A glitch in the SEO matrix • Hacker News Board

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#101

Post by pixl97 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:06 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #74

samwillis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the point of view of someone who spent 10 years running an e-commerce store, and all its advertising, until a couple of years ago. Both SEO and search result ads on Google are dead. The hay day of being able to play the game and make a tidy profit is long gone. Google are playing every trick in the book to extract every possible cent from advertisers, spying on their business and sales to maximise their own prof…

> Both SEO and search result ads on Google are dead And then > Google's visibility of all transactions on every e-commerce website on the internet is insane. Ah, so they have all of the information and yet their ad products don't work. They don't know this?

It's not good enough that Google makes massive amounts of money for each click, the market demands they make more per each click every day. Gotta chase that growth.

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#102

Post by JPws_Prntr_Fngr » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:07 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #75

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #23

The root cause of all this madness: Ads. As long as there is even a marginal financial incentive to get human eyeballs on websites (as opposed to the viewers actually playing for services or, you know, just hosting websites for free because they are cool), this will keep getting worse. A genuine desire to help incoming traffic doesn't really matter either. Anything helpful will be infinitely cloned, as long as there…

The internet as you know it would not exist without ads.

It would exist as we knew it back in the 90s / early 00s. It would consist of Wikipedia, McMaster Carr, BBS forums, and weird guys' hobby blogs. It would be one million percent better.

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#103

Post by JPws_Prntr_Fngr » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:10 PM UTC

username135 wrote: post #14

whispersnow wrote: post #3

I am waiting for the era when SEO world is totally disrupted or destroyed by AIGC

AIGC?

Artificially Intelligent Goddamn Catastrophe

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#104

Post by notRobot » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:16 PM UTC

mvdtnz wrote: post #78

mschuster91 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the Great Reddit Strike, adding "reddit" or "inurl:reddit.com" helped in that regard pretty well.

Given that the Reddit strike was an almost complete failure it still works well.

Several niche subreddits are still offline.

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#105

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:18 PM UTC

firefoxd wrote: post #57

The majority of times when i search on google I'm looking for someone's personal take on a matter. Whether it's a software recommendation or alternative, a recipe, or experience with a tool. Google only has listicles, top x, or best in 202x. I used to search reddit, but the hostile mobile page ruined that for me. Now i go to yandex and navigate through malware to find what i want. It doesn't help that recent trend of…

Because of widespread spam, astroturfing, hidden shilling, and soon generative AI, there is no way to tell whether something written on the internet was actually someone's personal take or whether it is paid for. I'd argue there's no web forum or social media site anywhere where you can reliably say "this was posted by an actual human and was not paid for."

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#106

Post by realfeel78 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:25 PM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #11

codegeek wrote: post #4

You either play the Organic SEO game or you Pay to Play (Ads). Google as a search engine is now useless when it comes to searching for a tool/software etc because everyone has gamed the "Best software for xyz" etc. But what's the alternative ? None. There are these "review" websites like Capterra/Software Advice/G2 and again you have to pay to play. You can technically get a review from a customer and get listed BUT…

> But what's the alternative ? None. And gob help you if you dare search for alternative to _____ .

I find the site AlternativeTo.net usually helps me find good options.

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#107

Post by shmde » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:27 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #75

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #23

The root cause of all this madness: Ads. As long as there is even a marginal financial incentive to get human eyeballs on websites (as opposed to the viewers actually playing for services or, you know, just hosting websites for free because they are cool), this will keep getting worse. A genuine desire to help incoming traffic doesn't really matter either. Anything helpful will be infinitely cloned, as long as there…

The internet as you know it would not exist without ads.

This river which has turned into a giant gutter would not exist without the filth.

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#108

Post by urbandw311er » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

superasn wrote: post #21

It's so weird that Google still hasn't created the ability to block spam domains. I don't think it's a technical difficulty but rather a management decision to allow spam as long as they have their adsense ads and it baffles me they just don't care about their end users at all. I think being a monopoly with most competitors lagging a lap behind can make you this way, but with chatgpt catching up quick, Google better…

> it baffles me they just don't care about their end users at all.

Just for you, especially for you in fact, I went and dug out this link to an interview with Corey Doctorow where he explains his theory of platform of “enshittification”.

https://podtail.com/en/podcast/future-tense-full-program-pod...

I think it will interest you to hear a reasonable theory as to why Google doesn’t care as much about their end users as you might think they should.

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#109

Post by jklinger410 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote: post #102

jklinger410 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet as you know it would not exist without ads.

It would exist as we knew it back in the 90s / early 00s. It would consist of Wikipedia, McMaster Carr, BBS forums, and weird guys' hobby blogs. It would be one million percent better.

Webrings, the original Web 1.0 that many gush about on this site, were partially designed to farm adsense revenue.

AOL started putting ads on your dashboard less than 2 years after it launched.

There wasn't a very long period of ad-free internet.

Re: A glitch in the SEO matrix

#110

Post by CrzyLngPwd » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 8:31 PM UTC

Google being garbage as a search engine feels like something we could have predicted as soon as google realised ads make money.

Search engines powered by ads are simply not incentivised to send you to the best product, or even a group of the best products, since you won't click their adverts.