141–150 of 390 posts
That doesnt mean that the content of the internet is usless, but it is now buried under 3 pages of useless SEO blubber
"Search results plagued with ‘clickbait’ would have been an understatement 20 years ago. The parts of the open web you access from Google/search (most of it) is almost entirely made-for-google' ranking algorithims. The situation is worse than it is on closed social media, including Google's YouTube. Professional YouTubers are also making content for rankings above all, but the fact that it's their own face/voice keep…
“site:reddit.com” saves the day, but I feel very uneasy doing so ever since they did their nasty API + demodding ploy.
It really is one of the most unfortunate things of the modern internet. :(
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few weeks ago, I had a question and I couldn't find the answer with Wikipedia or with internet searches. So I asked ChatGPT. I got an answer. Even better, it was sourced... Except that the source was a Wikipedia page that I had read and that didn't contain what I wanted. ChatGPT's answer was "fouled up beautifully", as Donald Knuth would say. A plain search is just a link and a quote, while the IA's answer is an ed…
I had similar experience; a friend use chatGPT to answer a question we had (was Stalin's son involved in the crash of an airplane carrying a Hockey team?). And it combined two separate events, a crash in 1953 which was actually the one we were thinking of, and another from 2011. It didn't give any sources, though I guess it may have been able to, but it was very confident in its answer and I only realised it was wron…
This is why I use ChatGPT and Kagi over Google search now.
A few weeks ago, I had a question and I couldn't find the answer with Wikipedia or with internet searches. So I asked ChatGPT. I got an answer. Even better, it was sourced... Except that the source was a Wikipedia page that I had read and that didn't contain what I wanted. ChatGPT's answer was "fouled up beautifully", as Donald Knuth would say. A plain search is just a link and a quote, while the IA's answer is an ed…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been thinking for some time that we could do with having a sort of private internet for the nerds. The internet itself used to be like this back in the late 90s. Nowadays 95-99% of the web is the general public which means that it has turned into what TV was - the happy happy box to keep the dummies occupied.
Well I mean welcome to hacker news I guess.
Recipe blogs are the most horrible example. The amount of BS you have to scroll through to get to the actual recipe.
Buy yourself a few recipe books from the seventies and the eighties in a thriftstore and your are good to go for a few bucks.
Google "gave me a massive pile of money", claims DeepMind co-founder
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“site:reddit.com” saves the day, but I feel very uneasy doing so ever since they did their nasty API + demodding ploy.
Honestly, the "golden days" of using reddit for that purpose are over, too. Both the fact that random other crap comes up due to how stuff is linked on reddit and generally most search engines being too lenient with your search terms and finally more and more conversation going to discord and other places that cannot be searched. It really is one of the most unfortunate things of the modern internet. :(
I think there's a good degree of pseudo-intellectualism on the site. Not necessarily in the conduct, but in claims of knowledge and the certainty they present it with.
There was a period in my life I've been active on Reddit myself. Looking back on that period in my life, I presented many strong and celebrated opinions there without much basis in reality. I'm not beyond blame for this, just stating an observation.
From my perspective, Reddit works as a validation machine, where validation is given somewhat randomly. It's like a self-service bias entrenching device. So perhaps it's natural to see pseudo-intellectual content there written by people such as my younger self.
"Search results plagued with ‘clickbait’ would have been an understatement 20 years ago. The parts of the open web you access from Google/search (most of it) is almost entirely made-for-google' ranking algorithims. The situation is worse than it is on closed social media, including Google's YouTube. Professional YouTubers are also making content for rankings above all, but the fact that it's their own face/voice keep…
exactly this.
I have very extensive knowledge in a certain niche that is profitable (for other people). I really enjoy building sites, so I tried to build a site that explains all the important topics for both short attention span 'TLDR' people, but also have more in-depth articles for people wanting to learn more. I built additional tools, a custom crawler with GPT regularly analysing new incoming data etc... and had a lot of fun building it.
the "organic" users I get (about 30-40) a day, have an average visit time of 3-4 minutes, which is pretty long for text-only sites I think.
but i absolutely loathe "off-page" seo, e.g. buying links.
so now the site will keep rotting away, after all the fun of building it is gone. and I have no incentive to work on it much more apart from the occasional maintenance, as it's not my primary business. And I don't want to sink thousands into buying links.
The only way to get "organic" traffic nowadays in even remotely profitable verticals, is by investing a shitton into backlinks.
the amount of shit low quality articles that have just been written for placing a link to game the google rankings is absolutely insane.
I wrote a not-very-coherent in retrospect article about 12 years ago while working for an SEO firm about how SEO was killing the internet. The basis being companies were creating pages and blog posts specifically to target keywords without actually having coherent things to say on the topic. Moreover people within Google like Matt Cutts seemed to be at the time if not outright encouraging it, at the very least giving…
> I wrote a not-very-coherent in retrospect article about 12 years ago while working for an SEO firm about how SEO was killing the internet. The basis being companies were creating pages and blog posts specifically to target keywords without actually having coherent things to say on the topic. Is there a way to improve the detection of posts like this so they can be deranked? If so, why isn't this done? You would hav…