How SEO Ruined the Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#131

Post by hombre_fatal » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

RobertoG wrote: post #104

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…

I just searched (1) "SEO ruined content" in duck duck go and this Hacker news page is the first entry. We are very lucky that, as far as we know, an accumulation of irony doesn't create black holes. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=SEO+ruined+content&t=canonical&ia=...

Currently page 2 on Google.

To be fair, "SEO ruined content" is a pretty specific search string and doesn't even show up in the results that out-rank this submission. This comment specifically talks about "SEO ruined content" and is, correctly, a good results candidate.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#132

Post by KMag » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #81

thomas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Pinterest ban would greatly improve google results.

I'm surprised Google's own Search team doesn't get frustrated enough by Pinterest results contaminating their own day-to-day searches that they'd consider ranking Pinterest results lower.

They aren't going to de-optimize their careers in order to optimize search just for themselves. Google used to be somewhat optimized for power users, but I suspect that learn-to-rank is over-optimizing search ranking for the median user.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747889

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#133

Post by wlesieutre » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

lerchmo wrote: post #128

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Say I want a recipe. A tried and true delicious recipe. Can I search and just find a recipe? Nope. Through the magic of SEO, I now have to scroll through 15 paragraphs of somebody's life story before being able to examine the time and ingredients. How much time and energy was wasted on building "tag" systems? All those fun little term link clouds that sites used to have. I know I wasted time on it. I had somethi…

I find this particular example particularly gross. Recipe's are no doubt a heavily searched category. Why does google allow pure CPM hacking garbage websites to win the top spots? does it have to do with the google ads from top to bottom?

>Why does google allow pure CPM hacking garbage websites to win the top spots?

Something bothered me about this question, and I think it's the way it frames Google's role as being a passive participant.

Google doesn't "allow" anything. Google writes the rules and picks the winners.

When you search for "chocolate chip cookie recipe," Google's search algorithm goes "Here's a nice webpage with Grandma Betty's life story and a paragraph about how to make chocolate chip cookies at the bottom. This is what you were looking for."

Recipe sites look like they do because Google forces them to look like that if they want Google to send them any search traffic.

Is there a different algorithm that would give more useful results? Is there a way to rank the sites on how well they present the information you were searching for? Is there a way to factor in whether a site has good recipes or terrible ones? I don't know, but I don't have a giant advertising money fountain and teams of very well paid engineers.

Like you hinted at, I think it's reasonable to suspect Google for not having an incentive to fix this. They get their ad money either way, and they probably get more of it from worse sites. As long as it's good enough to keep people from switching to other search engines en masse, they're not losing anything.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#134

Post by calibas » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

laurent123456 wrote: post #123

calibas wrote: post #112

SEO effectively means catering to whatever metrics Google happens to be focusing on at the moment. It's supposed to reward "good" content, but there's really no way of automatically judging what's "good" content so Google relies on all these other methods that are open to abuse. Whatever way Google rates websites has a direct effect on the web itself. In a way they're a victim of their own success.

Or rather we are the victims of their success.

Partially true because of how pervasive they've become, they're powerful enough to influence the lawmakers in my country. I don't really see myself as a victim though, I just use different search engines.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#135

Post by hombre_fatal » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

mda wrote: post #67

mcv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is how most complaints about "Google these days" play out.

Once pressed to give actual examples, we realize it wasn't a trivial search anyways and certainly not something better Google did long ago on a technical basis. And Bing certainly isn't doing much better.

Of course, there are some things that Google does filter out these days like things that seem like pirated content.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#136

Post by tqi » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

> I remember when it was easy to find logic, facts, and reason on the web. Then, someone optimized it.

When was that, exactly? In 1998, when only 3% of the world had access to the web and creating content was limited to a small handful of privileged individuals? This author rails against "Directing the narrative", while building site with a thin sliver of links related to a handful of topics they deem worthy of inclusion. They offer no solutions for an internet that servers 3.5 billion people, choosing instead to whine about how much better the internet was "back in the day."

I don't think Google is blameless, but I think they are more of an inevitable byproduct of this many people coming online than they are a root cause.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#137

Post by websitejanitor » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #97

inshadows wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Google determine bounce rate? That I click on another search result after I click on the first one?

Google search result links don’t link to the site directly but go through a Google-provided redirect that presumably has a reference to the original search query. If you were to go back to the same search result page and click on another result within a short timeframe they will assume you “bounced”. They also have Google Analytics littering the majority of the web, so I’m assuming that gives them a signal as well.

It's more complicated than this.

Google links directly to search results now, they stopped using the tracking redirect years ago. They probably track clicks and scrolling directly on the SERP with JS.

Google Analytics is absolutely not used for ranking purposes. GA is far too unreliable and gameable to be used for anything like that. It's more likely that Chrome and Google Safe Browsing are used for tracking user hits.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#138

Post by curmudgeon63 » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

scollet wrote: post #71

eitland wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They aren't being rude, just increasing the sample size and reporting back. Perhaps we're witnessing SEO for different regions, regulations, and aggregate history of the two.

Intentionally? I'll assume good faith. Under that presumption, my best interpretation of that poster is "socially unaware, likely prone to nitpicky argumentation."

The poster who said he was having difficulty getting good results from Google, was obviously venting about his own personal experience.

Next comes along another poster who says "I tried it. I don't have your problem." Another post down, "... The problem you're complaining about doesn't actually appear to exist, at least not objectively."

Excuse my outburst, but who the fuck says that?

The original poster was venting about a problem he experienced. What good can someone do when he comes in and says that he doesn't experience the same problem, and states that it likely doesn't exist? There is no upside here. There's an only a downside: being rude.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#139

Post by taberiand » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

owlninja wrote: post #113

meesterdude wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Recipe blogs are the worst! Just get to the goods already!

It's like we've flipped APIs on their heads - humans use tools to obtain the minimal data (just the recipe), while the bots make requests and receive the whole dump of pointless, extraneous fluff in return.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#140

Post by runxel » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

calibas wrote: post #115

leejoramo wrote: post #110

Anybody else remember when you could search for a phone number and find legitimate web pages that contained the phone number? We lost that a long time ago.

I just tried this out, and it works fine for at least one of the local organizations here, both in Google and DuckDuckGo (530-926-4698). I just tried it with my own number, and my site comes up with both search engines as well.

If I am doing that most of the time the first few hundred results are pages which just list all numbers there are – like in a consecutive manner.

Never understood why there are so many of this pages and why you would build one...