Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 318 posts

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

#201

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

lolinder wrote: post #129
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 don't think it's a question of levels of formality in your search terms, I think whether you find Google useful depends on what topics you typically search for. Google is fine for memes, news, and the other things that normal people regularly look for on the internet. Where it really breaks down is where it used to shine—finding obscure information about highly technical niche topics. Its obsession with guessing sy…

3 months ago, I needed to figure out how to get the UK government to tell a multinational's pension service managers that I am not subject to taxation on a 35 year old pension plan because I am a US tax resident. It involves first getting the US government to certify my residency to the UK. If that's not niche, I don't know what is.

Google was excellent, the process took me about 2-3 hours to get everything clear in my head, the documents went off in the mail, and the certification has been issued in the UK.

So yeah, I don't know what your experience is, but it's not mine.

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

#202

Post by drivebycomment »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #93
drivebycomment wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet is more useful than it ever was for a lot more people. It has more information on more stuff, and you can do a lot more than you ever could, and a lot more people benefit from it in more ways than ever. Is it universally better in every way ? No. Could it be better in many important ways? Yes. But hyperbolic statements like "the Internet was ruined" is just nostalgia and hyperbole.

> The Internet is more useful than it ever was for a lot more people. It has more information on more stuff, and you can do a lot more than you ever could, and a lot more people benefit from it in more ways than ever. Without proof, that's just as hyperbolic as the post you're criticizing.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...

The number of users on the internet went 5x from 2005 to now.

https://www.zippia.com/advice/online-shopping-statistics/

E-commerce volume went similarly steep and steady in increase.

https://siteefy.com/how-many-websites-are-there/

Number of active websites went up similarly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia#...

Wikipedia number of articles exploded.

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

#203

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Waterluvian wrote: post #118
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…

The problem I have is that I need a way to just get webpage results. I did a search on my phone for “what’s the best colossal sword in Elden ring?” just now and I got: - full screen of those “intelligent” answers that is just naming swords from Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3. - two SEO spam sites - two decent results - a full page of YouTube suggestions - two more SEO pages - a section of “people also searched for” - fo…

My results from the same query are related to yours but substantively different.

Top result: article from GameRant on the best colossal weapons (I have no idea what this means)

6 "intelligent" answers, the first of which when expanded lists the "Elden Ring: All 11 Colossal Swords, Ranked By Physical Strength"

Article from The Gamer called "Elden Ring: 14 Best Colossal Swords, Ranked"

4 YT videos

Reddit block

....

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

#204

Post by maronato »

amf12 wrote: post #169
ethbr1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN (and futurists in general) tend to significantly underweight inertia. People hate change, and absent a catalyzing event or order of magnitude advantage, it will take a decade for usage patterns to shift. E.g. Kagi over Google Kagi could hypothetically be 25% superior in all searches. Most people don't know and don't care. Search is the thing that pops up and they type into. You can even change that? To what? There…

> E.g. Kagi over Google > Kagi could hypothetically be 25% superior in all searches. The difference is the business model. Except for a small minority of people in tech and with disposable incomes, the majority aren't willing to pay for Search. So if Kagi wants to increase their adoption they would need another business model. Advertising (in one form or another) is the easiest one.

I’m not sure the problem is the business model. Bing has the same business model as Google and has been trying hard to get some traction, even integrating ChatGPT, to no avail.

Google is a verb, it’s the default, it’s the internet. Two whole generations grew up with it being their portal to information.

There’s nothing Kagi can do to dethrone Google, unfortunately. Its only hope is to carve a niche for itself and cultivate it.

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

#205

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #148
antod wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it wrong to want to be even further out of touch?

Well no, but you've only yourself to blame if you feel out of touch. Feel free to yell at them clouds.

> Feel free to yell at them clouds.

I do that every time I get my AWS invoice

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

#207

Post by Semaphor »

reactordev wrote: post #200
underwater wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Google results are trash. Here are three examples from this week: - I Googled "speed work running", wanting some workout suggestions. I visited four or five results that either didn't have concrete suggestions, were poorly written, or overly verbose. I ended my search with little faith that I was getting good advice. I typed the same thing into ChatGPT and got a suggestion of 6 different workouts that all seemed…

You are using it right however your bias is evident on the results. A 20-something will just scroll through the blog content to get to the recipe at the end. No huss, no fuss. In fact, they’ll open multiple tabs of search results to compare recipes in the time it takes you to gawk at the fact that you have to scroll to the end. Where is the recipe? Why is there a video? Table of contents? No, a 20-something will just…

> A 20-something will just scroll through the blog content to get to the recipe at the end. No huss, no fuss. In fact, they’ll open multiple tabs of search results to compare recipes in the time it takes you to gawk at the fact that you have to scroll to the end.

Uh, I do that and I’m 37. But I don’t scroll, I click the button that says "recipe" that’s on pretty much every recipe site.

IMO this is mainly about being used to the state of recipe sites on the internet, and has nothing to do with searching.

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

#208

Post by bfung »

underwater wrote: post #191
pclmulqdq wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is that Google actually works great. It works better than before. It just doesn't work in the way that we (highly educated and technical people) want. We all laughed at our parents and grandparents for typing full sentence questions into the search bar in 2005 instead of carefully crafted incantations with keywords, "site:" labels and other such things. Young people often use full sentences today because th…

No, Google results are trash. Here are three examples from this week: - I Googled "speed work running", wanting some workout suggestions. I visited four or five results that either didn't have concrete suggestions, were poorly written, or overly verbose. I ended my search with little faith that I was getting good advice. I typed the same thing into ChatGPT and got a suggestion of 6 different workouts that all seemed…

While reading your Google examples, I don’t think I could parse out what you were intending as a human. Perhaps different keywords would work better?

For example, “speed work running”, were you looking to improve sprinting? (I’m not a runner, so it almost reads to me like “working fast while on a treadmill”). Reading the rest of your example, maybe “sprint workouts” would give better results?

(40+yr old guy here, Google had always worked for me, as many people had described it working for 20yr olds. Finding the right, specific enough set of keywords had always been my “trick”. Little did I realize I subconsciously generate embeddings like a LLM to Google search)

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

#209

Post by Tanoc »

lolinder wrote: post #167
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its obsession with guessing synonyms (and ignoring your efforts to tell it to knock it off) is a major handicap I know people say it still doesn't work, but I find adding quotes completely effective for me when I need the precise keyword. Not sure what I'm doing differently.

It works some of the time for me, but there are frequently cases where I put the word in quotes and Google just pretends I didn't. It can be really egregious, too: I've searched for `foo` and had it say `Showing results for bar. Search for "foo" instead?` Then I follow the link that it provided and it still is searching for `bar` with the same prompt to refine the search , even though the double quotes are clearly st…

I can concur. Just yesterday I was searching for something specific and thought I was sleep deprived or just generally losing awareness because I could swear I typed a very specific name in, only for it to show up in Google's search results (not the search bar) missing the last letter with no "Did you mean ---?" or "Searching for ---. Look only for |||?". I tried it again, and it did the same thing. I switched from Google to Google Image Search and watched it in real time delete that last letter from the search bar where I'd typed the term in. I went to show an acquaintance immediately after, only for the behaviour not to repeat itself. It made me feel like I was going crazy.
Post reply on HN