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Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

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Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#91

Post by politician »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #75
kmlx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it'll eventually fragment into multiple segregated continental networks i think it already has. the Great Firewall of China is the classic example, but I think the trend started in the west with the Right to be forgotten/right to erasure in Europe, and subsequent HTTP Status 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons. GDPR just further cemented the split between Europe and the rest, and the new DMA & DSA regulation…

Exactly what I mean. There is no way to have an international network with national borders. Telecommunications providers have always been centralized and have always been in bed with the government. Only way we'll ever be free is if someone invents some kind of decentralized long range wireless mesh network.

Like Starlink?

Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#92

Post by shortformblog »

FargaColora wrote: post #27

You mention the "Dead Internet Theory" (not heard that phrase before!). I agree: the WWW Internet is dead, that is your problem. No-one visits websites anymore, everyone has moved to the 10 biggest websites and all data is now siloed there. If I want to search for something topical and relevant, I go to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord etc. The general Internet is dead: it's just…

I think this is a tad reductive, but I will say that we sure let a lot of big companies convince a huge portion of the population to create all of their content on platforms that they have no real control over.

The problem is, many of them didn’t realize this was a problem until recently.

That said, plenty of exciting stuff is happening outside of the walled garden, as long as you know how to find it.

Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#93

Post by NicoJuicy »

FargaColora wrote: post #27

You mention the "Dead Internet Theory" (not heard that phrase before!). I agree: the WWW Internet is dead, that is your problem. No-one visits websites anymore, everyone has moved to the 10 biggest websites and all data is now siloed there. If I want to search for something topical and relevant, I go to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord etc. The general Internet is dead: it's just…

The big siloed websites are just indexes of fresh content though.

With a generic way to place comments on it.

Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#94

Post by XCSme »

If the internet is dead, is there anything left that's "alive"? The mobile app stores are also filled with crap[0] and it seems that the ratio of spam content vs real content is getting close to infinity.

[0]: https://youtu.be/E8Lhqri8tZk - 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality

Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#95

Post by Gravityloss »

shortformblog wrote: post #92
FargaColora wrote: post #27

You mention the "Dead Internet Theory" (not heard that phrase before!). I agree: the WWW Internet is dead, that is your problem. No-one visits websites anymore, everyone has moved to the 10 biggest websites and all data is now siloed there. If I want to search for something topical and relevant, I go to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord etc. The general Internet is dead: it's just…

I think this is a tad reductive, but I will say that we sure let a lot of big companies convince a huge portion of the population to create all of their content on platforms that they have no real control over. The problem is, many of them didn’t realize this was a problem until recently. That said, plenty of exciting stuff is happening outside of the walled garden, as long as you know how to find it.

And not only did this happen already over a decade ago, a lot of the current internet users have never known anything else.

We had a discussion with coworkers and somebody mentioned irc. Explaining to younger colleagues what it was and that it was not a product of a company, but operators had servers that formed a network, and it was more like infrastructure. Felt weird.

Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#96

Post by ricardobeat »

politician wrote: post #91
matheusmoreira wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I mean. There is no way to have an international network with national borders. Telecommunications providers have always been centralized and have always been in bed with the government. Only way we'll ever be free is if someone invents some kind of decentralized long range wireless mesh network.

Like Starlink?

Starlink connects to standard internet gateways on the ground. It cannot function without the 'regular internet', unless a replacement appears.

Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#97

Post by kasey_junk »

Gravityloss wrote: post #95
shortformblog wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a tad reductive, but I will say that we sure let a lot of big companies convince a huge portion of the population to create all of their content on platforms that they have no real control over. The problem is, many of them didn’t realize this was a problem until recently. That said, plenty of exciting stuff is happening outside of the walled garden, as long as you know how to find it.

And not only did this happen already over a decade ago, a lot of the current internet users have never known anything else. We had a discussion with coworkers and somebody mentioned irc. Explaining to younger colleagues what it was and that it was not a product of a company, but operators had servers that formed a network, and it was more like infrastructure. Felt weird.

Most of the kids in my 3rd graders peer group understand federated infrastructures quite well because of Minecraft.

Perhaps it wasn’t the federated nature of irc that was surprising but the fact that it was irc?

Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#98

Post by ricardo81 »

trinovantes wrote: post #2

If this was the spam for a search engine (almost) nobody uses, it makes you wonder how much abuse the major search engines face

Indeed. There are various SEO "rank tracking" services that scrape millions of SERPs a month.

Re: Almost all searches on my independent search engine are now from SEO spam bots

#100

Post by PragmaticPulp »

FargaColora wrote: post #27

You mention the "Dead Internet Theory" (not heard that phrase before!). I agree: the WWW Internet is dead, that is your problem. No-one visits websites anymore, everyone has moved to the 10 biggest websites and all data is now siloed there. If I want to search for something topical and relevant, I go to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord etc. The general Internet is dead: it's just…

> If I want to search for something topical and relevant, I go to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord etc.

Maybe we’re searching for different content, but I disagree. While Google results are not without noise, I think it’s a huge exaggeration to suggest it’s useless. I still regularly find quality results from a quick skim of the first or second page of Google results.

Meanwhile places like Reddit, Twitter, and Hacker News are full of very strong opinions that feel truthy, but are mostly noise. Unless you go in with enough baseline knowledge to filter out 9/10 underinformed comments to dig out the 10% who actually have direct knowledge of the subject and aren’t just parroting some version of something they read from other comments, skipping straight to social sites becomes a source of misinformation.

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