Google Update Tanks Traffic

#1

Post by iamjdg » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

Google Update Tanks Traffic
painscience.com

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#2

Post by tlarkworthy » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

Glitch? Post was Aug 11th matching :

"Google Webmasters @googlewmc · Aug 11 On Monday we detected an issue with our indexing systems that affected Google search results. Once the issue was identified, it was promptly fixed by our Site Reliability Engineers and by now it has been mitigated. Thank you for your patience!"

https://mobile.twitter.com/googlewmc/status/1293212810474921...

Edit: author says no https://mobile.twitter.com/tomlarkworthy/status/129398818471...

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#3

Post by cblconfederate » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

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.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#4

Post by hinkley » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

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.

Given how often I get top results that are clearly machine-generated content, I anticipate a lot of broken overfitting will happen in the near term.

If you train NLP on text generated by NLP, you're gonna have a bad time.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#5

Post by eloff » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

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.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#6

Post by kobbad » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

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

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#7

Post by colejohnson66 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #4

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.

Given how often I get top results that are clearly machine-generated content, I anticipate a lot of broken overfitting will happen in the near term. If you train NLP on text generated by NLP, you're gonna have a bad time.

Now I’m curious: what would happen if one repeatedly trained GPT-3 on text generated by a “previous generation” GPT-3? (Similar time successive JPEG saves)

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#8

Post by idoh » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

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.

The point is that SEO itself is not a long term strategy.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#9

Post by paulcole » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

idoh wrote: post #8

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.

The point is that SEO itself is not a long term strategy.

"SEO" has worked for 20+ years. What SEO is changes but it will always be a viable strategy.

Re: Google Update Tanks Traffic

#10

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #7

hinkley wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how often I get top results that are clearly machine-generated content, I anticipate a lot of broken overfitting will happen in the near term. If you train NLP on text generated by NLP, you're gonna have a bad time.

Now I’m curious: what would happen if one repeatedly trained GPT-3 on text generated by a “previous generation” GPT-3? (Similar time successive JPEG saves)

I'm pretty sure it would drift further and further from something a human would recognize as intelligible.