I guess if google was willing to do no evil for a moment and actually think what would make both their search better for the user and www better place overall, they would put a big button next to each search result saying roughly "Hey, dear google. Every thing I have ever seen in this domain is full of crap. Please do not ever again show any page from this domain in my search results" And then use the information from this button to lower the search score for any domain with high level of users willing to ignore a domain completely.
The internet is an SEO landfill
101–110 of 438 posts
Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love for that to work but I'm skeptical that there would be a lot of signal in that sea of noise. We're talking about well over a billion monthly active users; for every HNizen annoyed with the state of the modern web, there are thousands of ordinary people that probably don't mind J. Peterman-esque recipes laden with product placement and somehow incorporating a listicle - as long as they get their recipe. A…
You could do a couple of things: * Make your upvotes only influence your own search results, and other users like you (similar search history, similar geography, similar past upvote pattern). The fraudster upvoters would just improve SEO for their own fraudster circle. They would see their fraud-upvoted site as #1 within their own circle but it wouldn't change the ranking for me. The programmer circle gets programmer…
What you are describing is a literal filter bubble, where very soon your only exposure to content will be seeing content you are already liking, ideas you are already adhering to, people you are already looking to.
A bubble where ideas and people that you and people like yourself don't like automagically get hidden from you so that you never get exposed to them. A nightmare.
Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#103It would be awesome if Google had up/downvote buttons like Reddit and use them to eliminate all the fluff in search results, even if on a targeted community basis. For example if a recipe has no pictures, too many ads, not clear instructions, or no equivalent volume measurements (e.g. "4 grams sugar (about 1 tsp)") I'm likely to downvote it, and those properties can be learned from multiple downvotes.
They essentially do.
Bounce rate is a key ranking factor. Going back to the search results too quickly is a negative signal.
Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#104Search results are so heavily weighted toward commerce, products and services because those are the people that can spend money on SEO. It's made the internet, seen through the eyes of search results, seem like an aggressive, shady market bazaar. I try searching for anything remotely bike related, bike community, mechanical information, or just general cool bike stuff and I can't find the human community underneath a…
One nice solution would be a search engine that throws out anything related to commerce or linking to commerce.
Not entirely throwing out commerce, but I sometimes use https://millionshort.com/ where you can remove up to the top 1 million websites from the results.
Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#105It would be awesome if Google had up/downvote buttons like Reddit and use them to eliminate all the fluff in search results, even if on a targeted community basis. For example if a recipe has no pictures, too many ads, not clear instructions, or no equivalent volume measurements (e.g. "4 grams sugar (about 1 tsp)") I'm likely to downvote it, and those properties can be learned from multiple downvotes.
This already exists. If you navigate back to the search results then that counts as a downvote. If you don't navigate back, that's an upvote.
Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#106SEO is essentially voodoo bullshit right? The people I’ve met who hawk it are the same people who in the same breath refer to themselves as UX professionals, interaction designers, or some other nebulous term. It’s yet another thing that requires little to no training but gives these people clout in their organization and a role to play.
Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#107Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are browser add-ons that do that.
I think search engines need to realize the value of raising their results' quality by allowing users to tell them which sites they think are scummy.
Make it an easy-to-click report button and pretty much every site whose politics I disagree with will get a downvote... every article by a person I disagree with as well. The question is: how useful is that to the search engine, or indeed to myself?
Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#109Search results are so heavily weighted toward commerce, products and services because those are the people that can spend money on SEO. It's made the internet, seen through the eyes of search results, seem like an aggressive, shady market bazaar. I try searching for anything remotely bike related, bike community, mechanical information, or just general cool bike stuff and I can't find the human community underneath a…
This is what happens when you don’t give users control over how search works. The weighting is blatantly user hostile by default because it’s so directed towards people who pay for your eyes. I would pay a massive amount of money for a search engine with a “no commercial results” switch. Of course paid search introduces class issues. I think we should view search like a public utility because it’s absolutely necessar…
> I would pay a massive amount of money for a search engine with a “no commercial results” switch.
Yeah but what does that even mean. How do you define commercial? Who is going to go through all of the pages and categorizing them into commercial and non-commercial? And how do you keep shills and “influencers” from littering your results with seemingly innocent but actually commercial content?
Re: The internet is an SEO landfill
#110this article is really something. the author is complaining about the spammy nature of the "Internet" when they are in fact complaining about the spammy nature of search results, particularly those on Google. and yet, the whole thrust of the argument is a complaint about difficult it has been to participating very aggressively in the dynamic that leads to this spammy nature. if they have a problem with this, they hav…
I'm inclined to thinking the article is actually a great marketing technique for this product.
I mean, it's peddling a way of sending marketing emails via AWS... Nothing spammy there!