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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?

#301

Post by ipullrank »

wslh wrote: post #81
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…

> 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…

I took a quick look at the sites in your profile. Guessing CoinFabrik is the one you care about? If so, you need more links.

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

#302

Post by LtWorf »

itishappy wrote: post #299
LtWorf wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion is that blogs have ads and documentation doesn't, and that's why the results are like this.

Totally agree! My point is that they both probably contain the same answer and I bet that's all most people care about. I think most of us here have strong preferences for picking the "most appropriate" source, but frankly, I suspect we're weird.

In my experience, blogs are mostly young students trying to build an online presence or something similar, and contain bad advice and wrongness.

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

#303

Post by collaborative »

throwaway447 wrote: post #274
collaborative wrote: post #133

Traffic to our anti-SEO search engine has quadrupled in the past month but we're still losing money Hard to beat ad-supported search

Do you have a link?

I try not to link because it bothers me when people accuse me of self promoting. It's in the profile :)

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

#304

Post by ravenstine »

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…

This is pure victim blaming.

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

#305

Post by genmud »

zeruch wrote: post #300
pradn wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying the Internet is going to be flooded by AI-generated content. Is it going to be any different than the million Wikipedia/StackOverflow re-skins? A bunch of trash sites we learn to ignore in our search results? Generative AI can also increase the amount of good content, too. If I knew that a particular human vouched for an AI-generated code snippet, I would trust it as much as a hand-written StackOve…

" A bunch of trash sites we learn to ignore in our search results?" Exactly. But when/if that stack shifts the signal to noise ratio at escape velocity into a toilet, behaviors will change. I'm just curious as to what that might look like. We've already seen plenty of examples as to what folks will do when an online option becomes sour/untenable...new ones arrive. Sometimes they look like old options repackaged. Some…

Encyclopedia Britannica type of resources are probably gonna make a comeback. I recently was thinking how much of an opportunity for growth there is going to be for fact checked/expert verified resources in the next 10-20 years.

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

#306

Post by genewitch »

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…

you can't copyright a recipe itself, so in order to copyright the content on a website with recipes, you have to do that "My mother used to make this on dreary winter days, and we'd sit by the fire ..."

Now, i was told this, repeatedly, over and over. It's probably false, but if it is false, cite the decision that precedented this.

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

#307

Post by genewitch »

entropyie wrote: post #284
loveparade wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not yesterday, it was 20 years ago when Google excelled at exact keyword matches. It has been a constant evolution away from that. I hate the new Google as much as others, but if you don't adapt your search habits for 20 years when the whole ecosystem around you has been obviously changing, that's kind of on you. Just use another search engine that fits your use case. Personally I use Kagi and I haven't touched…

Yep, it's time to give up on Google... Both the search engine and the company. Kagi Fastmail Rsync.net These are worth paying for.

seconding fastmail - i was grandfathered at $5 a year for years, i pay $15 now i think - and i am probably going to pay for kagi (or ilk). I run nextcloud, after trying other things like syncthing and owncloud - as well as owning a synology i would never put on the public internet.

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

#308

Post by marcod »

maronato wrote: post #204
amf12 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cul…

> Google is a verb, it’s the default

Hence, the lawsuit ;)

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

#309

Post by zeruch »

genmud wrote: post #305
zeruch wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" A bunch of trash sites we learn to ignore in our search results?" Exactly. But when/if that stack shifts the signal to noise ratio at escape velocity into a toilet, behaviors will change. I'm just curious as to what that might look like. We've already seen plenty of examples as to what folks will do when an online option becomes sour/untenable...new ones arrive. Sometimes they look like old options repackaged. Some…

Encyclopedia Britannica type of resources are probably gonna make a comeback. I recently was thinking how much of an opportunity for growth there is going to be for fact checked/expert verified resources in the next 10-20 years.

I've had similar thoughts.

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

#310

Post by devin »

ssgh wrote: post #105
devin wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Username is fsckboy. > I'm old, very educated, very experienced, technical, etc. Checks out.

"fsck - check and repair a Linux file system" ( https://linux.die.net/man/8/fsck ) The -b -o -y must be undocumented flags.

I’m aware. I thought it was funny.
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