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As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

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Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#31

Post by cyanydeez »

w0m wrote: post #29
zeruch wrote: post #17

I cant foresee a scenario where an endlessly growing mass of AI-generated noise, stacked upon itself, will be useful to anyone. Humans will invariably find a less contentious path (maybe its seeking out more localized options, maybe its balkanizing into various specialized domains, maybe its $NEWTHINGYETTOBESEEN, or all of the above. But the current trajectory cannot hold. Someone else mentioned the "reverse-takeover…

Eventually; someone will create an index to sort through the AI output and determine what's true/relevant and return it to the consumer. Call it 'airank' maybe?

yeah definitely not truth value.

probably a "exploit" trigger. hard to think how reality and predictive power are going to be mediated through some kind of source index.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#32

Post by adhesive_wombat »

It's always surprised me that confirmed SEO shenaniganery doesn't bring an instant ion-cannon strike from Google. I know they are apparently allergic to having a human ever decide anything ever. It's just that if I were them, with an infinite data lake to find the vendors' traces, trillion-dollar C-suite morals and the SEO was messing with the bottom line, there would be no quarter when a nest is uncovered. Delist everything to do with them, delete all their accounts and salt their persistent data profiles. Most of them are abroad and will struggle to do anything about it. After all, occasional Gmail or Android developer bans are meted out with various levels of capriciousness.

I guess it's good that they're not obviously going Judge Dredd left, right and centre, but it's still surprising to me that you can run up to them, slap them in the virtual face and stay online to do it again.

Or perhaps it is not messing with the short-term bottom line because the SEO sites are crawling with ads? And until ChatGPT what were you going to do? Use Bing?

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#34

Post by rgrieselhuber »

zenincognito wrote: post #25

SEO agency owner here. Have been in the agency game for over 15 years. For whatever it's worth, here are my 2 cents. Business is booming. Not exactly dying as indicated here in the HN circles because obviously HN crowd is much further ahead in the curve. SEO is still the number one opted channel by most ecommerce stores because keywords like "red party dress" or "green shoes" are still immensely more valuable and bri…

As a SaaS / data vendor in the space, I can confirm.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#35

Post by qvrjuec »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #32

It's always surprised me that confirmed SEO shenaniganery doesn't bring an instant ion-cannon strike from Google. I know they are apparently allergic to having a human ever decide anything ever. It's just that if I were them, with an infinite data lake to find the vendors' traces, trillion-dollar C-suite morals and the SEO was messing with the bottom line, there would be no quarter when a nest is uncovered. Delist ev…

Isn't this what happened with rap genius around a decade ago[0]? Maybe this was long before their policy of zero human intervention.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/25/5243716/rap-genius-plumm...

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#36

Post by bdw5204 »

asdfman123 wrote: post #15
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #6

The internet was ruined when it was de anonymized by Facebook and LinkedIn etc. I remember growing up in a completely anonymous internet. You could be who you are, say what you want and explore digitally. Then you would go back to society as the real you and temper yourself a bit to fit in and work with others and that was ok because you could blow off steam on the internet.

The internet was ruined when your normie older relatives got on it, unfortunately

They were using the internet before 2008 or so but mainly for sending and receiving emails. Younger people who weren't that into computers mainly used them to message their friends on AIM and pirate music on Napster then Kazaa then Limewire (the platforms kept getting shut down). In the post-2008 world, Facebook replaced email and AIM and Spotify/Netflix replaced piracy. The difference is, the people who used to just use the internet for email now spend far more time online because Facebook is designed to be addicting.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#37

Post by lobochrome »

w0m wrote: post #29
zeruch wrote: post #17

I cant foresee a scenario where an endlessly growing mass of AI-generated noise, stacked upon itself, will be useful to anyone. Humans will invariably find a less contentious path (maybe its seeking out more localized options, maybe its balkanizing into various specialized domains, maybe its $NEWTHINGYETTOBESEEN, or all of the above. But the current trajectory cannot hold. Someone else mentioned the "reverse-takeover…

Eventually; someone will create an index to sort through the AI output and determine what's true/relevant and return it to the consumer. Call it 'airank' maybe?

Yahoo!

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#38

Post by fsckboy »

I'm old, very educated, very experienced, technical, etc. My assistant is young and none of the above. She finds everything very quickly through internet searches. However-it-is that google is interpreting search terms, that's how her brain works. I told her about a house I drove by that looked like a cool Halloween house. While I was still telling her basics about it, she was already pulling up pictures of it. I had said the house looked like it was melting, so she typed in "melting house", I think. Not that that's genius or quirky or anything, but I would never dream of typing in something I was thinking "informally", and her approach is more like "whatever whackadoo thing I'm thinking, probably other people think just like me" and she finds anything I ask her about. (I've pretested that query, and turns out that there are melting houses all over the world, just gotta look in your neighborhood)

so to the point here, I lament that Google doesn't work any more, but she doesn't, she thinks it works great. Now if I can just get her to stop finding restaurant recommendations on TikTok...

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#39

Post by mushufasa »

I can see AI decrease some of the traffic for content writers who relied on SEO taking a hit; like political blogs or various sites that paid for ads to drive traffic and then essentially sell more ads to those users on their own site. But the writers/platforms that have great content can also use AI to improve their own content, so I don't think this is going to be a 'fall off a cliff' style event.

I don't think that SEO is going to be decreasing anytime soon for e-commerce, which is probably the best use of SEO. AI generation images and content are no substitute for physical goods, like shoes.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#40

Post by spookie »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #32

It's always surprised me that confirmed SEO shenaniganery doesn't bring an instant ion-cannon strike from Google. I know they are apparently allergic to having a human ever decide anything ever. It's just that if I were them, with an infinite data lake to find the vendors' traces, trillion-dollar C-suite morals and the SEO was messing with the bottom line, there would be no quarter when a nest is uncovered. Delist ev…

They'll only start noticing when it's too late. For now, I assume, the bling is still flowing enough to be as addictive to them as the SEO spam is for most.
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