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Google Update Tanks Traffic

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Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#81

Post by rchaud »

eloff wrote: post #5
cblconfederate wrote: post #3

Web content makers have to realize their days of monetizing are numbered. Free web content is free food for NLP algorithms , which have already become impressive. In one of the next Google updates, they will eliminate web results compeltely and just give you the predicted answers. We're bound to see original content trying to hide themselves from google in order to remain relevant.

Except nobody wants to click on something produced by an NLP algorithm. I don't doubt people will do that as they have every other shady SEO technique, but Google will continue to fight it as spam. At the end of the day I think quality content is still king and the only viable long-term SEO strategy.

Aren't Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant etc all providing answers generated by NLP algorithms? People seem to be using them pretty frequently.

Google already provides no-click search answers by scraping data from a website and bolding a paragraph that may answer your question. The branding of the original site is removed on these snippets.

How long before Google decides not to link out the website altogether?

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#82

Post by throwaway2048 »

weisbaum wrote: post #57
xamuel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you're seeing lower traffic on your site and don't feel like you need to improve the content or do something different, you deserve to be losing that traffic to someone else who does. I disagree. Suppose you're unquestionably the world expert in some niche field, and you write a site with high-quality, timeless content. It would be really infuriating if some SEO knocked you out of the search results with an adfar…

That assumes there is no progress, convergent thought, or evolution in your field and its entirely static. As an expert you should want to figure out and identify new ways to explain or communicate your field - again - sitting static is never a good idea, in any industry, ever. With that being said, google can recognize brands, influencers and leaders in a given industry - but if they dont actually explain their cont…

You are ignoring the point about how content farm adcram jibberish regularly beats out actual good content, SEO wise.

Not new cutting edge ideas that have passed your old ideas by, and Google is doing the world a favour.

A pile of garbage.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#84

Post by kobbad »

hundchenkatze wrote: post #34
kobbad wrote: post #6

This was posted by me earlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24115881

No, this is a link to a different post about the same change/glitch, not the same article. Is this a weak attempt to drive people to your blog?

not my blog :) This was the first source and wanted to share

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#85

Post by cblconfederate »

eloff wrote: post #5
cblconfederate wrote: post #3

Web content makers have to realize their days of monetizing are numbered. Free web content is free food for NLP algorithms , which have already become impressive. In one of the next Google updates, they will eliminate web results compeltely and just give you the predicted answers. We're bound to see original content trying to hide themselves from google in order to remain relevant.

Except nobody wants to click on something produced by an NLP algorithm. I don't doubt people will do that as they have every other shady SEO technique, but Google will continue to fight it as spam. At the end of the day I think quality content is still king and the only viable long-term SEO strategy.

As NLP models keep increasing in size, they 'll reach the scale of the google index, and they give better answers. It's basically a huge associative memory that can produce responses it has and hasn't seen -it s definitely the evolution of searching.

Google has strategically bought every browser address box. It has eliminated the referrer , so websites don't know what search keywords led them there. It owns the whole process, and at this point , web content is just fodder for the next iterations of NLP models. It's already become cheap enough and it will become unmonetizable (unless it's opinion content, which is fodder for endless social media rambling).

Currently the most monetizable content is video. This might take longer to commoditize as deepfakes are still too early.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#86

Post by [deleted] »

rchaud wrote: post #81
eloff wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except nobody wants to click on something produced by an NLP algorithm. I don't doubt people will do that as they have every other shady SEO technique, but Google will continue to fight it as spam. At the end of the day I think quality content is still king and the only viable long-term SEO strategy.

Aren't Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant etc all providing answers generated by NLP algorithms? People seem to be using them pretty frequently. Google already provides no-click search answers by scraping data from a website and bolding a paragraph that may answer your question. The branding of the original site is removed on these snippets. How long before Google decides not to link out the website altogether?

[deleted]

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#87

Post by adventured »

tgb wrote: post #31
system2 wrote: post #29

When will people learn? From the article: "partly my fault for building my business around organic search and failing to diversify over the years" Build real businesses, solve real business problems and stop depending on search engine SEO niche sites. One way or another either the competition eats you and write all your content with more links or search engine drops you or blacklist you then you are dead. This is NOT…

What's the alternative for content like this?

A newsletter format perhaps, meant to eventually make the website merely a side bonus. Depending on how they're done, newsletters can be wildly lucrative, far more so than a site like PainScience.

I scanned his site, I see no newsletter. I think that's an extraordinary mistake, to not have been leveraging all that free Google traffic all those years to build up something like that. You use the free Google traffic to make Google unnecessary to your business, that should always be your focus (of what to utilize the Google traffic for) while the freebie traffic is still flowing.

100% this guy would have been better off building a wholly independent newsletter type service that had zero dependence on Google and could be built out via other means (once it's cash flowing you can legitimately advertise it to build subscribers up, it becomes free-standing and self-building as a real business, Google is almost entirely cut out of the situation then, and anything you get from Google traffic is a bonus). The beauty of a newsletter, again if it's applicable to what you're doing, is it's a free agent, you're not going to be dependent on a singular traffic source, you can take advantage of all of them without much fear of losing your business because one traffic source vanishes.

He still has some search traffic, I'd put all of my effort into building a newsletter on the back of what's left, there might still be time to unlock from Google this way while using Google's remaining search traffic to kick free.

As a bonus he can also still sell/promo his books via a newsletter.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#88

Post by Veen »

colinmhayes wrote: post #61
aresant wrote: post #27

Years ago a Google engineer on HN infamously said something to the effect of "Google considers SEO / free traffic a BUG" - somebody have that link handy?

Of course Google considers SEO a bug. The entire point of SEO is tricking google into thinking a page should be the top result. Google's goal isn't to always show the page with the best SEO, it's to show the page the searcher is searching for. Google has been in a continuous battle to stop SEO since it's inception.

> The entire point of SEO is tricking google into thinking a page should be the top result.

Many SEO professionals help businesses by writing the content people search for. Their goal is not to trick Google, but to write content that deserves the top spot. A mattress retailer may not have the first clue how to write content that is useful to people who want to buy mattresses, but SEOs and professional writers can do it for them.

Additionally, Mr. Mattress Retailer has no idea about the technical aspects of content that help Google to understand it: site navigation, meta data, schema data, and so on. Technical SEOs can help them out. The result is content that's relevant to the right audience, informative, and published with all the extra stuff that helps Google to make sense of it.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#89

Post by adventured »

sjs382 wrote: post #47

> POST REMOVED > With apologies, I have taken this post down: it has attracted a lot more attention than I expected, and I need to reconsider what I want to say on this topic.

They got spooked that Google will finish the job out of spite now that the post is getting so much attention. The focus shifted to fear of losing what's remaining (they mentioned it's still just barely paying the bills).

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#90

Post by ghaff »

tehjoker wrote: post #79
ghaff wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How is that "deserved"? It may be deserved because that's what many people want rather than a plain vanilla list of ingredients and instructions.

I haven't met a single person that prefers the current state of things. Every time my friends and I search for a recipe we are constantly annoyed by having to scroll through a story that appears to be there simply for ad placement or SEO.

I have zero issue with finding a basic recipe if that's what I want. I prefer background and context.
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