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Blogwashing

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Re: Blogwashing

#81

Post by cardiffspaceman »

jakobegger wrote: post #69

Another great trick is just increasing version numbers in your blog posts! People look for content relevant to their version number, so you should just make sure you have copies of your content with all the version numbers people might search for! And with version numbers, you are not limited to dates in the past, you can even write articles about the future! Here's a brilliant example: https://gorails.com/setup/ubun…

But won't their article be old in April, and get less viewership than the one some other author is holding back until day-of?

Re: Blogwashing

#82

Post by mic47 »

geocrasher wrote: post #12

If I wrote an article in 2015 and freshen it up with more relevant links, better writing, or some other thing, is it still published in 2015? Should I re-date it? Am I "gaming" the system by doing that? Or am I notifying my readers (all 3 of them!) that there is fresh content? This is actually a real question from me, and I'd love feedback. I look back on my stuff from a few years ago and the blog posts need fixing u…

To me, the date in the blog is indication how relevant it is. So if you updated links and info in 2y blog to make it relevant again, I don't mind if the date would be today. But probably best would be to put 2 dates: original publish date, and date last modification/relevance.

Re: Blogwashing

#83

Post by cortesoft »

nicoburns wrote: post #3

Honestly, I feel like this is Google's fault. It shouldn't be prioritising new content as much as it does. The best articles are often "classics" from several years ago that haven't changed because they haven't needed to.

It depends on what you are looking for. I was having issues after an OS update and was looking for help, and ended up finding all sorts of out of date info for previous updates. Had to look for more recent posts.

Re: Blogwashing

#84

Post by msla »

puranjay wrote: post #66
nicoburns wrote: post #3

Honestly, I feel like this is Google's fault. It shouldn't be prioritising new content as much as it does. The best articles are often "classics" from several years ago that haven't changed because they haven't needed to.

I work in content marketing so SEO is a big part of my work focus. Google's algorithm tends to classify queries as "evergreen" and otherwise. With the former, recency doesn't seem to matter that much. I've had content stick a page 1 ranking for 3+ years without any updates. For non-evergreen keywords, recency matters a lot. A fresh article on an established domain can often outrank better, but older content. The quer…

https://yarchive.net/

This website is a curated archive of Usenet posts.

It's far from universal, but if you understand quality content, you will recognize it here:

https://yarchive.net/comp/risc_definition.html John Mashey talking about RISC vs CISC.

https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/lost+found.html Ted Ts'o on lost+found.

... and plenty more.

Re: Blogwashing

#85

Post by mikorym »

> It's almost 2020... Google knows about this

Google also knows about vertical search [1] and actively destroys anyone who pops up with a good new algorithm and hope for a startup.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_search. I am pretty sure there has been a HN frontpage article about a couple with a vertical search startup that was legally and practically destroyed by Google.

Re: Blogwashing

#86

Post by vinaypai »

Interesting that the text in the search bar in the screenshot says "AWS Pinpoint Alternatives" doesn't actually line up with the text at the bottom where it says "Searches related to Send with SES — AWS Pinpoint Alternative" and you only see 5 pages of results. The text at the bottom should repeat the search phrase verbatim.

I get completely different results on Google if I actually search for the phrase in the search bar, with no sign of the blog in question. I see zero evidence that the scummy SEO tactic actually works and a lot more evidence of a faked "Google" screenshot.

Re: Blogwashing

#87

Post by jessriedel »

mikorym wrote: post #85

> It's almost 2020... Google knows about this Google also knows about vertical search [1] and actively destroys anyone who pops up with a good new algorithm and hope for a startup. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_search . I am pretty sure there has been a HN frontpage article about a couple with a vertical search startup that was legally and practically destroyed by Google.

First, does this have anything to do with the OP article? Second, care to link to anything to substantiate your claims?

Re: Blogwashing

#88

Post by dredmorbius »

swalsh wrote: post #14
nicoburns wrote: post #3

Honestly, I feel like this is Google's fault. It shouldn't be prioritising new content as much as it does. The best articles are often "classics" from several years ago that haven't changed because they haven't needed to.

When I'm looking for a book, I usually look for older but still popular books. New but highly rated books are hit or miss, but those old ones that people still recommend have consistently been great reads.

No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers. So that if a man wishes to improve himself in any subject he must guard against immediately seizing the newest books written upon it, in the assumption that science is always advancing and that the older books have been made use of in the compiling of the new. They have, it is true, been used; but how? The writer often does not thoroughly understand the old books; he will, at the same time, not use their exact words, so that the result is he spoils and bungles what has been said in a much better and clearer way by the old writers; since they wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject. He often leaves out the best things they have written, their most striking elucidations of the matter, their happiest remarks, because he does not recognise their value or feel how pregnant they are. It is only what is stupid and shallow that appeals to him. An old and excellent book is frequently shelved for new and bad ones; which, written for the sake of money, wear a pretentious air and are much eulogised by the authors’ friends. In science, a man who wishes to distinguish himself brings something new to market; this frequently consists in his denouncing some principle that has been previously held as correct, so that he may establish a wrong one of his own. Sometimes his attempt is successful for a short time, when a return is made to the old and correct doctrine. These innovators are serious about nothing else in the world than their own priceless person, and it is this that they wish to make its mark. They bring this quickly about by beginning a paradox; the sterility of their own heads suggests their taking the path of negation; and truths that have long been recognised are now denied — for instance, the vital power, the sympathetic nervous system, generatio equivoca, Bichat’s distinction between the working of the passions and the working of intelligence, or they return to crass atomism, etc., etc. Hence the course of science is often retrogressive.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer, "On Authorship and Style"

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/...

Emphasis, and wall of text, in the original.

Re: Blogwashing

#89

Post by stanislavb »

hinkley wrote: post #73
nicoburns wrote: post #3

Honestly, I feel like this is Google's fault. It shouldn't be prioritising new content as much as it does. The best articles are often "classics" from several years ago that haven't changed because they haven't needed to.

I run into a similar problem trying to chose libraries for projects. There's one project that is 'active'. Are they active because they're better, or because they arrived late to the party and are reinventing the wheel. This other project is 8 years old and has hardly been touched in 2 years. Is that because it takes 4 years to cover the entire domain and a couple years to fix all the bugs that can be fixed? Or becau…

You can have a look on LibHunt next time. Apart from project activity, you can compare different libs by their relevant popularity. That should help you make a better decision. E.g. https://ruby.libhunt.com/categories/21-a-b-testing

(disclosure - I've built libhunt)

Re: Blogwashing

#90

Post by dredmorbius »

sdegutis wrote: post #64
djsumdog wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a HN post a few weeks ago showing how Duck Duck Go was better at showing old content. I totally agree. We like what's fresh and new, but next time you go to a blog and read some tech article; look through their archive and see what else they've written. If you run your own blog, keep an easily indexd archive page. Mine goes back to 2007: https://battlepenguin.com/archives/

I had a blog for a decade but I realized that I would post something and nobody would read it, but then a famous programmer would post the same thing in their own blog a year later and everyone would hear about it. So I concluded that blogs are only for the well known programmers and that it’s a waste of my time to share my thoughts with “the web” as a general entity. Instead I share my thoughts with individuals when…

My own blogging has served, variously:

- As a public record of the evolution of my ideas and thinking. (Often embarassing.)

- As a reference for things I've found useful, and contextualised.

- A place I can post my highly original thoughts ... to be told "oh, X came up with that years / decades / centuries / millennia ago." Happens far more often than I'd have ever dreamed.

- As a place I can refer to / link to my own best efforts at explaining some idea or principle. Rewriting from scratch continuously is tedious.

- Rarely, for discussion.

- As a very loose bookmarking service. (Only a small fraction of references end up there, but the ones which do tend to be significant.)

- Something of a shingle, though I've not leveraged that as yet.

Every so often a particular post will take off, and it's generally exciting when it does. Rarely the pieces I pour my sweat and tears into, though that happens occasionally. What the World decides to Take an Interest in is a wonderously fickle phenomenon.

There's also the tinkering on the blog itself as a technical means of presenting, distributing, and organising information, which I find interesting.

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