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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?

#41

Post by Nextgrid »

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…

SEO doesn't mess with the bottom line though. If anything, it could improve the bottom line by making the ads look more attractive if the organic search results have all been polluted to hell.

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

#42

Post by leptons »

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.

> You could be who you are, say what you want and explore digitally.

You can't even really do that on HN without getting your account deleted. I don't think the blame belongs solely on Facebook and Linkedin so much as anyone who has any kind of power online using it on others as they see fit.

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

#43

Post by asdfman123 »

bdw5204 wrote: post #24
asdfman123 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of good content out there, but the problem is finding it. A Google replacement wouldn't be any better, because everyone's attention would be directed into optimizing new replacement site. It frustrates me when people say "Google should search reddit by default." The reason reddit is still halfway decent is there isn't as much money in gaming it, but there would be if the entire world was sent to it.

I think the best path to a "Google replacement" is probably to reinvent Yahoo or dmoz. You'd still have to human curate the worthwhile sites through a ton of SEO spam and, if you go the dmoz route of volunteer curators, that's an attack vector for spammers but I think it'd be much more manageable than trying to build an index of the entire web and search it. A new general purpose web directory would also help mitigat…

That kind of web directory would work if it were just used by a small group of adherents.

But it would encounter the same problems typical to big tech once any "real" money started flowing in.

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by postalrat »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #7
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.

There are many anonymous websites, like 4chan, and you are free to create your own, which is itself something you can do anonymously.

How are people you to find your forum if sites indexing sites like google apparently won't link to your site: https://www.google.com/search?q=anonymous+English-language+i...

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

#46

Post by postalrat »

ge96 wrote: post #28

I don't get the argument about gpt replacing a search engine. If gpt trains from search engine data how does it get new data? I guess the usage of gpt over time.

Why would gpt train from search engine data instead of the actual documents being indexed?

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

#47

Post by ge96 »

postalrat wrote: post #46
ge96 wrote: post #28

I don't get the argument about gpt replacing a search engine. If gpt trains from search engine data how does it get new data? I guess the usage of gpt over time.

Why would gpt train from search engine data instead of the actual documents being indexed?

Not just documents, everything, every website that becomes searchable information. How would that work in the future if people don't use search engines, how does the gpt/llm bring that info in. Not saying it's not possible, would there be an API people submit their content into...

Edit: actually I wonder if wikipedia will make one (model) they have so much info

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

#48

Post by StableAlkyne »

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.

Which is ironic, considering the Internet was also "ruined" in 1993 when ISPs gave everyone Usenet access, flooding the Reddit equivalent of the day (if Reddit were the only real forum) with anonymous users who cared not for cultural norms. Prior to that, it was mostly people posting under their real name with their real workplace or college in their email address.

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

#49

Post by spookie »

qvrjuec wrote: post #35
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...

Their lengthy apology is.... I don't know how to describe it. It reminds me of relationship I had, in a bad way.

The part where they go on to say "We messed up" cracked me up. You don't "mess up" when you are fully aware of your actions, and perform them as planned.

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

#50

Post by preommr »

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…

> because obviously HN crowd is much further ahead in the curve

Do you actually think this or is this just a polite way of saying lots of HNers are out of touch?

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