.

You are using a different query it seems. Also as a non native speaker you appear to be rude.

I'm not trying to be rude, but I honestly believe a lot of the complaints people make about how useless Google's search results seem overblown. I use Google all the time, sometimes for obscure results, often for technical stuff, and the worst I've ever had to do is look past the first page, but often the first page suffices.

Google showing results for director's commentary of God of War when someone searches "Lord of War director's commentary" is arguably not a failure on Google's part if more people do search for the game than the movie, regardless of the incorrect title.

That said, I completely agree with the theses of TFA. SEO is a cancer.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#64

Post by purerandomness »

ivanche wrote: post #55
gsich wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see mainly two problems: - Affiliate spam from douchebags that provide "reviews" of products just to link back to Amazon. Makes it nearly impossible to find actual reviews of products. - People who type whole sentences in natural language into Google. I tried since I used the internet to serach for keywords, omit as much words as possible that aren't necessary. Most people (after I guess ~2010?) don't. This worsens…

Wow! Now people who know how to type using proper grammar and vocabulary are a problem???

Not OP, but let's say you want to find out the protein content of brussels sprouts.

I would type `protein content brussels sprouts` (without quotes) because I fully understand that the information I'm seeking might be in some tabular form, or phrased in a way I don't anticipate.

Most non-technical people however would type in `What is the protein content of brussels sprouts?` literally.

This leads content creators who see these queries in "keyword analysis tools" to dump SEO-optimized crap into millions of blog posts, with completely irrelevant word soups with countless varations of the question, and the actual information buried deep within that gibberish essay, unreadable by humans, only optimized to drive ad traffic.

Google's optimization for the non-technical use case has lowered the overall search result quality immensely.

There was a time when Google didn't simply ignore some of your search words, or when control characters like +, -, and "" were actually respected (~pre 2010), and the introduction of verbatim mode didn't change much IMHO.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#65

Post by BostonFern »

mcv wrote: post #35
mda wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half your searches? Isn't it a bit dramatic? You can always check your search history, but I seriously doubt 50% of your searches Google can not find anything - assuming data is somewhere accessible-. Tell us a few of the obscure things that you know exist openly and google could not find for you. I see these claims all the time, but usually with zero examples.

It's a very rough estimate. I'm not going to check every search in my history. But it feels like the chances I'll find what I need are comparable to the chances I won't. One example: this weekend I was looking for lyrics from the British folk band Why? . I know they exist; my brother has a bunch of their albums. I have quoted lyrics at Google, I've searched for it on Youtube, I've searched for the band name combined…

Lyrics are notoriously hard to find on Google. I assume it's in part due to copyright issues, but it's also not how Google works. Searches are based on key words, not exact matches of several words in order.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#66

Post by ivanche »

purerandomness wrote: post #64
ivanche wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Now people who know how to type using proper grammar and vocabulary are a problem???

Not OP, but let's say you want to find out the protein content of brussels sprouts. I would type `protein content brussels sprouts` (without quotes) because I fully understand that the information I'm seeking might be in some tabular form, or phrased in a way I don't anticipate. Most non-technical people however would type in `What is the protein content of brussels sprouts?` literally. This leads content creators wh…

Interesting. Why do you think that content creators wouldn't see `protein content brussels sprouts` in "keyword analysis tools"? Why do you think they wouldn't create millions of blog posts containing words `protein content brussels sprouts` or countless variations thereof?

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#67

Post by mda »

mcv wrote: post #35
mda wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half your searches? Isn't it a bit dramatic? You can always check your search history, but I seriously doubt 50% of your searches Google can not find anything - assuming data is somewhere accessible-. Tell us a few of the obscure things that you know exist openly and google could not find for you. I see these claims all the time, but usually with zero examples.

It's a very rough estimate. I'm not going to check every search in my history. But it feels like the chances I'll find what I need are comparable to the chances I won't. One example: this weekend I was looking for lyrics from the British folk band Why? . I know they exist; my brother has a bunch of their albums. I have quoted lyrics at Google, I've searched for it on Youtube, I've searched for the band name combined…

I think this particular query has a problem with the with the unfortunate name "why" which is probably causing the confusion. I don't think search engines did a better job before, nor this has anything to do with Seo. Change the "Why" with another obscure band with a distinct name, you would get results, could Gogle do better, sure, is it worse than before, I reaaly don't think so.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#68

Post by [deleted] »

RobertoG wrote: post #20

It kind of ruined content too. Why it ruined content? You are not the only one that is searching for the answer to that question. Keep reading to know why SEO ruined content. Many people think that SEO ruined content, in this post, we are goin to explain why SEO ruined content. When you finish reading this post, you will know why SEO ruined content. In the last years we have observed a grown in the quantity of conten…

[deleted]

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#69

Post by meesterdude »

RobertoG wrote: post #20

It kind of ruined content too. Why it ruined content? You are not the only one that is searching for the answer to that question. Keep reading to know why SEO ruined content. Many people think that SEO ruined content, in this post, we are goin to explain why SEO ruined content. When you finish reading this post, you will know why SEO ruined content. In the last years we have observed a grown in the quantity of conten…

this x1000! By pandering to the algorithm of google, a lot of great content has become watered down, softened, or impacted in other ways. Titles have to be worded a certain way, article length has to be a certain length...

hoping someone else chimes in with other thoughts because I used to know more about this, and SEO cheapening quality content was one of the key takeaways I had.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#70

Post by [deleted] »

netsharc wrote: post #10
mcv wrote: post #5

I totally agree. Google has become useless for about half my searches. It gives me only the biggest, most commercial or most popular results. Anything obscure is impossible to find. I'd like to have a search engine where you get only the most obscure, hard-to-find content. One where you can tweak the kind of content you're looking for, or even switch between different modes: am I just looking for the definition of a…

I have another "Google is shit now" anecdote: a few months ago I wanted to look up some trivia for the movie "Lord of War". I entered this term in Google, and since there was a game that was just released, it responded with "Showing you results for 'God of War'". No results on the front page had anything related to the Nic Cage movie.

[deleted]
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