The internet is an SEO landfill • Hacker News Board

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#31

Post by jormungand » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

hiccuphippo wrote: post #27

jormungand wrote: post #8

Unfortunately SEO ruins great, witty and brief marketing texts.

But why is that? Do search engines rank better when a text is longer? Or is it that with more words there's a higher possibility that one will match with what the user is searching? And doesn't it all just make users waste more time searching for something concrete? Maybe there's space for search engines that can summarize a page if it's long and give the user what they want.

yeah, many studies out there proving that longer text equal to better ranking; which also comes with another benefit of hitting long tail keywords.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#32

Post by dheera » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

It 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.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#33

Post by minitoar » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

theturtletalks wrote: post #21

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…

So true. Whenever I look up something now I just add Reddit afterwards. It's been working well so far, but I guess that can be manipulated as well.

Or “wiki”.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#34

Post by graeme » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

mars4rp wrote: post #28

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…

yes, at the beginning Google got a huge market share because they were able to return the better result and don't return spammy and unrelated results. but they are not doing that anymore, it is really hard to find a not spammy (what you described) result on Google these days. and other search engines are only copying the Google algorithm we need to get back to judging a web page by its content, AI should be able to h…

Google actively encourages the recipe sites to add the fluff.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#35

Post by spiderfarmer » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #32

It 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.

Upvoted.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#36

Post by cottonseed » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

I just wish search engines would let me block sites. There are maybe a dozen SEO land grabs in my domain that are trashing my search results and provide no value.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#37

Post by SomeOldThrow » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

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…

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 necessary for surviving the world.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#38

Post by saagarjha » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

jonex wrote: post #11

It started off strong, nicely illustrating the background leading to this mess, but then the conclusion falters, in particular the accusation of: "Don’t the makers of Search Engines know this? Of course they do. It’s just not in their interest to bring clarity." without any suggestions on what they could be doing to achieve that clarity. To me, it sadly seems like a losing war between the SEO-spammers and the search…

> If The spam is good enough

“Good spam” is just real content.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#39

Post by corodra » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

Question, and seo is not my field of expertise at all.

Doesn't it seem odd that an seo consultant says to pay for search result ads? In my mind, the point of seo is not to pay "per click". You may pay for a great article to be written, and pay for it to be on a site, which is fair to me. But I then expect it to be noticed because of it's own merits, quality of writing and quality of "publisher". If you also have to pay for an ad for it, why bother with the publisher or even "seo quality" writing? Just write quality while ignoring seo tactics, put it on your own domain and pay for the ad yourself.

Again, I'm no expert and I have no skin in this game. Anyones two cents? Especially if you own an ecommerce site of some sort.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#40

Post by SomeOldThrow » Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

orkon wrote: post #23

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.

Then the search engine itself would be probably thrown away :-D

My favorite parts of the internet have no relation to ads or commerce at all.... including wikipedia. When you’re looking for information commerce is a massive distraction.