It's crazy that so much content is now unaccessible due to subs going private. I don't know what to blame more: centralization of forums into one giant company like Reddit, or Google's algorithm that still shows those private Reddit pages.
Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
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Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#2I think there is a third cause: the low visibility of high quality non-Reddit forums on Google against the tide of low-quality results.
There's some kind of SEO exploit that Google is unable to counter. Apparently, by creating bot accounts on a semi-reputable social media platform like LiveJournal, Baidu or Reddit and having them post endless links to each other from website X, website X is inflated on Google even if no humans interact with any of the bot posts/accounts.
I don't work in SEO and have never bothered to investigate this, it's purely a topic that keeps coming up in the twitter posts of one of the owners of Livejournal-spinoff Dreamwidth (their account is @Rahaeli).
Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#3I think there is a third cause: the low visibility of high quality non-Reddit forums on Google against the tide of low-quality results. There's some kind of SEO exploit that Google is unable to counter. Apparently, by creating bot accounts on a semi-reputable social media platform like LiveJournal, Baidu or Reddit and having them post endless links to each other from website X, website X is inflated on Google even if…
I don't think I've ever seen a result linking to Baidu or LiveJournal, and Reddit is always legitimate content. Might be a location thing?
Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#4It's really disturbing just how bad Google search has become. For so many cases Google actually is only useful as a search interface for Reddit, StackOverflow, and other sites that accumulate (and actually garbage collect) knowledge. Without such a qualifier Google will just give you absolute SEO trash results for many types of searches.
Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#5Maybe this is a good time to mention the Web Archives browser extension [1] that offers links to various cache / archive providers for any page you visit from a toolbar button. There are many such extensions, this is the one I've been using occasionally. Simple but very useful.
I haven't tried since the beginning of the Reddit strike though, I don't use Google and I only very occasionally run into Reddit pages. I know ArchiveTeam has asked help to archive Reddit [2].
(not affiliated to anything mentioned)
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/view-page-arc...
Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#6Google should probably just buy Reddit and run it at a loss.
This may not be good for us the users, and might end up killing Reddit in the long run, but it's better for both Google and Reddit than the current situation.
Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#7I think there is a third cause: the low visibility of high quality non-Reddit forums on Google against the tide of low-quality results. There's some kind of SEO exploit that Google is unable to counter. Apparently, by creating bot accounts on a semi-reputable social media platform like LiveJournal, Baidu or Reddit and having them post endless links to each other from website X, website X is inflated on Google even if…
I don't think I've ever seen a result linking to Baidu or LiveJournal, and Reddit is always legitimate content. Might be a location thing?
That's not what I'm saying.
* Make posts linking to X on platform of choice.
* Google starts linking to X (not the posts about X).
Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#8Google should probably just buy Reddit and run it at a loss. This may not be good for us the users, and might end up killing Reddit in the long run, but it's better for both Google and Reddit than the current situation.
What's the difference for users between Google buying Reddit and Reddit just shutting down now? One promo cycle? Less?
There's no "long run" any more for Google's touch of death, like there was for Google Groups; they've gotten quite good at speed-running value destruction.
Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#9It's really disturbing just how bad Google search has become. For so many cases Google actually is only useful as a search interface for Reddit, StackOverflow, and other sites that accumulate (and actually garbage collect) knowledge. Without such a qualifier Google will just give you absolute SEO trash results for many types of searches.
I'd love the following combination:
* A search engine that only crawls and searches a whitelist of sites.
* Community functionality to vote on the contents of the whitelist.
Re: Tell HN: Google search sucks even more during Reddit blackout
#10It's really disturbing just how bad Google search has become. For so many cases Google actually is only useful as a search interface for Reddit, StackOverflow, and other sites that accumulate (and actually garbage collect) knowledge. Without such a qualifier Google will just give you absolute SEO trash results for many types of searches.
I'd love the following combination: * A search engine that only crawls and searches a whitelist of sites. * Community functionality to vote on the contents of the whitelist.
Or have it crawl anything but be able to provide allow lists the way uBlock Origin allows picking block lists.
But I'm not sure I would want an allow list approach. How to you run into new interesting websites? How would people find your new website? A block list would be good though.