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Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

reasonablypolymorphic.com

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Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#31

Post by taftster »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #24

> What I dream of is Google circa 2006. A time where a search engine searched what you asked for. A time before aggressive SEO. A time before social media, when the only people on the internet had a reason to be there. A time before sticky headers and full-screen modal pop-ups asking you to subscribe to a newsletter before reading the article. A time before click-bait and subscription-only websites which tease you wi…

[Quoting your quote] - A time before aggressive SEO? No, just that Google was able to defeat it with Page Rank (one of their possibly few innovative ideas to the search arena). Mathematically, Page Rank did very well to weed out the SEO'd websites of the time.

Point is, I don't think SEO at the time was any more or less "aggressive", per se. Just different. And clearly, the game has since escalated altogether.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#32

Post by redavni »

I have resorted to using Russian (Yandex) and Chinese (Baidu) search engines in the last few years. It is interesting that non commercial sources have more of a voice on these search engines than on Google today.

Google is good at many things, but their leadership is questionable now, unlike in the past.

I would pay a subscription fee for a service that provided partity with Google and customer service that answers the phone.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#33

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #24

> What I dream of is Google circa 2006. A time where a search engine searched what you asked for. A time before aggressive SEO. A time before social media, when the only people on the internet had a reason to be there. A time before sticky headers and full-screen modal pop-ups asking you to subscribe to a newsletter before reading the article. A time before click-bait and subscription-only websites which tease you wi…

> Well, I built sort of exactly this: https://search.marginalia.nu/

What's the elevator pitch? What do you actually do that is special?

From the about section:

> This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.

> The software for this search engine is all custom-built, and all crawling and indexing is done in-house. The project is open source. Feel free to poke about in the source code or contribute to the development!

But that doesn't really give me much info.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#34

Post by yazzku »

I would also ask, why is HN so monotonous?

If you compare 'new' vs what goes on the wall, you'll see a non-trivial amount of Big Tech bias and very good posts (often criticisms) effectively getting censored. Is the paycheck that good?

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#35

Post by jrochkind1 »

drivebycomment wrote: post #4

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

Eh, I dunno. I feel like if there had been a human somewhere blogging or writing on a forum "I was thrilled to find this village in Croatia which really reminded me of my trip to Koh Lanta, one of my favorite places" -- then Google of 15 years ago would have found it and put it on the first page. Even if there are ten such things on the web today, I don't think it's gonna wind up in my google search. But am I overly optimistic about historical Google?

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#36

Post by spitfire »

drivebycomment wrote: post #4

This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search having exceeded what's possible today. From the article: > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I’m always on the lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap…

I actually built this exact thing for myself when I was looking for property to buy. I built a VAE DNN to identify sandy white beaches, added in a bunch of data about economics and such, built a custom McPain index (Inverse of the distance to the nearest chain restaurant (McDonalds, Burger king, Starbucks, etc)*1000000)[1].

Fed a bunch of countries coastline into it, and popped out ranked beachfronts to investigate more.

1. I once went to Ao Nang, Thailand a few years after the tsunami and found a really cool chill cheap beach town and loved it. Went back a few years later and right on the main street there was a McDonalds. Across from that there was a Burger king, ~100M up the road was another McDonalds. I will never return.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#37

Post by i_have_an_idea »

The author seems to only have a superfluous understanding of SEO. Yes, keywords matter, as well as inbound and outbound links, but, these days Google is also quite sophisticated about surfacing results that meet the criteria for Good Page Experience and pass the Core Web Vitals. That means responsive web sites, with highly optimized images, font delivery, minimal on-load jitter that load super fast, even on old mobile devices. All of that is good for the end user.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#39

Post by jrochkind1 »

warning26 wrote: post #22

There's a lot of Google hate on HN, and much of it is deserved, but I think this particular trend of blaming Google for the prevalence of useless clickbait articles is a bit much. The real answer to this question is that walled-garden social media took over everything. The much-pined-for "Old Google" worked because people used to actually create content on their own sites, and not just post it on walled garden monoli…

I do wonder how things would be different if facebook posts (instagram, tiktok, etc) were exposed to Google... I'm not sure they'd be better though.

Re: Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google

#40

Post by devmunchies »

I disagree that its google's fault. I think it went from a diverse mainstreet to a walmart. Likely an inevitable progression of any economy if not deliberately prevented. Was likely quickened by Google though.

"They paved paradise to put up a parking lot"

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