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Blogwashing

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Re: Blogwashing

#21

Post by dorfsmay »

geocrasher wrote: post #12

If I wrote an article in 2015 and freshen it up with more relevant links, better writing, or some other thing, is it still published in 2015? Should I re-date it? Am I "gaming" the system by doing that? Or am I notifying my readers (all 3 of them!) that there is fresh content? This is actually a real question from me, and I'd love feedback. I look back on my stuff from a few years ago and the blog posts need fixing u…

Often dates are extremely relevant, for example a 10 year old hardware review won't be as relevant as a new one. On the other hand, blogs don:t have to be static, some programing technique might still be relevant, but need to be updated for a new version of the language.

Solution: put a "first published" and a "last updated" date, or use a wiki that makes the revisions available online and a way to link to the different revisions.

Re: Blogwashing

#22

Post by patrec »

geocrasher wrote: post #12

If I wrote an article in 2015 and freshen it up with more relevant links, better writing, or some other thing, is it still published in 2015? Should I re-date it? Am I "gaming" the system by doing that? Or am I notifying my readers (all 3 of them!) that there is fresh content? This is actually a real question from me, and I'd love feedback. I look back on my stuff from a few years ago and the blog posts need fixing u…

The most transparent way would be to add a [First Published: ..., last updated: ...] header. But if the content is really reasonably up-to-date wrt the latest publishing date, I don't think you're doing something shady.

Re: Blogwashing

#23

Post by tambourine_man »

codingslave wrote: post #15

Search is just getting worse and worse, its a problem that probably nobody can solve with the current paradigm. I think in a few years there will be a significant opening in the search market for an algorithm that manages to structure information differently

Or, some public database of the crawled web where we can apply our own algorithm.

I've always dreamed of a grep for the web, for instance. Trying to Google for code is a pain, even when quoted/verbatim.

Re: Blogwashing

#24

Post by pjc50 »

codingslave wrote: post #15

Search is just getting worse and worse, its a problem that probably nobody can solve with the current paradigm. I think in a few years there will be a significant opening in the search market for an algorithm that manages to structure information differently

Search is a battleground. There are huge amounts of money to be made from "worsening" your search results by steering them to inferior products. So search engines and blackhat SEO are locked in a permanent struggle.

Re: Blogwashing

#25

Post by greenhatman »

geocrasher wrote: post #12

If I wrote an article in 2015 and freshen it up with more relevant links, better writing, or some other thing, is it still published in 2015? Should I re-date it? Am I "gaming" the system by doing that? Or am I notifying my readers (all 3 of them!) that there is fresh content? This is actually a real question from me, and I'd love feedback. I look back on my stuff from a few years ago and the blog posts need fixing u…

If there are significant changed, I'd rather write a new post.

You can add a link to the new post somewhere on the old post.

Re: Blogwashing

#26

Post by thrower123 »

geocrasher wrote: post #12

If I wrote an article in 2015 and freshen it up with more relevant links, better writing, or some other thing, is it still published in 2015? Should I re-date it? Am I "gaming" the system by doing that? Or am I notifying my readers (all 3 of them!) that there is fresh content? This is actually a real question from me, and I'd love feedback. I look back on my stuff from a few years ago and the blog posts need fixing u…

Please, for the love of all that is holy, publish new information as a new post, don't silently update old content. You never know when some obscure bit that is contained in the old post that appears to be superseded by new material will turn out to be invaluable.

Enough old content disappears from the internet organically.

Re: Blogwashing

#27

Post by jellicle »

imgabe wrote: post #13
ddevault wrote: post #11

Another thing I see a lot is scammers scraping my blog's RSS feed and re-publishing my articles on their site, then filling it with adware. Sometimes the page they show to googlebot is completely unrelated to the page you get when clicking through.

I thought Google heavily penalized your site if the human version was different from the googlebot version

The fact that Pinterest links still appear in every search suggests this isn't true, or isn't very true.

Re: Blogwashing

#28

Post by jellicle »

Vast numbers of people are currently employed writing/updating articles with titles like "What You Need To Know About Cats In Mid-November 2019".

This is Google's fault.

Re: Blogwashing

#29

Post by ThrowAway54769 »

nicoburns wrote: post #3

Honestly, I feel like this is Google's fault. It shouldn't be prioritising new content as much as it does. The best articles are often "classics" from several years ago that haven't changed because they haven't needed to.

How is this Googles fault? They’re just following the market. People want “modern” information. They don’t want old stuff from two years ago.

Re: Blogwashing

#30

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

swalsh wrote: post #14
nicoburns wrote: post #3

Honestly, I feel like this is Google's fault. It shouldn't be prioritising new content as much as it does. The best articles are often "classics" from several years ago that haven't changed because they haven't needed to.

When I'm looking for a book, I usually look for older but still popular books. New but highly rated books are hit or miss, but those old ones that people still recommend have consistently been great reads.

I find this is especially true of fiction or infotainment books. Older fiction and popularized non-fiction usually deals with many of the same social issues faced today, but because it has stood up to the test of time, often more effectively.

Whether it’s gender identity issues, technological warfare, jingoist politicians, class struggles, leadership advice, etc., somebody already wrote about it more effectively than the huge majority of modern writers churning out books.

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