Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The internet is an SEO landfill

docs.sendwithses.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 438 posts

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#251

Post by plotteddancer16 »

detaro wrote: post #229
Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: recipes, one of the potential reasons for this is that bare recipes are not copyrightable by law. Courts see them as algorithms, almost -- e.g., there are only so many ways to cook a grilled cheese sandwich. > 17 U.S.C. 102(b): In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of…

That's not quite the same as the pattern the parent describes I think: There's a longer post before the recipe, not integrated into the recipe.

Ya, I believe the OP was talking about the five pages of story-telling before the recipe that requires you to annoyingly scroll until you find the recipe ingredient list. I came here for a cookie recipe, not a story about how you discovered you liked oatmeal cookies when you were 12, but then became a raisin-cookie fanatic, before moving back to chocolate chips, when you suddenly remembered your Grandma baked you peanut butter cookies as a kid. /sic

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#252

Post by [deleted] »

avip wrote: post #247
caiocaiocaio wrote: post #14

Google any recipe, and there are at least 5 paragraphs (usually a lot more) of copy that no one will ever read, and isn't even meant for human consumption. Google "How to learn x", and you'll usually get copy written by people who know nothing about the subject, and maybe browsed Amazon for 30 minutes as research. Real, useful results that used to be the norm for Google are becoming more and more rare as time goes by…

Try google something like "how to do X on Y" or "what's the shortcut key for A in B". You have to crawl through piles of garbage like a racoon to find the one-liner you were looking for.

[deleted]

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#253

Post by jen729w »

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.

Amazing! This does something that I wish they would all do — allows me to block a site.

I never, ever, for any reason, want to see results from the Daily Mail. I don’t even care if it’s the most relevant content: I just never want to see that site in my results. I know I can block it in hosts or whatever, but that’s not what I want. I don’t even want to see the link.

I wish DDG would give me this option.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#254

Post by chrischen »

caiocaiocaio wrote: post #14

Google any recipe, and there are at least 5 paragraphs (usually a lot more) of copy that no one will ever read, and isn't even meant for human consumption. Google "How to learn x", and you'll usually get copy written by people who know nothing about the subject, and maybe browsed Amazon for 30 minutes as research. Real, useful results that used to be the norm for Google are becoming more and more rare as time goes by…

Also superficially relevant recipes or just regurgitated content.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#255

Post by dheera »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #222
dheera wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this can be done a little more intelligently. Up/downvotes should be based on the structure of the site and more so than the meaning of the content. An downvote should not mean "I disagree with this author" but rather "this site was useless spam" or "I derived no information from this site because it threw 5 popups in my face". Or if I downvote a bunch of paywall sites it should stop showing me paywall sites.…

What you're proposing in this comment doesn't even work on Reddit/HN. People don't even agree what each star represents in 5-star rating systems.

That's because those rating systems naively apply the ratings across the entire population. The average of the star ratings should be weighted by the normalized dot product of each rater's style and your rating style, or the similarity between each rater and you. A 0-star rating from someone whose preferences are orthogonal to you should not influence the average rating you see.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#256

Post by marvin-83 »

tarsinge wrote: post #217
phkahler wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grep the internet and sort by pagerank was great. Then everyone removed links that went offsite. Then link farms. The fake blogs and influencers are the evolution of link farms. Unfortunately sellers will game the system. How do we create a way for buyers to game it?

Maybe it’s time to bring back curated web directories like the original Yahoo?

Yeah, I think so.

Curation-as-a-service could even become a viable market. It's arguably already happening to a certain extent through various platforms, creators, and aggregators; but it's not really split off as its own service yet.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#257

Post by jen729w »

philippoi wrote: post #183
ehnto wrote: post #18

Search 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…

I've been lamenting this demise of Google over the last year or two, but it's been especially foul the last few months. Similar to your biking anecdote, I was trying to find any simple trouble shooting help for a home coffee brewer that suddenly stopped working. I couldn't find any results in the first 4-5 pages that weren't trying to sell me a new machine. The manufacturer is also partly to blame, because I couldn't…

I’ve tried switching over to DuckDuckGo.com a bunch of times over the years, but this time the move has stuck.

I think one of the reasons is that I do not get a bunch of the ‘smart’ stuff that Google tries to do for me. In a way it’s like using a search engine from 10 years ago ... and it’s better.

There are things that I do miss — quick cards for things like currency conversion, flight details, that sort of thing - but the mighty Duck is getting better at those, and if I need to reach in to Google I can always just !g it.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#258

Post by pbourke »

tshaddox wrote: post #181
caiocaiocaio wrote: post #14

Google any recipe, and there are at least 5 paragraphs (usually a lot more) of copy that no one will ever read, and isn't even meant for human consumption. Google "How to learn x", and you'll usually get copy written by people who know nothing about the subject, and maybe browsed Amazon for 30 minutes as research. Real, useful results that used to be the norm for Google are becoming more and more rare as time goes by…

See also: most long-form journalism.

Long-form journalism is what it’s advertised to be, at least.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#259

Post by bradleyjg »

pembrook wrote: post #239
bradleyjg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there's a trade that makes both sides better off that increases the happiness in the world. It's a Pareto improvement. When marketing convinces someone to buy something that ends up being a bad trade (i.e. the person that buys it is not made better off) then there is no such improvement and the world is not made better off.

This hints at a common sentiment I see on HN. The idea that everything you and I buy and do is very considered and intelligent. But the great unwashed masses don't put such thought into their purchases, and are being "duped" by evil conspiratorial marketing. If only everybody else was as smart as us, right? Have you considered that maybe the majority of successful companies in the world are fulfilling customer wants…

I don't consider myself immune from hucksters. On the contrary, I've certainly be tricked and manipulated before and I expect I will be again.

Given that hucksters have existed for as long as markets have, I don't have your touching faith in the power of markets to eliminate them.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#260

Post by stordoff »

wbl wrote: post #177
mostlyjason wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We expect everything on the web, including our user agent, to be free as in no cost. The only way to pay for the development cost is to sell to third parties aka advertisers. If people actually paid money to develop more advanced user agents there would be a market for them. Why do people prefer free over paid? I think people underestimate the influence of advertisers and underestimate the value of their own time spe…

The guy who posted the story of splicing a 500kW cable wasn't looking for money. He wanted to amuse people and thanks to him we got amused endlessly. The costs of putting things online are $5 per month at Digital Ocean.

> the story of splicing a 500kW cable

Do you have a link to this? I've tried googling "splicing a 500kW cable" (and variants) and haven't found much relevant.

Post reply on HN