Wow the SEO world is really sick
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Technology
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In a just world, the idea of SEO shouldn't even exist. You shouldn't be able to game an algorithm to rise to the top. But that's what literally our entire world has become now. Social media influencers, scammy and spammy websites and services, AI art thieves, content farm sewage. None of it would exist if the algorithms didn't let you game them or promote certain behaviors.
The problem is that "don't let people game you" is extremely difficult.
It's many, many orders of magnitude easier to provide a useful search of sites that tell you the truth about what they are than it is when 99% of sites lie to you.
I'm a web developer and used to work for companies focused on SEO over quality. It's a pain in the ass and takes all the fun out of the job.
I've definitely noticed the results suck ass, but this is a nice breakdown.
I think this is part of the reason that Google sucks nowadays. I genuinely don't feel like I can trust it for finding products.
I just use it for opening the door to learn about features (not brands/models) that I didn't know about previously. Then I do searches for those features and try to find forum results (usually Reddit unfortunately). It seems to work decently well
Goshdarnit, I've seen these weirdo webpages before, which would talk at length about how they've conducted tests, but then not show any data. I was seriously wondering, why they were bothering, but of course, it's some shitty metric they have to fulfill.
I feel like Google results these days value the domain rather than the individual webpages instead. Always the same websites..
Fantastic article highlighting the issue. Thanks!
I remember there was a time Google tried to be the best search engine out there, by ranking first what has most value for the user. Now it is ranking first what brings them more money, hence undermining Google's credibility, and making itself less ueful for the user. The enshittification of Google for everyone to see.
Somehow the user has been banned from Reddit, but their comment is still at the top of the thread — we wonder how many other comments this user has published across different subreddits.
...and that's the kind of content Reddit wants to sell to train AIs 🤣
That's cool and all and important for exposure, but what can I really do about it? It's the ethereal algorithm and shitty companies gaming it for profit, with everyone else suffering because of it
You can sign up to kagi.com for non ad based rankings results like we had in 2010 era google searches. 100 free searches then a paid model.
Or use this open source engine a guy built and maintains in his basement https://stract.com/
I wanted to support this site by trying to add it as an rss but they didn't have one :(