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The internet is an SEO landfill

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Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#191

Post by zo1 »

oconnor663 wrote: post #80

> Don’t the makers of Search Engines know this? Of course they do. It’s just not in their interest to bring clarity. Because they're in a perpetual arms race against spammers. The search engines don't have a choice about any of this.

I reckon that arms-race only exists because the web is fundamentally broken due to having/allowing some level of anonymity.

If you could perma-ban a spammer's real world identity or that of his company (or any company they're a part of), then there would be no need for the arms race. Just a continual "negotiation" whereby bad behavior is informed and requested to stop. And if that entity decided to ignore such a request they'd get the nuclear option of being permanently banned from the platform. You could argue that such a system would not be that different to real-world licensing requirements/restrictions as applied to lawyers and doctors.

Just follow the identity like you would the money, and you could solve a good chunk of this issue.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#192

Post by jasode »

swayvil wrote: post #153
Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're missing is the fact that larch search engine companies have no profit motive to do this. They get the vast amount of their money from commercial ad sales -- ads for commercial results. Why would they purposefully castrate their highest paying customers? And if you think the answer is to create and host a new, independent engine, you will be hard pressed to develop a good one, and to find the money to keep…

How about a layer over Google? Take Google's search results and filter them. Any obvious barriers to that?

>Any obvious barriers to that?

Rate limits.[0]

One can't really build a robust and comprehensive (server-side) search engine on top of Google's search API. In other words, Google Inc isn't going to provide an API so powerful that one can build an "alternative to Google" with it.

On the other hand, if you're talking about a "client-side" filter instead of a new search engine, (e.g. a client-side webscraper that flips through the Google results pages), you'd run into multiple problems. E.g. random CAPTCHAS screwing up the automation script, and the difficulty of creating a "rules engine" (e.g. machine learning) on your local computer that recognizes blog articles with a commercial slant.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+search+api+rate+limit

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#193

Post by jacquesm »

alltakendamned wrote: post #104
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you, I already knew about it but had somehow forgotten.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#194

Post by probably_wrong »

RestlessMind wrote: post #141
userbinator wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the "showing results for Y, click here to search for X" when X is what you actually wanted to search for. It's ironic that, in trying to make search "human friendly", Google has also succeeded in giving it all the negative traits of a human --- the "human" that is more like a commissioned salesperson. I know the argument is that humans frequently make mistakes so "we should just show them what we think t…

> Search was much better when ... If you really believe that, maybe it is a nice startup opportunity for you :)

I have long wondered how much such a project would cost. I have no actual idea how much hard drive space would I need, nor how much processing power.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#195

Post by erikpukinskis »

RestlessMind wrote: post #155
swayvil wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our culture is a frog nailed to the floor. The nail is commerce. The frog can still sorta function. Wiggle in little circles. It ain't pretty or healthy or free. No hopping. I wonder what it would be like to not have that nail through us.

Commerce -> revenues -> viable businesses -> sustainable jobs -> peaceful livelihood prospects. No commerce -> no jobs -> unrest -> violence and wars (citation: centuries of human history). Maybe, commerce is the nail which constrains humanity both in a good and a bad sense - by providing a peaceful alternative to violent lifestyles and by creating a consumerist culture?

> (citation: centuries of human history)

That’s not a citation. And given your thesis is a sprawling abstract claim, it really needs some real citations.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#196

Post by probably_wrong »

RestlessMind wrote: post #155
swayvil wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our culture is a frog nailed to the floor. The nail is commerce. The frog can still sorta function. Wiggle in little circles. It ain't pretty or healthy or free. No hopping. I wonder what it would be like to not have that nail through us.

Commerce -> revenues -> viable businesses -> sustainable jobs -> peaceful livelihood prospects. No commerce -> no jobs -> unrest -> violence and wars (citation: centuries of human history). Maybe, commerce is the nail which constrains humanity both in a good and a bad sense - by providing a peaceful alternative to violent lifestyles and by creating a consumerist culture?

Aren't plenty of (most?) modern large scale conflicts fueled by commerce, though?

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#197

Post by SomeOldThrow »

RestlessMind wrote: post #155
swayvil wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our culture is a frog nailed to the floor. The nail is commerce. The frog can still sorta function. Wiggle in little circles. It ain't pretty or healthy or free. No hopping. I wonder what it would be like to not have that nail through us.

Commerce -> revenues -> viable businesses -> sustainable jobs -> peaceful livelihood prospects. No commerce -> no jobs -> unrest -> violence and wars (citation: centuries of human history). Maybe, commerce is the nail which constrains humanity both in a good and a bad sense - by providing a peaceful alternative to violent lifestyles and by creating a consumerist culture?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism:_Is_There...

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#198

Post by swayvil »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #143
swayvil wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Much like a spam-filter. Seems straightforward enough. What am I missing?

What you're missing is the fact that larch search engine companies have no profit motive to do this. They get the vast amount of their money from commercial ad sales -- ads for commercial results. Why would they purposefully castrate their highest paying customers? And if you think the answer is to create and host a new, independent engine, you will be hard pressed to develop a good one, and to find the money to keep…

user smt88 offered a fabulous idea :

>Wikipedia is basically an information search engine without commerce or social media. The problem is that your results page is the article itself, and you need to scroll to the bottom to get to an external site.

>It's theoretically possible to change the UI or analyze Wikipedia to make a pretty solid search engine powered by millions of person-years of curation.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#200

Post by swayvil »

jasode wrote: post #192
swayvil wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a layer over Google? Take Google's search results and filter them. Any obvious barriers to that?

>Any obvious barriers to that? Rate limits.[0] One can't really build a robust and comprehensive (server-side) search engine on top of Google's search API. In other words, Google Inc isn't going to provide an API so powerful that one can build an "alternative to Google" with it. On the other hand, if you're talking about a "client-side" filter instead of a new search engine, (e.g. a client-side webscraper that flips…

see user smt88's idea above.
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