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

401–410 of 438 posts

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#401

Post by vxNsr »

I honestly think the only way back from this is to curated lists like in the old days.

Or specialized search engines. as a user I'm often using byzantine strings of words to get the result I want because of all the SEO if I had access to an engine that only had programming related stuff, or only had recipe related websites, or only political stuff I think I would have an easier time searching it would also give the creators of the specific content an easy place to post their wares.

Kinda like specialized torrent sites. Ever since I got access to content specific torrent sites I haven't used public sites, and I have only had to use private general sites once or twice.

Because the search-engine is content specific it'll be better at organizing the information and surfacing what I'm interested in finding, I think there will still be a place for google but it'll be less useful than it is today.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#402

Post by thirdsun »

angel_j wrote: post #387
lostctown wrote: post #121

I append "reddit" to any query not meant for a productive task. Except now the internet is mostly reddit for me, which kinda bums me out. Especially given the new js-heavy design. In 2019, if I want reliable search about something I know nothing about I must first search on google, then try again with "reddit" appended, then change www.reddit.com to old.reddit.com, then parse through what are often questionable answe…

The SEO mongers are on to that search already. I get spam blog posts with reddit in the title for no reason.

Isn't that solved by using the more specific filter site:reddit.com?

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#403

Post by cylinder »

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…

Yep, maybe using magazines and other gatekeepers of quality was not such a bad idea.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#404

Post by cylinder »

graeme wrote: post #34
mars4rp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why doesn't Google disrupt itself -- the most concise, cleanest pages that focus on what the user is actually looking for (recipe, not a narrative) should be #1. It's even in Google's interest!

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#405

Post by cylinder »

Angostura wrote: post #280
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…

To be honest, I just tend to use one recipe site now - BBC Good Food. I ended up subscribing to the magazine since I was getting so many recipes from there. The user ratings on the recipes don't seemed to be gamed either - since there is no incentive to do so.

I just add "serious eats" to my searches.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#406

Post by thirdsun »

MisterTea wrote: post #287
mythrwy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who thinks Reddit really sucks? It's a cesspool of kiddie memes, shock, ill informed opinion and political posturing. Besides, if I wanted to search Reddit I'd go to Reddit. It being front page for _everything_ I search for now is so annoying.

I was really late to the reddit party and only made an account a few years ago. Thought it would be a great technical resource... Every time I had a more advanced question the place seemed to fall flat. You'd go to a very specific sub thinking there should be some informative people but you come to find it's full of people in the same boat as you. They wind up guessing or throwing out whatever to get karma simply bei…

As always: It depends. There are great communities and in-depth discussions on niche topics to be found on reddit, but of course there's a lot of low quality content. Particularly when it comes to product recommendations, many reddit communities seem to have become an echo chamber and settled on the same few products they have been suggesting for a while. Often those aren't necessarily bad recommendations, but they are far from in-depth and rarely backed by any actual experience with or tests of the product in question - instead it's become a popularity contest.

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#408

Post by dasv »

wbl wrote: post #309
stordoff wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/ is the version I've found.

Warning (NSFW?): if you're coming from HN, the link redirects to this somewhat entertaining image https://imgur.com/32R3qLv

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#409

Post by DrScump »

guelo wrote: post #363
CondensedBrain wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "I've also enjoyed the organic explosion of low carb cooking that has happened online. I have been witness to the community growing from its very beginnings less than a decade ago when it was just some people trying to make weight loss taste good" This is way older than a decade. I knew people getting into it and sharing recipes on Usenet. The current boom is new, but online low carb communities are ancient in int…

The original low carb fad was Dr Atkin's diet in the late 90s.

Atkins goes back to the 1980s, and keto diets well preceded him.

There was already an active Usenet community for lowcarb diets in the late 1990s (alt.support.diet.low-carb).

Re: The internet is an SEO landfill

#410

Post by dagw »

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…

is how much they admit they're stealing from their grandma.

Does that still work? Most people's grandmas today where very much alive and cooking in both the 70s, 80s and even 90s and thus as steeped as anybody in all the international influences and 'foreign' ingredients that those decades brought.

the way the internet treats cooking is retarded.

And here you and I disagree. I like the way that 'modern' cooking is willing to revisit well established and 'sacred' truths about food and put them to the test. Perhaps a housewife in the 1920s isn't the authoritative source on the best way to prepare a dish, and even if she is there is no way to know without someone actually testing that hypothesis. Sites like Serious Eats and all the sites they begat bring both rigor and the joy of experimentation back into cooking. I mean why not substitute one thing for another just to see what happens or apply the 'wrong' technique to a standard dish? Many a dish that is considered a 'classic' today no doubt got their start that way.

Post reply on HN