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The internet is an SEO landfill

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Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#321

Post by pascalxus »

corodra wrote: post #50
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…

Those are the absolute worst. A recipe with someone's jackass life story for 2000 words. You start to wonder if it's even a recipe at all. You have to scroll for a good minute, hoping you didn't miss the recipe. Then come the ads that reformat the size of the page. Everything jumps around and you have to rescroll again. Exactly why I stick to cookbooks in the past year or so. More and more, "fuck the internet", long…

oooh but look at all that "Dwell time", that's how google's algorithm knows you're having a great time.

I switched over to duck duck go several months ago. it's just as good as google for almost everything.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#322

Post by moltar »

lostctown wrote: post #302
calcifer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then change www.reddit.com to old.reddit.com You can opt-out of the redesign in your settings so www.reddit.com and old.reddit.com both show the old reddit, and you can use new.reddit.com to view new-only pages.

I'm logged out by default and only log in to comment, which is rare. I don't like leaving my username up for display if a friend/family member has to borrow my laptop for something. I've engaged in a couple of communities that are a little more counter-cultural than my peers.

There’s an extension that redirects to old reddit.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#323

Post by wmeredith »

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…

You could always, stay with me here, pay for content. Cooks Illustrated (no affiliation) is an awesome resource for those interested in recipes that are proven without the garbage.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#324

Post by pdimitar »

nickfromseattle wrote: post #311

This is 100% how search engine optimization works, the consultants are correct. As a marketer, when I search for marketing information on Google 70%-90% of the time all of the stuff on the 1st page generally isn't teaching me anything I didn't already know. But as someone who does this exact thing, I know how expensive good content is - hiring an author to write 3,000 words of valuable information for a reader can co…

What I don't like about your line of thinking is that creating such content should even cost money.

Knowledge should be free at our point in time and supposed evolutional stage. But it's not.

I'd gladly donate some local lectures on the stuff I know if I had the time. But I wouldn't charge money for it.

Knowledge should be free. And internet should have become mega yellow pages on steroids like a decade ago.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#325

Post by p1necone »

dheera wrote: post #54
corodra wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are the absolute worst. A recipe with someone's jackass life story for 2000 words. You start to wonder if it's even a recipe at all. You have to scroll for a good minute, hoping you didn't miss the recipe. Then come the ads that reformat the size of the page. Everything jumps around and you have to rescroll again. Exactly why I stick to cookbooks in the past year or so. More and more, "fuck the internet", long…

One thing about cookbooks is that the massive barrier to actually publishing and distributing is a natural filter for credibility; most cookbooks have tried-and-true recipes and are either authentic or a genuinely good adaptation by a skilled chef author. The internet is full of garbage recipes that either just don't work, inauthentic, and uncreative, all at the same time. As far as murdering trees go -- let's not fo…

I don't know about that - for every one 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat' there's 99 'middle aged white persons easy diet fad of the year 5 minute meals'. Published cook books dont really seem better to me.

There seems to be two distinct 'genres' of cookbooks. One written by people who have studied cooking, and one written by people that have studied marketing.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#326

Post by pdimitar »

blunte wrote: post #236

Indeed most of the content on the web is SEO fluff or veiled attempts to push an affiliate link. Worse, almost every site has a cookie “preference” popup (when everyone knows the preference is just the minimum necessary cookies), a newsletter signup popup, and a browser notification request popup. Add to that the autoplaying videos that will pop out into their own overlay if you scroll away plus the rotating ads of d…

I still remember to this day the experience I had with the Miranda IM messenger -- I was signed it to at least 6 services (ICQ, AIM, Yahoo and a few others). 40MB of RAM during the time when 1GB RAM on an average PC became the affordable norm, no lag ever, instant rendering, everything works instantly, plus a lot of possible customisation -- themes, emoticon packs, you name it.

Same with web. Search for something, get 7 useful results on the first page, get your work done in minutes. No banners, no ads, no consent popups, no constant nagging for signups. Just content and some personal expression -- which, while comical at places, is still vastly preferable to the crap show we are enduring today.

Fast forward 12-15 years forward and I am absolutely amazed how awful the state of the desktop and the web is. Things are only getting worse with time.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#327

Post by rorykoehler »

corodra wrote: post #159
com2kid wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of this is that the cookbooks rarely have super niche recipes. Even some of the highest rated "authentic" cookbooks have the flavor level tuned way down to be more "suitable for American tastes". The best cooking tutorials are barely translated Youtube videos. Or even better, recipes going through Google Translate. (Or get a multi-lingual friend... :) ) Cook's Illustrated also does some 100% legit inter…

I absolutely understand what you're getting at. But, I have a reason to disagree. I find cookbooks help expand the cultural horizons to cooking. Only because you can get "authentic" cookbooks of other countries. The Polish ones I have, are in Polish. So, that's easy. The French ones I have, though in English, are written either originally by Frenchies and translated or they also know English and have a good editor. S…

Cultural is just one dimension. I've had to change my diet drastically recently for health reasons and the niche I fall into (no starch, no dairy, very low sugar others known as no dairy keto) is barely catered for, even on the Internet.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#328

Post by c22 »

mostlyjason wrote: post #94
nitrogen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original designers of the web envisioned a world where every user could have their own chosen "agent" to navigate the web for them. This is where the User-Agent HTTP header comes from. There would be search agents, data mining agents, and interactive browsing agents. We missed out on like 90% of what the information revolution was supposed to bring to users, and instead the data giants have captured all the value…

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…

> We expect everything on the web, including our user agent, to be free as in no cost.

I don't think this was an accident. Back in the 90's I paid for Netscape Navigator and for email. People used to even pay money to indexed by search engines (like paying to be in the Yellow Pages). Companies started "giving these things away" in a calculated move that I guess the nascent web population was just not cynical enough to reject.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#329

Post by SomeOldThrow »

codetrotter wrote: post #109
SomeOldThrow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 necessar…

> I would pay a massive amount of money for a search engine with a “no commercial results” switch. Yeah but what does that even mean. How do you define commercial? Who is going to go through all of the pages and categorizing them into commercial and non-commercial? And how do you keep shills and “influencers” from littering your results with seemingly innocent but actually commercial content?

Agreed that it’s semantically tricky but if you give me a bag of heuristics to work with it’d be worlds better than what we have now.

Keep in mind there is incentive to have a commercial meta tag so that when I’m actually looking for a good or service I’d be able to easily find it (or see the lack of it). The other 99% of the time ads and products are just an annoying distraction and a waste of money to serve.

TBH google kind of sucks for looking for stuff, amazon + reddit recommendations are my main source of surfacing things I want to buy.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#330

Post by 1123581321 »

Filligree wrote: post #179
1123581321 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use a Mac, DevonThink and its associated products are great examples of paid user agents that seek out and organize information for you. Their free trials are fairly generous.

I don't use a mac. Is there any equivalent for other platforms?

The closest I’ve ever found is https://www.zootsoftware.com/ - famously championed by James Fallows of The Atlantic. I don’t believe its web crawling tools are as sophisticated as Devon Technologies’, but it can do a lot and has a lot of power tools to process what it ingests. I haven’t used it since 2010, so my information may be out of date.
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