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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?

#61

Post by userinanother »

Raidion wrote: post #54
fsckboy wrote: post #38

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…

I think Google still deserves a ton of credit. Online shopping is tricky, but information is incredibly easy to access, especially if you do know how to avoid clicking on Quora or WebMD style sites. Google does a great job of shepherding you towards information and at the very least gives you additional context that you can use to corroborate or tune your search.

Information search works a lot better because it has no commercial value. Therefore no SEO attack

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

#62

Post by ge96 »

wfvr wrote: post #58
ge96 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The whole text of wikipedia has been included in training data for basically all LLMs since the start.

That's cool real Hitch Hiker's Guide book

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

#63

Post by zenincognito »

preommr wrote: post #50
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?

Politely, and with due respect, I consider myself "out of touch" for most things that I don't do on a day to day basis or those that are NOT my livelihood.

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

#64

Post by legitster »

My first job out of college was writing SEO articles for [unnamed failed startup]. It was exactly the sort of daft, fluffy, "let me Google that for you" content you would think a 20 something SEO writer would come up with.

And it's these kinds of fluffy, non-clickbait content that people are complaining about when they talk about Google's search results these days. I don't think the real problem are two-bit hustlers sneaking in bait-and-switch content here and there - it's that Google's own rules encourage mediocre and non-authoritative content.

So one of the reasons people gravitate towards ChatGPT (or, to a similar degree TikTok) is that both will give you strong and authoritative advice (even if it's wrong!)

I don't necessarily believe the internet is worse today (if you have any false nostalgia, try searching a forum for an answer to a technical problem). But experts who were actually putting out good content and information were consistently getting ripped off by knockoffs for decades and we shouldn't be surprised that nobody is contributing anymore.

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

#65

Post by no_wizard »

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.

This perhaps, is some rose colored glasses.

I remember friends getting harassed online, where it was one of the few places they could be themselves (for instance, a good friend of mine was openly gay online well before he was in person) and the internet seemingly didn't take kindly to this in alot of corners (gaming for starters)

That said, they were able to find some community that didn't exist the same locally, so the vastness is the upside here in that respect.

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

#66

Post by AniseAbyss »

fsckboy wrote: post #38

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…

I always like to talk about how much I hate advertising but when I need a Thai restaurant Google Maps has my back.

But I'm also old and remember that the yellow pages used to bring in billions of revenue. Have things really changed on a fundamental level?

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

#67

Post by ipaddr »

legitster wrote: post #64

My first job out of college was writing SEO articles for [unnamed failed startup]. It was exactly the sort of daft, fluffy, "let me Google that for you" content you would think a 20 something SEO writer would come up with. And it's these kinds of fluffy, non-clickbait content that people are complaining about when they talk about Google's search results these days. I don't think the real problem are two-bit hustlers…

People are still contributing at a higher rate but google isn't including them. That's the difference not that suddenly professionals are fleeing because of something that has been happened since the beginning.

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

#69

Post by ranting-moth »

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.

Google's search results have been poisoned by SEO.

A lot of the time when looking for information about X the search results are dominated either by someone trying to sell me X or they have very superficial information about X just so they can a bit further down try to sell me X.

(I'm talking about the unknown X, not Elon's failing project).

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

#70

Post by philipov »

gretch wrote: post #60
preommr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I'm not the OP you replied to, but there's a scene from the movie the big short that really punched the understanding into my head: Michael Burry: I may have been early but I'm not wrong some exec: It's the same thing! I believe that a lot of HN posts are probably "right", but they are so far in the future and so non-applicable to day-to-day life, that it's indistinguishable from wrong. For example, everyone predicti…

To wit: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"

Or in another case, there's a political scientist, whose name I don't currently remember, who's made fun of for predicting 9 out of the last 5 recessions. Sure, he may have predicted the ones that happened, but a broken clock is also right twice a day. Your predictions aren't worth much if you can't avoid false positives.

EDIT: [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/11/01/predict-nine/]

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