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Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

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Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#431

Post by pixl97 »

layer8 wrote: post #400
Kalium wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask an email administrator how well decentralization works at scale. It should be concerning that email has re-centralized to deal with all the problems that come from federation and decentralization.

That’s not the reason email has re-centralized. It’s because big-tech companies provide it for free in order to bind users to their services, and at least in the case of Google, also to collect data and drive ads. As someone who administrates their own email server and works at an SMB who administrates their own email servers, it works quite well and doesn’t require centralization.

"When mice march with elephants it's in the mices best interest to be cautious"

I've done a lot of a lot of email administration over the years, servers with 100,000s of accounts, and you walk a very fine line in being able to communicate with the rest of the world. Your IPs must exist in certain blocks (or at least not be in banned blocks). You must block outgoing spam messages at a much higher rate and quality than google/hotmail do. Get yourself blacklisted for any reason and expect to disappear from the internet, meanwhile no one is going to block the largest services.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#432

Post by dotancohen »

dazc wrote: post #420
jacobsimon wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the parent commenter - have you set up google search console and reviewed what pages and keywords were affected? There could be other reasons why your pages aren't being indexed properly. If it's a small site, it could have been something as simple as changing an image or page title.

I have never found search console useful for anything other than random 404's and one-off server errors. When a site is hit by an algorithmic penalty there is never any clue as to why.

This is my experience as well. If someone could mention how to examine the console to improve a site after an algo change, I would absolutely love to hear it .

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#433

Post by wslh »

samdung wrote: post #165

The internet is an SEO landfill ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20256764 ) This is a related discussion from about 5 years ago about how SEO is ruining search. Google still seems to have a thick enough skin and a monopoly to get away with crap even after so many years of ruining search.

Seems like Larry Page and Sergey Brin should return to Stanford to do a postdoc. Irony intended.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#434

Post by rustcleaner »

pixl97 wrote: post #357
CuriouslyC wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fix is a decentralized search network with nodes linked to people or legitimate businesses. You manually distribute trust to friends and businesses you like, and you can manually revoke that trust, with some network level trust effects occurring based on spammy/malicious behavior.

You know why you don't see systems like this at any scale Because they don't work.

I think they would work fine if the surveillance and advertising industry were overnight christened criminal enterprises and users had to start paying for what was once '''free''' (cost of entry: pieces of your soul, bit by bit).

Decentralized has a small convenience cost and the crime of surveilling everyone to advertise to them (among other uses) is too cheap for decentralized to come out on top. Note I am Atheist when I say this: if law doesn't hammer the scourge, those who get religious about this stuff are the ones who'll enjoy any modicum of sovereignty.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#435

Post by rchaud »

throwup238 wrote: post #129
tonyarkles wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked up Cookie and Kate. On my iPad I had to flick 7 times to get past the exposition on Crispy Roasted Chickpeas and find the actual ingredients. When I found the ingredients, they occupied a small squeezed sliver of the page. As I was counting the number of simultaneous ads surrounding the ingredient list (4 separate ads), a pop up covered them all and suggested I sign up for her newsletter. The recipe loo…

The problem is that Google started weighing time spent on page very heavily in their ranking algorithm - I don't remember at what point this happened but it must be about a decade ago by now. Every time a user clicks a Google result without using "Open in New Tab" and clicks the back button, Google gets a signal about how long they spent on the page. The longer a user spends on the site, the stronger the signal. Once…

Google also massively reduced AdSense payouts over the years as well.

Result? Adsense-based websites started jamming in more ads per page to maintain their old revenue levels. Pages became longer so that more ads could be thrown in.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#436

Post by dsq »

wickedsight wrote: post #197

Last year a friend and I made a website about the Nurburgring. It provided basic info for first time visitors that we were missing on our first visit. My friend spent a lot of time creating a UI with a custom map for displaying locations and routes. I wrote a bunch of content that was thoroughly researched. At a certain point we ended up being invited by one of the largest rental companies to see whether we could wor…

Did you any problem building a site on a proprietary subject like Nurburgring? Its private. Dont they have copyright, etc.

Did you get an agreememt with them or is it not an issue in Germany?

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#437

Post by meristohm »

I read through to the end, skipping swathes of GPT-3 nonsense, and I don't really want to use the wider internet anymore. Of course I will for awhile yet, buy these feelings add up, I'm getting older, and I have the luxury of being able to go without it except in service to others (medical portals, work email and related websites). If I hadn't opened HN I'd be out preparing the garden that much sooner, but The Luddite looks resonant, and I appreciate learning about it.

Like quitting caffeine and related decaffeinated drinks (no coffee or tea is grown in WA that I know of, and I sleep better now anyway), and eventually chocolate (ditto, but much harder to let go of), quitting the internet is happening in fits and starts.

Going to put the next layer of compost onto our wee garden bed, longing for unfenced, ecologically-balanced land instead, with the massive centuries-old Douglas-fir still standing. I am reminded every day of our short-sightedness, by the huge stumps and fairy-ring encircled low spots.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#438

Post by rustcleaner »

elorant wrote: post #384
cess11 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean, "legitimate companies"? You seem to have misunderstood the difference between an advertising agency and a SEO company. What you're describing is what advertising agencies do, SEO companies are spammers that sell access to their spamming tools. It's similar to the difference between an agency practicing law and having them send a cease-and-desist, and buying a DDoS. Not that I'm particularly fond of…

A plastic surgeon is a legitimate business. How on earth would a business like that promote its site and gain visitors? By paying exuberant fees on keyword auctions on AdWords? It's way more affordable to just pay a PR firm, or a SEO company to publish an advertorial on a news site. And no, not all companies that sell SEO are spammers. Grow up, please. Some of you guys need to get your heads out of your butts and rea…

>A plastic surgeon is a legitimate business.

At this point, the argument has lost good faith.

ADDENDUM: for comprehension, not plastic surgeons.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#439

Post by xandrius »

Tommix11 wrote: post #193
petepete wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard that word, perhaps it's more of an American expression? In the UK we'd probably say bittersweet.

Tragicomic is used often in Swedish (Tragikomiskt). There is a nuance difference between tragicomic and bittersweet. Bittersweet is when you daughter moves out to her own place,it's sad that your kid grew up but also great, it's bittersweet but not tragicomic. Tragicomic is when something is so screwed up that the only thing you can do is laugh at it.

Exactly this, well put.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#440

Post by gofreddygo »

jacobsimon wrote: post #380
sharpshadow wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google be like: this website performs well on the ranking, does it have AdSense, no, downrank.

To the parent commenter - have you set up google search console and reviewed what pages and keywords were affected? There could be other reasons why your pages aren't being indexed properly. If it's a small site, it could have been something as simple as changing an image or page title.

> could have been something as simple as changing an image

Or something nefarious like Google skewing their algo to favor websites with more placeholders for google's ads.

You know the consistent allegations against Google on this topic from long time insiders and my personal experience of terrible search results does not allow me to apply Occam's razor at all. Instead its the inverse of assuming malice.

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