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How SEO Ruined the Internet

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Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#171

Post by randomdude402 »

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 like your good article about content click here to see how I think about good content also

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#172

Post by NullPrefix »

mattowen_uk wrote: post #56

A MAJOR problem with google is it's assumption that if you search in English you don't care if the top results are American. I've noticed that on google.co.uk, unless you add 'uk' at the end of your search query you'll always get US sites first [1]. Google clearly lump all English based queries into the same geo-graphical bucket - they never used to do this. --- [1] Yes, I am logged in, and Google knows where in the…

It doesn't matter which google tld you use. .co.uk , .ca or whatever it will still give you results tailored to you, not to tld. Just did a random search on a random country tld and still got a result at the top for my city.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#173

Post by com2kid »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #168
com2kid wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filler content is the cost of ad supported content sites. Pay for a Cooks Illustrates or NYT Cooking subscription and all these problems go away.

I have never understood what the filler content on recipe pages is accomplishing though. It somehow makes the page do better in google? How?

More space for ads.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#174

Post by NullPrefix »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #162
koyote wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse when you are trying to search in a language that is not English from a region that is English speaking. I often look for recipes in French or German and it's impossible to find anything. I try to browse to google.de/fr, I try adding site:.fr but it will still try and give me the most English results. My Google search settings indicate I am happy with German and French results but it seems to have no a…

I have the reverse problem: Google would happily return me Polish-language results for everything, where I almost never want that. For the types of searches I do, there's almost never anything worthwhile in my native language. This, + their annoying attempt at detecting which country I'm in (so I would get German results when in Germany, and Chinese results when in China) led me one day to figuring out the magic URL…

Do share, please.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#175

Post by com2kid »

dceddia wrote: post #170
com2kid wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filler content is the cost of ad supported content sites. Pay for a Cooks Illustrates or NYT Cooking subscription and all these problems go away.

And if you want it all in one place, an entire compendium of tried and tested recipes, pick up a copy of one of Cooks Illustrated's New Best Recipe books, even an older one. I have a copy from probably 5 years ago that seems to be out of print and can be had for $7 used. It's 900+ pages of well-tested recipes where each one has a narrative about how they tested and arrived at the final recipe.

The website is searchable and has videos. :-D

Cooks Illustrated is amazing, the rigor they go through testing everything, and adapting to available ingredients, makes for such incredible reliability!

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#176

Post by egypturnash »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #125
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…

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…

Or you could buy a cookbook. There's a bunch of them out there. Some are good, some are bad, some are long-lived classics, some are deep dives into a particular cuisine by someone who knows it inside out.

You'll still have to suffer through a certain amount of SEO bullshit, you probably don't wanna just go to Amazon and try buying the best-selling cookbook in whatever cuisine you're interested in because that's got its own Amazon-specific SEO clogging things up, but...

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#177

Post by solstice »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #135
mda wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Somewhat unrelated to your point but the phrase "Google these days" made me think the following: Could Google freeze its index and capabilities every one or two years and make it available as a sort of "search the web like it was in 2008" archive? That might also solve the problem of how to prioritize search results over time. The people in 2015 are likely to have been interested in different things than the people of 2040, especially for some search terms (vine for example). I mean they already do this by having different search engines for different countries/languages.

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#178

Post by ruytlm »

arkitaip wrote: post #146
octocop wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sooo true, every time i look for a recipe online it's all i ever see.

Recipes have become hilarious as they have transitioned into storytelling pieces for whoever is trying to promote their lifestyle blog.

This is because of a quirk of copyright; in the US at least, a recipe itself is not considered copyrightable if it is a mere listing of ingredients; however, they can be covered by copyright when they have "substantial literary expression – a description, explanation, or illustration, for example – that accompanies a recipe or formula…”.

If you want some recipes that don't have all that nonsense associated, I'd recommend the BBC's Food site[0].

[0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#179

Post by josephjrobison »

Animats wrote: post #158

The moment when Google turned to the dark side was in 2005-2006, when they stopped sponsoring the "Web Spam Squashing Summit" and started sponsoring SEO conventions. "There's going to be a Web Spam Squashing Summit next week: Thursday, Feb 24th. (2005). Technorati is organizing the event (thanks guys!) and we're hosting it on-site at Yahoo in Sunnyvale. The main goal to get the tool makers in a room together to talk…

I can tell you as an in-the-trenches SEO that Google is 100% not in cahoots with SEOs in any way.

Google WILL bend over backwards for paid search agencies that direct their clients ad spend through AdWords - but this is not SEO. These paid search agencies that funnel millions to AdWords will get invited to Mountain View, get paid lunches, visits from Googlers, etc. - but this is SEM not SEO.

What does Google do for SEOs? They have a handful of ambassadors that answer questions on a weekly basis. While they are generous with their time (https://twitter.com/JohnMu), they keep things very close to the chest regarding the details of their algorithms. They will send some speakers to some SEO conferences, but will rarely if ever sponsor an SEO conference unless it's a part of a broader paid advertising or marketing tech conference.

Google's Algorithm updates - https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-algorithm... - rolling out every month or so are notoriously a black box and frustrate SEOs to no end!

Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet

#180

Post by josephjrobison »

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…

Google is of course going to return the most popular results to please the largest amount of people.

If you're looking for more technical results, it'll take a more technical approach.

You should learn search operators - https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en - that allow you to control the results for specific sites or very detailed requests.

Even better, set up a custom search engine - https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/4513882?hl=en - with 100 of your trusted sites and now you have Google search precisely tuned to your needs.

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