Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's right as often as he's wrong
What has he been wrong about?
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Search engines and SEO spam
331–340 of 555 posts
Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
There aren't as many blogs now as there used to be.
I find that claim surprising considering how many more people there are simply using the internet at all. Fewer unique blog domains due to “blogging” sites that aggregate users? Sounds plausible. Fewer people blogging overall? I’m not convinced yet.
I frequently append site:reddit.com to searches for a niche search term these days. I think a lot of people who would have blogged or commented on blogs are posting there instead.
Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think one of the fundamental things that make search work well about 1-2 decades ago was that web sites would link to each other, and that those links could vaguely correlate with reputation. There were link spammers, but there was actually a some decent organic content as well. What's happened since then is that almost all the normal "people linking to things they like" has gone behind walled gardens (chiefly Face…
I wish FB would be more open, but since they have all this walled garden info, are they well placed to start a competing search engine? Would be interesting if their activity could help filter out seo hackers.
FB search seems to have gotten worse and worse. Unless I can remember the specific Group where I saw something, it's very unlikely that I can find it again. And they know which posts I've been highly engaged on...
Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#334> Why not try writing a search engine specifically for some category dominated by SEO spam? Back in the olden days, there were lots of organizations that collated high quality content from the best writers. They nurtured expert writers and paid them well. They fact-checked the content and employed diligent editors and proofreaders so it was accurate and well-written. Over the years, they'd build a reputation for reli…
I tried creating a search engine for recipes. It works well and people like it, but the struggle is no one remembers that it exists and Google is just their default for search.
So from an individual developer perspective, it's very hard to get people to change their habits. And Google/duck/Bing is the one stop shop.
It's still out there, but I haven't worked on it much lately. I always think that if I had some good advertisers, a better UI, and a salary coming in, maybe it could take over some of Google's usage!
Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think one of the fundamental things that make search work well about 1-2 decades ago was that web sites would link to each other, and that those links could vaguely correlate with reputation. There were link spammers, but there was actually a some decent organic content as well. What's happened since then is that almost all the normal "people linking to things they like" has gone behind walled gardens (chiefly Face…
Why has blogs and articles stopped linking to things? I'm reading a restaurant review site, and they won't link to the restaurant. The chef name is a link to a list of all articles tagged with the chefs name, rather a wikipedia link or something useful that can tell me who that person is.
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Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#336For developers, you can remove some spam websites from Google and other search engines, with these uBlock filters: https://github.com/quenhus/uBlock-Origin-dev-filter
Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's right as often as he's wrong
What has he been wrong about?
Okay. I was gonna respond with something snarky about what a crappy mod he was, or how he was a Saint and you don't deserve to worship at his functional feet. But I'll tell you what he was wrong about: He was, as a leader and a human and a mod, petty. He pied pipered himself into a sweet spot and no one would deny he's a good coder, but there the ego took off and forever left behind a skidmark. The cool exterior, the sense of self-importance, the punching down, above all the love of spreading one's revelatory wisdom to the poor little guy; you can love that sort of thing too much, and he did. Perhaps you weren't here or didn't interact with him directly. In my view he became dismissive and derogatory toward people who worshiped him (like you) once he acquired a small degree of fame.
Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find that claim surprising considering how many more people there are simply using the internet at all. Fewer unique blog domains due to “blogging” sites that aggregate users? Sounds plausible. Fewer people blogging overall? I’m not convinced yet.
I'd believe it. As an IT consultant, I interact with a lot of people who are semi-techs themselves- mostly small business owners who are used to wearing a lot of hats, and also the type to have been motivated to run their own personal blogs about diving/photography/conlangs/quilting/gardening/whatever their personal hobbies are. Ten years ago, the majority(!) had at least something up and running, where they would po…
I think a lot of people are still writing this kind of content, but you have to look elsewhere for it: Reddit, Facebook, Twitter; to name the obvious ones. It’s also harder to find, but you can find all kinds of personal content written in comments and posts on these sites.
Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#339Google knows how to surface relevant results and they choose not to because they aren't optimizing for relevant results, they're optimizing for revenue or profit within some constraints (don't lose too many users, privacy, avoid actually terrible or completely irrelevant results). All the various suggestions in this thread plus far more complex and insightful solutions are known to Google. Most of it boils down to us…
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Re: Search engines and SEO spam
#340To some extent, I worry that the problem with search engines is that there isn't any data worth returning. Yesterday's thread talked a lot about reviews. Writing a review is hard work that requires deep domain expertise, experience with similar products, and months of testing. If you want a review for something that came out today, there is no way that work could have been done, so there simply isn't anything to find…
Maybe there's a hardware engineer out there with a decade of experience shipping and reviewing TVs publishing his thoughts to his blog. He's heard about the latest and greatest and he's offering his expectations based on the promotional material, his friends at the company, history from the brand - whatever. Maybe, if he's built a reputation of good reviews he's got a big audience. Big audience? TV brands give him an early review model.
Modern Google actually makes the content problem worse. When our notional TV blogger is starting out in our world he publishes two or three essays, nobody reads them, he stops putting in do much effort, posts occasionally, dwindles off. In a world with a perfect search engine his early essays get some attention to encourage him to post more, a feedback loop starts, and before you know it he's a full time TV reviewer.