For many of my searches, I simply type "search term xyz Reddit" to find more relevant results than what Google would throw at me.
How SEO Ruined the Internet
191–200 of 296 posts
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 recom…
Which for some reason competes with another BBC website, https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#193I 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…
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…
> - Also in other areas it is becoming ridiculous. For example: what is the idea behind aggressively showing me captcas while I'm logged in with two different google controlled accounts, one gmail and one gsuite, both paid?
To intentionally discourage you from using Firefox so you give in and switch to their stalker browser.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#194I really dislike posts like this on HN. It’s essentially whining. The author does not suggest any alternative, does not offer any ideas of their own, and just laments the state of the world.
Instead let’s upvote articles on how to build search engines, how search indexing could be improved, how Google’s search works, etc.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#195I feel like I know enough about the internet that I almost don't need google anymore. (the search algorithm is great, but not the sources it provides)
At this point, I have built a set of "sources I trust" and use google as a tool to internally search their websites more than anything else.
site:source.com "search query"
1st page guitar tabs are the most vanilla chord strum patterns. 1st page recipes are some "americanized - SAHM blog" version of the real thing. 1st page news is a sensationalized link to CNN or Fox, that doesn't quote 1st sources. 1st page game reviews are IGN and 1st page movie reviews are Rotten Tomatoes. For anything more niche google results wikihow or quora, when reddit almost certainly has a better answer somewhere.
The 1st page of Google search returns perfectly average results. But, I have stopped expecting any 'perfect' or 'great' results from it.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#196I 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…
There are definitely sites who's results I wish I could ban from my results. I won't visit them so they are just a waste of space. My short list, thillist, collider, vulture. Also related to SEO I think is every cooking recipe seems to be 6 to 8 large images and a bunch of unneeded text followed by the recipe 8 to 12 screens down. AFAICT it's entirely not related to me getting to the recipe and instead either a patte…
Given the uniformity of recipe site design I'm starting to wonder if there isn't more going on. Like maybe they are all run by the same company or maybe there is a template that every person that wants to run a recipe site is somehow pushed to use.
I mean literally, search for any recipe, click the first 10 links. Screens and screens if large pictures and superfluous text with actual recipe way way down the page.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#197It 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 is sooo true, every time i look for a recipe online it's all i ever see.
There's a Chrome extension to fix that: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter
> This Chrome browser extension helps cut through to the chase when browsing food blogs. It is born out of my frustration in having to scroll through a prolix life story before getting to the recipe card that I really want to check out.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#198I really dislike posts like this on HN. It’s essentially whining. The author does not suggest any alternative, does not offer any ideas of their own, and just laments the state of the world. Instead let’s upvote articles on how to build search engines, how search indexing could be improved, how Google’s search works, etc.
The upvotes on this post say something else. Personally, I value the discussion more than the post itself, so as long as there's a healthy discussion the post checks out.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#199Earlier 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!
There's a Chrome extension to fix that: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter
> This Chrome browser extension helps cut through to the chase when browsing food blogs. It is born out of my frustration in having to scroll through a prolix life story before getting to the recipe card that I really want to check out.
Re: How SEO Ruined the Internet
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is correct. DuckDuckGo is finally better.
My experience is the opposite: while there certainly was a time when I felt DDG actually respected my queries [1] that time is now gone. The results I get often have very little to do with what I typed in the search box. I find myself resorting to !g more often than ever before. [1] I seem to have thought so in last December: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18665232
This was my experience as of a year ago. Nowadays when I do a search on DDG (my default choice) the results are terrible. Then I add !g and the results are even worse. I’ve had so many recent searches for information on technical subjects result in abject failure, leaving me to throw my hands in the air in frustration.
It’s gotten so bad that I’ve installed BasiliskII and SheepShaver [1] just so I can relive the nostalgia of the days when I had my first Macintosh, before I’d even had access to the Internet for the first time. The help system and the documentation for software back then was so much more exhaustive than it is today!