51–60 of 289 posts
> However, once Reddit creates a search engine, and once people get to know that there is an opportunity to game the system and create a financial opportunity, people will abuse that system and we will be back to the place where we are now. SEO stuffed websites. I help run a Reddit website and open source project for managing scheduled posts [1] and we see a lot of garbage there, sadly. Over the years the site has pr…
> I was too young to use Google when it first got started, but according to many, in the beginning, Google had better or more accurate search results. One reason for this was the fact that most of the sites back then were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing information. > But I think all can agree that Google results reduced when people started to game the algorithm…
> It is only more recently that they seem to have given up. They haven't given up; the OP has a point. The "sites" you are hoping for Google to return _don't exist_. Any website online right now that doesn't exist to drive ad revenue is exceedingly rare. In 2001, there were way more websites that existed just for fun; any tom, dick and harry could open up note pad and get a website online. That doesn't exist anymore.…
I'm sure someone at Google has. They could fix it if they wanted to, and boost well-known sites that get straight to the recipe (allrecipes.com, foodnetwork.com) instead of making you scroll through the SEO spam first. They haven't.
> I was too young to use Google when it first got started, but according to many, in the beginning, Google had better or more accurate search results. One reason for this was the fact that most of the sites back then were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing information. > But I think all can agree that Google results reduced when people started to game the algorithm…
> It is only more recently that they seem to have given up. They haven't given up; the OP has a point. The "sites" you are hoping for Google to return _don't exist_. Any website online right now that doesn't exist to drive ad revenue is exceedingly rare. In 2001, there were way more websites that existed just for fun; any tom, dick and harry could open up note pad and get a website online. That doesn't exist anymore.…
So it's both "less signal" (fewer high-quality websites) and "more noise" (more spammy SEO-to-oblivion sites).
[0] A similar thing happened to video advertising, which is why even really good YouTube videos are filled to the brim with ad integrations, merch tie-ins, and calls to like and subscribe.
> I was too young to use Google when it first got started, but according to many, in the beginning, Google had better or more accurate search results. One reason for this was the fact that most of the sites back then were indie websites, which did not care about SEO and money and created websites for sharing information. > But I think all can agree that Google results reduced when people started to game the algorithm…
> It is only more recently that they seem to have given up. They haven't given up; the OP has a point. The "sites" you are hoping for Google to return _don't exist_. Any website online right now that doesn't exist to drive ad revenue is exceedingly rare. In 2001, there were way more websites that existed just for fun; any tom, dick and harry could open up note pad and get a website online. That doesn't exist anymore.…
It is easier than ever to open your websites, and there are tons of free providers today. Look at any manual aggregator -- like hacker news or hackaday.com -- to see them. This is a variety I have not had in 2001!
But the practice of appending 'reddit' to your Google search isn't depending on Reddit building a better search engine. It's using Google's search engine, and trying to direct it to a database that you hope has the answer you're looking for. So there's that. Of course, if that practice became widespread, then people could still try to stuff Reddit posts with junk in the hope that it gets picked up by Google in these…
There was a post, which trended on HN yesterday (2000+ upvotes) that stated Reddit is sitting on a gold mine and they can build a better search engine because people are appending 'reddit' at the end of it. This is a response to the original post, explaining why the logic behind is it false.
* Reddit groups are moderated in a way that "THE INTERNET" as a whole isn't.
* Reddit is a destination in itself. It's not like Google, which is a means to arrive at various destinations.
* A Reddit search engine just has to index Reddit. It can do things like entirely filter out clickable external links, which would make SEO much less fruitful.
* Reddit is dependent on being an effective conversational watercooler. For financial reasons, it's not going to allow itself to become filled with the same level of cruft as the entire web is.
This is somewhat evidenced by the difference between Reddit and Usenet. Compared with how Usenet quickly devolved into an unmanageable morass with the advent of spam, Reddit has managed to stay fairly legible.
(BTW off topic but personally I think this whole post could've just been a comment subthread in the original post. Of course we all want our ideas to bubble to the top. But if everybody started a whole new thread every time they thought they had something REALLY IMPORTANT to say that shouldn't be ignored, then every large thread would give birth to dozens of baby threads and make HN less effective overall. On the other hand, I see someone else thanked you for putting this in a separate "breakout room" so to speak, so what do I know? Cheers.)
I think the reason reddit building a better search engine wouldn't help them is that it's already pretty darn easy to just add "reddit" to a search and, at least for me personally, I don't do it that often. Typing "reddit" at the end of my search seems a lot easier and faster than going to reddit and typing my query into their search.
Also, contrary to the blog post, I think people have always tried to game both search results and make money on reddit.
> However, once Reddit creates a search engine, and once people get to know that there is an opportunity to game the system and create a financial opportunity, people will abuse that system and we will be back to the place where we are now. SEO stuffed websites. I help run a Reddit website and open source project for managing scheduled posts [1] and we see a lot of garbage there, sadly. Over the years the site has pr…
Why don't you guys add a flat monthly/one-time usage fee?
For example, Stripe won't allow any of it at all. It's blacklisted in multiple ways through their restricted services.
Thanks for posting op, it's interesting to think about. > Reddit posts are good because the people who create these posts or make comments are doing it to share their knowledge. I would offer a bit of a different perspective here, I think maybe even most do it for what you could call self-soothing. For example, a lot of people share knowledge, but it's _their knowledge_, which can also be defined as _sharing their su…
> I would offer a bit of a different perspective here, I think maybe even most do it for what you could call self-soothing. > > For example, a lot of people share knowledge, but it's _their knowledge_, which can also be defined as _sharing their subjective past_ and that's known to be a very soothing thing for people who may even be troubled by the unknown in their personal lives. Hop online, boom, you're a domain ex…
I've said it before and I'll say it again... I think building better search goes against everything Reddit wants to be. Reddit doesn't want to be Google or Wikipedia. Reddit wants to be a mix between Discord, TikTok, and Instagram. The redesign they did years ago pushed a more Instagram like design. Things like chat and rPan are meant to keep you on the site interacting with other users in real time. Their new video…
There is massive incentive, since Google earns over $50B per quarter selling ads to people who want to buy stuff. Targeting these queries effectively would be hugely more valuable than my current ad selection of increasingly desperate shitcoin/NFT shilling and pleas to buy Reddit gold.
This is exactly right: if Reddit ever decided to build a search engine they'd wind up destroying their site, because everyone would try to game the results and fill Reddit with crap to do it. The point it is that search engines are adversarial: people who are skilled and determined are actively trying to replace good results with their results.
This is a good point I'd never considered before. The better your search, the more people will try to game it, the worse your results will get.