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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

#221

Post by altairprime »

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 you want to be rich, solve search without full-text indexing of sites. Pagerank only ever worked because of human curation of webrings. Full-text search made is easier to find content, and opened the door for spammers. The only viable route forward for search will be to replace full-text indexing with human curation, somehow. Solve how to scale that up instead, so that when everyone else realizes we need it for the health of the Web, you’re ready.

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

#222

Post by ffhhj »

pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #150
api wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All open systems are destroyed by spam once they become popular enough to be profitable targets. This will eventually happen to the Fediverse too. If there is money to be made pissing all over the commons, the commons will be pissed all over. It even happens to proprietary silos if they are too open. Look at how many bots and spammers infest social media. Propaganda and disinformation can also be considered a form of…

> This will eventually happen to the Fediverse too. Oh, don’t worry, the Fediverse will never catch on.

Why? Serious question.

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

#223

Post by Veen »

0des wrote: post #204
Veen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that work any more? I thought everyone put nofollow attributes on comment links.

If it didnt work, would you still see it?

Yes, because to sell it you need someone to believe it works. That's independent of whether it actually works (although this does answer my initial question).

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

#224

Post by marginalia_nu »

Domenic_S wrote: post #216
ColinHayhurst wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. > 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 legacy content and spam. The "general" Internet is not dead. Though if you just want to participate in just Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, Instagram, Google Maps, Discord you might well think that. Users of marginalia (aut…

> The "general" Internet is not dead. For some things it is. Good luck getting a non-sponsored/SEO-gamed review of a kitchen appliance or particular vacation mode such as a cruise. It's flabbergasting. Most times I just stick "inurl:reddit.com" in my search and try to get discussion threads about the thing I'm researching, but even that's getting filled up with shills.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

http://www.jitterbuzz.com/indmix.html

http://www.alaska.net/~akpassag/

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

#225

Post by Jiro »

pnutjam wrote: post #115
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the WWW internet is dead; there's still millions of webpages being made and published every day. However, the traffic numbers are skewed in favor of the big socials and aggregators; I wouldn't be surprised if the 80/20 rule applies there.

There seems to be a tendancy towards video that undercuts the "old internet". I prefer instructions in a text or list format, but that's almost impossible to find for things like, changing the headlight bulb on my traverse. 1. turn the wheel so it is pointed hard in the direction of the bulb you are changing. 2. remove the hex screws from the shroud in the wheel well 3. pull the shroud down, it's pretty flexible plas…

Even something like that flounders on the question "these instructions say to pull down the shroud, what is a shroud?" or "I can't find those hex screws, where are they located?" Repairs are inherently visual, although text with illustrations might work.

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

#226

Post by nonrandomstring »

dreen wrote: post #68
matheusmoreira wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet itself is probably gonna die soon anyway. Every country wants to impose its own laws on it. I think it'll eventually fragment into multiple segregated continental networks, if not national ones, all with heavy filtering at the borders. I'm happy to have experienced the free internet. Truly a jewel of humanity.

I think this was inevitable all along, something similar happened to radio if I'm not mistaken. However, the good news is that we will never stop reinventing everything. The real value of the old internet was showing us what is possible.

> The real value of the old internet was showing us what is possible.

Of equal value is that it showed us what not to do.

We have 30 years of documentation for research on exactly what a successful intra-planetary network needs to be immune to. A successful future network must build-in resistance all forms of human pyschopathology from the ground up.

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

#227

Post by dylan604 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #209
dylan604 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who uses your search? I had never heard of "you" until just now. And there is the problem with "new" search engines. Unless you can come up with what would have to be one of the greatest ad campaigns the world has ever seen, no significant number of users will know you exist. Where does the money to pay for that ad campaign come from? How will a search engine generate money to stay relevant? Once people see you b…

Why would I need to generate money to stay relevant?

The first relevant was the wrong word. sustainable would be more appropriate. on the assumption that hosting the search engine isn't free, and unless it is supported by a generous benefactor it will need to have a way of generating money to keep the servers running.

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

#228

Post by soheil »

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…

To a fish the world is made of water and there can't possibly be anything else worthwhile. This is more indicative of how you spend your time online vs reality.

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

#229

Post by freediver »

lukev wrote: post #195
Teandw wrote: post #62

This guy throws multiple reasons/conspiracies out there on why the website is really struggling to gain literally any sort of traction. Web is all bots, search engines not promoting competitors and being drowned out by SEO spam, yet he's failing to see the most obvious reason... the reason nearly all websites don't gain traction... Because it's a bad website. It provides no value to the user. I put in a few search te…

I second this. Don't get me wrong, I applaud the concept and the effort, but this implementation isn't quite there. I searched for "document management system comparison" since I am currently in the process of selecting one for our legal team at work. Some on-the-ground reports from real users would be hugely valuable. But this is the classic example of where Google utterly fails; document management is a 100 billion…

Typed this search into Kagi and got:

- This results from an old site https://www.scanstore.com/Scanning_Software/Document_Managem... not sure if still relevant

- A bunch of discussions from reddit and other forums (probably best lead)

- One research paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.3131.pdf

- Listicles grouped togeter so you can skip them

- The noncommercial filter gave a few more good results, but it seems like there is not much 'good' content written on this topic

I would definetely not call all Kagi results fantastic, but it does seem to be better than Google. We are trying hard to solve the problem of the nonsense on the web (Kagi founder here).

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