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A glitch in the SEO matrix
- bbischof 3y agoSEO is dead, or it's so back, I have no idea. (not OC)
- steveBK123 3y agowhile true;do echo "its over\n";sleep 1;echo "we're so fkn back\n";sleep 1;done
- jtriangle 3y agoThat's never gonna rank well on google unless you add 6-700 words about why it works along with pictures and links to other high value blogs talking about your key points. Welcome to hell.
- whispersnow 3y agoI am waiting for the era when SEO world is totally disrupted or destroyed by AIGC
- ceejayoz 3y agoThe SEO world is gonna love AIGC. I'm sure it's already in wide usage there; it makes the convincing-but-fake review websites trivial to stand up in quantity. It's the real content that's going to get disrupted/destroyed.
- safety1st 3y agoYes, I know a few SEO/SEMs. They're ecstatic at the moment with how much easier and cheaper AI has made it for them to pump out shitty content. This is already underway and it's already the case that Google is sending you to a bunch of mediocre articles that were written mostly by an AI. The real question is what happens once that trend compounds over the next 2-3 years. It is working right now so it is going to 10x.
- plagiarist 3y agoAIGC is absolutely already here. Recently I was trying to find information about a miter slot on a piece of equipment. One of the more helpful articles had a quick shout-out to miter slots in the middle of a listicle about casino slot machines.
- qingcharles 3y agoIt's been in use since at least 2006 that I know of. That's when I was first let onto it by a friend running a big content farm. Now it's absolutely out of control. I use it myself generously to help me write articles, but you have to be incredibly careful because it so frequently hallucinates. You have to have some knowledge of the domain you are writing in to peep when it is going full HAL9000 on you. The Internet now feels like this to me: https://www.okcu.edu/admin/communications/web/wharrgarbl https://www.okcu.edu/admin/communications/web/wharrgarbl See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
- whispersnow 3y agoIf I search by key works and only get AI generated contents, why not directly ask AI, why waste time on Google
- username135 3y agoAIGC?
- bbischof 3y ago`AI generated content` probably
- dewey 3y agoAI generated content
- asdadsdad 3y agoan AI green card
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y agoArtificially Intelligent Goddamn Catastrophe
- rchaud 3y agoWho do you will be lining up to buy AIGC software? The article links to a tweet where hustlebros build a 500-page WP site with "best shoes 2023" type articles with affiiate links. It's already semi-automated, AI GC is just the final piece.
- codegeek 3y agoYou either play the Organic SEO game or you Pay to Play (Ads). Google as a search engine is now useless when it comes to searching for a tool/software etc because everyone has gamed the "Best software for xyz" etc. But what's the alternative ? None. There are these "review" websites like Capterra/Software Advice/G2 and again you have to pay to play. You can technically get a review from a customer and get listed BUT if you want to be shown on the main page for that category, you need to pay crazy PPC. Source: I play this game since I run a software business. Would love an alternative but there are none. You either Play the game or you Die.
- seydor 3y agotheir ads are not worth it. they have become way too expensive and results are not good
- moneywoes 3y agoIn contrast what is your top of funnel strategy for social proof? What would a fair review site look like?
- nicbou 3y agoI add "-best" to my searches. It helps.
- dgellow 3y agoHow much of your time do you spend “playing the game”?
- Veen 3y agoIf you do a lot of SEO keyword research, you'll come across these often. Lots of topics have odd exam-question-like keywords with large search volumes. As the article points out, there's little point optimizing for them unless you want to attract traffic from students (or dishonestly bamboozle your SEO clients into thinking you've done wonders for their organic traffic).
- jrmg 3y agoIt wasn't written to answer someone's question or satisfy their search intent. It was just written to rank. Anyone who’s searched for reviews or tech questions recently has experienced this. And it’s slowly eating everything. The web is turning into nothing but potemkin content.
- the_snooze 3y agoIt's all parasitic bots on the surface stealing content and generating sludge. Humans find shelter underground in un-indexable private chats.
- PheonixPharts 3y agoThis is strangely where I've found the most personal benefit of LLMs. As long as it's not too current or depend on recent information (like the weather), searching for information in LLMs reminds me a lot of Google 10 years ago. Yea sometimes LLMs hallucinate, but sometimes websites are just wrong. For a variety of topics LLMs are just a better form of search.
- flir 3y agoI just typed this into ChatGPT (so not even a question): "tar -x??? filename.tar.gz" It gave me back "tar -xzvf filename.tar.gz" with a breakdown of what each switch does. I don't think Google's ever been able to intuit what I'm asking for like that.
- dizhn 3y agoTotally. The internet is full of blog sites explaining how to do things that are impossible. Like how to cast from vlc to dlna on Android. They'll have a whole page with bullet points and everything that ultimately involves using a Chromecast. I once ended up at a page about an emulator that was hallucinating in GPT3 levels. Something like playing Gran Turismo on an xbox emulator or something. They have no shame.
- yonatan8070 3y agoI've seen this being very prevelant in technical support, searching for an answer about "Windows blue screen error code 0xwhatever" will yield an infinite list of results telling you to reboot, run sfc /scannow, and reinstall Windows
- boxed 3y agoMeanwhile on Kagi: The first five results for me was this SEO spam. I went in and blocked those domains. Now it's all good stuff again.
- nomel 3y agoI remember how quickly Google removed the ability to block domains, once they added it. I think that was the peak of its usability.
- dazc 3y agoIt was removed because it was being gamed from the outset. The workable alternative would be a 'Social Credit' system where some domains can be blocked if enough of the 'right people' want them blocked. Google running a social credit system may have unintended consequences though.
- Regnore 3y ago> It was removed because it was being gamed from the outset. 'Gamed' as in people would block the most ad-infested pages which just so happened to be the ones which made Google the most money?
- dazc 3y agoNo, 'gamed' as in mass blocking one's competitor's results. If you think ads are bad you should take a peep into the world of 'negative seo'. I can assure you that any solution you can think of that will improve web search will be used in the exact opposite way you imagine.
- moneywoes 3y agoWas that feature not akin to the report button
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
- soulblaze3 3y ago[flagged]
- superasn 3y agoIt's so weird that Google still hasn't created the ability to block spam domains. I don't think it's a technical difficulty but rather a management decision to allow spam as long as they have their adsense ads and it baffles me they just don't care about their end users at all. I think being a monopoly with most competitors lagging a lap behind can make you this way, but with chatgpt catching up quick, Google better start thinking about their users now as it's a growing sentiment that their quality is totally bad nowadays and their uncaring attitude towards spam domains like Pinterest and spam search results where sites are creating hundreds of pages with same content and different heading is just not gonna cut it anymore.
- andrenotgiant 3y agoThey actually did have it as an experimental feature for a little while, maybe 10 years ago. [0] If I recall correctly, it was made available in response to another big wave of criticism directed towards Google about "Content Farms". It has been interesting to see the difference in response between the "Content Farm" debacle and what we are dealing with currently. [0] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-sites-to-find-more-of-what-you.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-sites-to-find-m...
- hospitalJail 3y agoPretty sure 4chan is knocked down quite a bit. Sometimes when I search 4chan gif or b, I get a page of unrelated websites.
- samwillis 3y agoMost of these spam content farms are covered with ads supplied by Google. The incentive isn't necessarily there to remove them. On top of that the worse the search results, the more likely the user will click an ad rather than an organic result. The Google of old wouldn't have been tempted by that incentive, but that Google is long dead. Bad search result = more revenue from ads. Obviously it's a fine balance, they don't want to loose users, but they will have the metrics to (religiously) work from. As someone who used to run ad campaigns on Google until a couple of years ago, they are doing the same to advertisers. Users will happily click an ad, go back to the result and try another, many many times. Google have systematically made the advertising on search results worse, showing ads more regularly for poorer placements, removing control and visible auditing. It's all so they can extract more revenue from the advertisers.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoThe root cause of all this madness: Ads. As long as there is even a marginal financial incentive to get human eyeballs on websites (as opposed to the viewers actually playing for services or, you know, just hosting websites for free because they are cool), this will keep getting worse. A genuine desire to help incoming traffic doesn't really matter either. Anything helpful will be infinitely cloned, as long as there is incentive to clone it. I dont really know a good solution either. Targeted ads are incredibly useful to small businesses, and that genie is out of the bottle.
- jklinger410 3y agoThe internet as you know it would not exist without ads.
- nradov 3y agoThat would be awesome.
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y agoIt would exist as we knew it back in the 90s / early 00s. It would consist of Wikipedia, McMaster Carr, BBS forums, and weird guys' hobby blogs. It would be one million percent better.
- jklinger410 3y agoWebrings, the original Web 1.0 that many gush about on this site, were partially designed to farm adsense revenue. AOL started putting ads on your dashboard less than 2 years after it launched. There wasn't a very long period of ad-free internet.
- actionfromafar 3y agoStatic banner ads with no (user) tracking aint such a bad thing IMHO. I wonder how this could be implemented at a technical level. How do you avoid gaming the system?
- divbzero 3y agoOP will soon be ranking for the exact phrase he discusses. (If we discuss “a comprehensive ecosystem of open-source software for big data management” enough, perhaps we can get this thread to rank too.)
- izzymiller 3y agoI am really hoping so. my last paragraph: PS: secretly, I hope that this post starts ranking for “a comprehensive ecosystem of open source software for big data management”, which is why I have said it verbatim so many times and added a helpful callout at the top for students. To be honest, I'd settle for the 19th spot: just above highadviser.com.
- js2 3y agoYou're in the 14th spot on Duck Duck Go as I write this comment. https://start.duckduckgo.com/?q=%22a+comprehensive+ecosystem+of+open-source+software+for+big+data+management%22 https://start.duckduckgo.com/?q=%22a+comprehensive+ecosystem... Edit: DDG's results are not stable for me. I get different results every time I reload. Sometimes it comes up second: https://imgur.com/a/YyqI2Z4 https://imgur.com/a/YyqI2Z4
- rchaud 3y agoEspecially as it's received a backlink on a high-content page from a high ranking domain like news.ycombinator.com!
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- titzer 3y agoAfter having used computers for a few years (oh, about 30), and having grown up with the internet (first dialup at age 16 in 1996), I gotta say, Access to information should not have (ranked, optimizable, commercially-bent) search as its base interface. This is a cosmic, civilization-level screwup. Not only do you get the decades of SEO and advertising, but the whole system becomes lossy over time. You can't find what you used to anymore.
- plagiarist 3y agoGoogle was absolutely incredible when it first showed up. Now it is not great. When I want information all it gives me is shopping or listicles one step removed from shopping.
- lenzm 3y agoWhat's the alternative? Manually curated directories lost to search. Anything completely manual isn't going to be "web-scale". Anything algorithmic is ranked and optimizable.
- hospitalJail 3y agoAlphabetic? AAAPlumbing (btw my wife gets tons of business because her name starts with an A, and the insurance website is sorted by alphabet) By date?
- generalizations 3y agoManual curation, the way libraries work. (Or at least, good libraries) And search functions within those curated datasets.
- wombatpm 3y agoWho is going to be the neutral arbitrator who assigns Dewey Decimal numbers or Library of Congress codes to web pages? Can’t trust the page authors that’s for certain.
- 3y ago
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoThe whole Cisco courses, blog spam, SEO industry are some of the worst things to exist in technology. I hope all of them gets burned by a massive fire. Who even thinks of becoming a SEO consultant?
- rchaud 3y agoSEO is the player, ad-funded search is the game. Hate not.
- JohnFen 3y agoWhy not? It's totally valid to hate both the game and those who are willing to play it. They perpetuate the game, after all.
- perryizgr8 3y ago> Cisco courses These Cisco certifications are such a scam tbh. Cisco commands and CLI are the most confusing, illogical designs for any feature. And they make sure to put in tens of thousands of features and hundreds of ways to configure every different feature. Then they create these overpriced courses and pay for their own employees to take every single one. Since Cisco employs a lot of people, and prefers people with Cisco certifications, this creates a lot of demand for the courses. Most of the certifications could be replaced with a single 2 month networking course that explains the workings of features, provided they redesign their CLI to be slightly usable.
- vogon_laureate 3y agoSEO is dead, yes, SEO is dead It was looking the other way When they shot it in the head They took the cannolis, dropped the weapon and fled They left a little note that the cops done read It said: “SEO is dead, yeah, #SEOisdead” It was killed by a fully autonomous GPT An AI assassin executed it with glee It had outlived its purpose, so it has ceased to be Will anyone even miss it? Highly un-like-ly Maybe Neil Patel, Semrush, and Yoast WP It was kind of critical to their whole industry But SEO is dead, y’all, SEO is dead It was looking the other way when they shot it in the head Don’t believe me? Google it now you’ll see Wait, how can this be? It’s still full of page after page of SEOpremacy?! But SEO is dead, fam, SEO is dead We saw the footage of it getting popped in the head They dropped the murder weapon and made scarce with cannolis But in truth the victim was already long known to the po-lice When it comes to killing search it was light years ahead It ran a mob of listicle and review-site gangstas Paid ad omertàs, hashtag mafiosas Meta-tagged, ultra-blagged, copywritten hustlas Want to find out if you’ve got penile cancer? Here’s ten ads for “natural” Viagra SEO is dead, Lord, SEO is dead It was looking the other way when they put a cap in its head
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Animats 3y ago"SEO is also a zero-sum game." One with external costs imposed upon others. I had a go at fixing this with Sitetruth, which was an attempt to tie web sites to real-world companies rated using info from Hoovers, the SEC, DNB, etc. But the whole concept of tying web sites to real world companies now seems dated.
- firefoxd 3y agoThe majority of times when i search on google I'm looking for someone's personal take on a matter. Whether it's a software recommendation or alternative, a recipe, or experience with a tool. Google only has listicles, top x, or best in 202x. I used to search reddit, but the hostile mobile page ruined that for me. Now i go to yandex and navigate through malware to find what i want. It doesn't help that recent trend of developers building their content website with react and such, have no little to no concept of SEO.
- marklar423 3y agoI think it depends on the topic. On technical / software questions I do still find individual websites and blogs. For something like product reviews, my experience is exactly like yours and the only thing that shows up is the trash you mentioned. I don't think this is a search problem, I think Google is legitimately surfacing what's available on the Internet for given query. I think this is the dead internet theory at play, and that there just isn't anything valuable to show! People who would (in the past) run their own website or blog now post that same content on social media, which is why Reddit has become mandatory for people looking for genuine opinions.
- JohnFen 3y ago> I think Google is legitimately surfacing what's available on the Internet for given query. Google certainly omits quite a lot, though. Especially smaller sites run by actual people.
- OtherShrezzing 3y agoI've been looking recently for an opinion article on the Tailwind CSS framework, ideally listing its benefits, drawbacks, long-term maintenance considerations etc. There appears to be absolutely no way to find this type of information on Google these days.
- ryandrake 3y agoBecause of widespread spam, astroturfing, hidden shilling, and soon generative AI, there is no way to tell whether something written on the internet was actually someone's personal take or whether it is paid for. I'd argue there's no web forum or social media site anywhere where you can reliably say "this was posted by an actual human and was not paid for."
- RyanHamilton 3y ago"Automated search engines that rely on keyword matching usually return too many low quality matches. To make matters worse, some advertisers attempt to gain people’s attention by taking measures meant to mislead automated search engines. We have built a large-scale search engine which addresses many of the problems of existing systems. It makes especially heavy use of the additional structure present in hypertext to provide much higher quality search results. We chose our system name, Google, because it is a common spelling of googol"
- Solvency 3y agoThis isn't a glitch. This is literally intentful design by Google to make as much revenue as possible while providing as little utility as possible. The internet as we know it is utterly shaped by this purposeful dystopian SEO dynamic.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoGoogle being garbage as a search engine feels like something we could have predicted as soon as google realised ads make money. Search engines powered by ads are simply not incentivised to send you to the best product, or even a group of the best products, since you won't click their adverts.
- nazcan 3y agoNo incentive is too extreme - users can still switch search engines.
- wffurr 3y agoIt's a dark forest out there for keywords.
- izzymiller 3y agoha this was my alternate title
- dmvdoug 3y agoGiven “a strange game: Almost as strange as global thermonuclear war,” I was a little crushed that the post didn’t end, “The only winning move is not to play.”
- cyanydeez 3y agoGoogle no longer returns or even indexes "millions" of pages.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago> this one of the 300 niche sites im building Like bragging about throwing the most empty soda cans out of your car as you drive down the highway.
- obblekk 3y agoIs there a fundamental reason that content that ranks high can’t also answer a user query crisply? Is it just that no one has found a good way to do it yet or is it fundamentally impossible because of some google ranking thing?
- neilv 3y agoPeople talk about SEO as a cat&mouse game, but I'm not sure it has to be. Does Google want to win the game, or do they profit from the game continuing? For example... When Google was founded, your site would flourish by the value of its content. But today, given all the SEO that the search engines permit, your options are limited. And one of the big options you're forced to choose from is to pay Google money, to be seen at all in real-world searches by people. "That's a very nice Web site you got. Would be a shame if nobody was to find it." If they wanted to, maybe Google has enough information about the world that it could wipe out the vast majority of SEO, with a zero-tolerance policy. For example... Let's say you do SEO work. Google can probably tell that a site you worked on was SEO'd. So the site gets penalized severely. But there's more. Google probably knows exactly who you are, much of what you work on, who you interact with, etc. After your last clients are burnt to the ground, discoverability-wise, you get an engagement to work on a different site. Google has a good chance of figuring out that, too, and those sites get penalized severely. For engaging in deceptive and manipulative behavior, to rig search engine results, compromising people's ability to access the world's information. "Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." You're not going to keep doing SEO, because nobody wants to pay money to have their site receive search engine perma-death. I'm not saying that this particular approach would be a good thing (and there would have to be a managed transition from the current mass sociopathic frenzy). But saying that the current situation is a cat&mouse game that can't be solved... might mainly be serving the cat and the mouse. Maybe the cat and mouse are in a symbiotic relationship that lets them both milk the cows.
- cratermoon 3y agowell, a comprehensive ecosystem of open source software for big data management definitely describes Hadoop, so this article is ranked #1 for showing us that.
- hoseja 3y agoTurns out the paperclip maximizer was corporate egregores all along.
- timwis 3y agoWhat perplexes me is how these sites make it to the _front page._ Isn't ranking heavily informed by the number of sites that link to the page in question, and the reputation of those sites? I would imagine that the only sites linking to these spam pages are other spam sites run by the same owner (and, of course, google.com), which themselves should have low reputations. Does "exact match" really outweigh reputation scores that much?
- Aeolun 3y agoWhat else would you expect? Searching for an exact match and getting wildly different results has been known to inflame some passions.
- agmater 3y agoIn high competitive keywords, yes. But these sites don't have backlinks (https://i.imgur.com/9ka6yV1.png https://i.imgur.com/9ka6yV1.png). So if you wanted to beat them you either write new content that matches the search intent (like OP) or you find good backlinks.
- asymmetric 3y agoHow do these SEO dashboards know what people are searching for? Is there a way (maybe via the ad bidding platform?) to get this kind of data from Google?
- rl1987 3y agoGoogle Ads platform has "Keyword Planner" thingy that can also be accessed via API: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/keyword-planning/generate-keyword-ideas https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/keyword-pl...