Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, "site:" still works. I use "site:reddit.com/r/edh $cardname" any time I want to research Magic the Gathering combos. It also works far better than the same search string in DDG/Brave/Bing.
There should be an inverse, "nosite:" selector, to avoid results from a site.
As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
241–250 of 318 posts
Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#242Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#243Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#244I'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…
A lot of HNers are pretty out of touch with how the vast majority of people use the internet.
We know.
Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#245Earlier 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…
I’m sorry but are you trying to speak for all highly educated and technical people? Because as far as I know, I’m both and I find Google just as good as ever, if not much better. The only place I see people complaining about Google is Hacker News and certain parts of Reddit and by no means are the opinions on these sites anywhere near universally shared by most people. And by all means, I think calling yourself highl…
Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
The state of recipe sites is 100% driven by Google. Those sites add the fluff because that is what Google rewards. The actual recipe quality doesn't matter. If I use my example, the page contains: * Bio of the author - Google SEO rewards content written by "real humans", so this is there to appease the bot. * Giant images of overnight oats - This helps the page rank highly on Google Image Search. * Fluffy paragraphs…
> Recipes can be protected under copyright law if they are accompanied by “substantial literary expression."
https://copyrightalliance.org/are-recipes-cookbooks-protecte...
So the fluff is both an attempt at that substantial literary expression, and a way to differentiate this version of the recipe from 1000 other versions of the _exact_ recipe because the recipe itself is not unqiue or copyrightable! Without it, recipe's would be penalized by the duplicate content penalty Google applies.
Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#247Earlier 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…
Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#248Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#249Earlier 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…
Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?
#250SEO 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…
> SEO agency owner here Could we speak? I run a bootstrapped company for more than two decades and [natural] SEO explained part of our growth. Nowadays it is not working as expected after trying a lot of stuff and agencies. It feels like we can write articles all day without moving the needle except peaks sharing in Reddit that go down quickly. It seems like I need to apply a giant budget to move those metrics. I und…
This company then picked a biggish ad-spend budget, spent it on Google, FB and other ad companies (digital agencies). And the users just started rolling in over the course of months. The increase in users, let them "monetize" by convincing "sponsors" to "pay" for content on this new "platform", which netted them a big chunk of profit and more money for more ad-spend which made more users come.
Next up, they will brand and sell this platform which has "X-millions of users", even though most are one-off users, barely any repeat or long-term users, etc.
It's like some sort of endless shit-peddling cycle driven by marketing, and it was frankly disgusting to watch from the sides. Their stated goal was actually noble, uplifting, etc. But all they ended up doing was building a "herd" of users that they could monetize and use for marketing other projects, and helped no one except for their global brand, and their owners.
Sorry about the rant.
In summary: Yes, just get an ad-agency and pay them to help you get users. At least you have a valid product I assume and genuine value to provide in exchange for money.