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As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

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Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#51

Post by pier25 »

thegrim33 wrote: post #3

This is a meta-level comment, but a technique I've been using for a while now, which I've found pretty helpful/useful, is that if an article starts off with an anecdote I immediately know not to bother reading it. It shows you that the author is more interested in pushing a feeling/emotion/story rather than relaying actual information. They're trying to manipulate how you think about the topic from the very beginning…

> They're trying to manipulate how you think about the topic from the very beginning.

Isn't giving context exactly that?

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#52

Post by wildrhythms »

fsckboy wrote: post #38

I'm old, very educated, very experienced, technical, etc. My assistant is young and none of the above. She finds everything very quickly through internet searches. However-it-is that google is interpreting search terms, that's how her brain works. I told her about a house I drove by that looked like a cool Halloween house. While I was still telling her basics about it, she was already pulling up pictures of it. I had…

How would you have phrased that query?

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#53

Post by btown »

zenincognito wrote: post #25

SEO agency owner here. Have been in the agency game for over 15 years. For whatever it's worth, here are my 2 cents. Business is booming. Not exactly dying as indicated here in the HN circles because obviously HN crowd is much further ahead in the curve. SEO is still the number one opted channel by most ecommerce stores because keywords like "red party dress" or "green shoes" are still immensely more valuable and bri…

> still a ton of keywords don't have any advertisers at all. Optimizing for these has been the number#1 revenue maker in the past 3 years.

The more Google trains its normal users that “generic queries will get you spoon-fed generic-ness, so you have to be specific to get what you want…” the more valuable placement on long-tail keywords will become. People aren’t going to stop searching, they’ll just hate Google more when doing so. And they’ll begrudgingly adapt.

The SEO industry will be fine. Startups that naturally breathe long-tail SEO will excel. Incumbent advertisers will see keyword costs rising across the board, though, and perhaps pass costs to customers. That’s not inherently a bad thing - but there’s a lot more to the debate there than just this aspect.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#54

Post by Raidion »

fsckboy wrote: post #38

I'm old, very educated, very experienced, technical, etc. My assistant is young and none of the above. She finds everything very quickly through internet searches. However-it-is that google is interpreting search terms, that's how her brain works. I told her about a house I drove by that looked like a cool Halloween house. While I was still telling her basics about it, she was already pulling up pictures of it. I had…

I think Google still deserves a ton of credit. Online shopping is tricky, but information is incredibly easy to access, especially if you do know how to avoid clicking on Quora or WebMD style sites.

Google does a great job of shepherding you towards information and at the very least gives you additional context that you can use to corroborate or tune your search.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#55

Post by smeagull »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #6

The internet was ruined when it was de anonymized by Facebook and LinkedIn etc. I remember growing up in a completely anonymous internet. You could be who you are, say what you want and explore digitally. Then you would go back to society as the real you and temper yourself a bit to fit in and work with others and that was ok because you could blow off steam on the internet.

Get this - you can have an anonymous facebook and linkedin account too.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#56

Post by userinanother »

zenincognito wrote: post #25

SEO agency owner here. Have been in the agency game for over 15 years. For whatever it's worth, here are my 2 cents. Business is booming. Not exactly dying as indicated here in the HN circles because obviously HN crowd is much further ahead in the curve. SEO is still the number one opted channel by most ecommerce stores because keywords like "red party dress" or "green shoes" are still immensely more valuable and bri…

The SEO industry has been the big winner from the crapification of Google. No surprise there

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#57

Post by smeagull »

postalrat wrote: post #45
amadeuspagel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many anonymous websites, like 4chan, and you are free to create your own, which is itself something you can do anonymously.

How are people you to find your forum if sites indexing sites like google apparently won't link to your site: https://www.google.com/search?q=anonymous+English-language+i...

You are talking as if that isn't a positive. Forums are at their best when they grow slowly.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#58

Post by wfvr »

ge96 wrote: post #47
postalrat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would gpt train from search engine data instead of the actual documents being indexed?

Not just documents, everything, every website that becomes searchable information. How would that work in the future if people don't use search engines, how does the gpt/llm bring that info in. Not saying it's not possible, would there be an API people submit their content into... Edit: actually I wonder if wikipedia will make one (model) they have so much info

The whole text of wikipedia has been included in training data for basically all LLMs since the start.

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#59

Post by pishpash »

thegrim33 wrote: post #3

This is a meta-level comment, but a technique I've been using for a while now, which I've found pretty helpful/useful, is that if an article starts off with an anecdote I immediately know not to bother reading it. It shows you that the author is more interested in pushing a feeling/emotion/story rather than relaying actual information. They're trying to manipulate how you think about the topic from the very beginning…

You mean like Quora answers from a certain country's users?

Re: As the public begins to believe Google isn’t as useful, what happens to SEO?

#60

Post by gretch »

preommr wrote: post #50
zenincognito wrote: post #25

SEO agency owner here. Have been in the agency game for over 15 years. For whatever it's worth, here are my 2 cents. Business is booming. Not exactly dying as indicated here in the HN circles because obviously HN crowd is much further ahead in the curve. SEO is still the number one opted channel by most ecommerce stores because keywords like "red party dress" or "green shoes" are still immensely more valuable and bri…

> because obviously HN crowd is much further ahead in the curve Do you actually think this or is this just a polite way of saying lots of HNers are out of touch?

I'm not the OP you replied to, but there's a scene from the movie the big short that really punched the understanding into my head:

Michael Burry: I may have been early but I'm not wrong

some exec: It's the same thing!

I believe that a lot of HN posts are probably "right", but they are so far in the future and so non-applicable to day-to-day life, that it's indistinguishable from wrong. For example, everyone predicting Google is going to end - yeah all great companies eventually come to an end - if you want to be insightful, you actually have to be on time with it.

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