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As a legit biz trying to win legit links, this is such a hassle to deal with. Perhaps even worse is the rise of "barely legal" blogs... (though these may be th

As a legit biz trying to win legit links, this is such a hassle to deal with. Perhaps even worse is the rise of "barely legal" blogs... (though these may be the same thing as PBN I suppose), but, by these, I mean, sure, they're original content, original "reviews," and "legitimate" blogs. But the articles are pumped out en masse, often written in sub-par English, with nothing more than re-wording of a reviewed site's "about us" page. (Perhaps they're even training Markov models on reviewed sites' content?) But they increasingly dominate searches, particularly in the B2B and B2C tech space. Do these serve customers' search intent? They're simple gateway pages: the content is often not really "readable." But since Google favors "reviews" and pages that link to many other top 10 SERPs, they dominate, vs legit product pages. Not far on the list of deplorables is the rise of the "tech stack" lists. Just endless lists of "alternatives to X," and "rankings of XYZ products" (with next to no legit reviews), or "here's the stack this company uses." All designed to get widespread long tail links.

cloverich 7y ago
> Not far on the list of deplorables is the rise of the "tech stack" lists These drive me nuts. I wish there was a way to incorporate trusted users flagging sites like this. I'm sure there's technical issues with it, but ideally it would let you "hide results from this site" to both keep them from popping up _and_ serve as a flag against the site.
- davesmith1983 7y ago
  That is open to abuse in other ways. For example on Youtube there are frequently flagging campaigns from one group by constantly reporting a channel.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    If you really think about this, that looks totally like spamming someone (which is totally illegal). This could be illegal as much. Especially in the long run.
whalabi 7y ago
(OP here) OpenAI recently demonstrated a frighteningly high quality text generator[1] which leaves me concerned about the future.. humanity of the web - no more of those sub-par English articles if a bot writes for you. Makes me think we'll inevitably see large tracts of the web near-fully automated - information gathering (research) and text generation (writing) for articles based on a simple prompt for that spark of creativity. Next ten years sure will be interesting on the web. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dangerous/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dang...
- bhartzer 7y ago
  Computer-generated content has been around for a long time... and I even tested creating websites with auto generated content in the 1990s. It's nothing new. In fact, the content has been so good for a long time that even scientific papers get accepted https://gizmodo.com/mathematics-journal-approves-paper-filled-with-computer-5953147 https://gizmodo.com/mathematics-journal-approves-paper-fille... and that was back in 2012.
  - Swenrekcah 7y ago
    That was an example of a broken review process, not of good content.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  Who says, that your comment isn't a bot already? Internet is really turning into a low trust society... I guess network sites with only your friends will become more important then. With probably even bigger niche conspiracy and antivaxx bubbles then now..
  - dorgo 7y ago
    >Who says, that your comment isn't a bot already? Why do people care whether a human or a bot wrote a comment / draw a picture / developed software.. ? The only relevant metric is the quality of the comment / picture / software, isn't it? https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/
mrtksn 7y ago
I don’t know, maybe it’s expected that the legit businesses pay for advertising? It’s not like people going to switch to Goggle’s competition. Excuse my cynicism, it’s just that I can no longer find quality content/service/product in Google, I am over reliant on social media for discovering new things but apparently Google’s businesses is doing great.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  That's what I figured about Facebook and Google. As a (new) firm. You are supposed to pay. And make it as hard as possible to get visibility. (the natural way)
- donmcronald 7y ago
  > It’s not like people going to switch to Goggle’s competition I started using Bing more than 6 months ago and haven’t switched back. I don’t think Bing is better, but it isn’t much worse.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    It really depends where you are. In the UK it's basically worthless.
ljm 7y ago
Google has become significantly less useful for me lately because of this. It’s like a distributed content farm. Stack Overflow is terrible for it. More often than not the whole first page becomes a bunch of links to the same original SO post, just hosted in different places with different ads on top. I’m not sure DDG and alternatives are any better, just because of the pure amount of noise that exists on the internet to beat google at their game.
- cordite 7y ago
  Ugh. These stack overflow scrapers are so frustrating. "This link isn't purple yet, I haven't clicked on it." So I click on it and bam in my fatigue I realize half way through it's the same thing I saw five minutes ago with tweaked search terms.
dsl 7y ago
> often written in sub-par English Poor english skills are often a stronger indicator that the content is genuine. Search Twitter for a trending hashtag as an example. The vast majority of people in this world can't string words together real good.
- ddalex 7y ago
  >string words together REALLY WELL FTFY
  - appstorelottery 7y ago
    > string words together. FTFY
eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
Companies "reviewing" their competitors, or at the very least, trying to tag on to their SEO is something I'm seeing a lot of lately. I just don't think most people, when they search for "[product] review" want to hear from the main competitor of said product. Some companies are even sketchier about it, by setting up separate domain names to appear that they are separate. I'm at the point where I now try to explicitly search sites like Reddit or Quora as Google seems to be full of so much trash and bias / affiliate spam before you find what you want.

cloverich 7y ago

> Not far on the list of deplorables is the rise of the "tech stack" lists These drive me nuts. I wish there was a way to incorporate trusted users flagging sites like this. I'm sure there's technical issues with it, but ideally it would let you "hide results from this site" to both keep them from popping up _and_ serve as a flag against the site.

davesmith1983 7y ago
That is open to abuse in other ways. For example on Youtube there are frequently flagging campaigns from one group by constantly reporting a channel.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  If you really think about this, that looks totally like spamming someone (which is totally illegal). This could be illegal as much. Especially in the long run.

whalabi 7y ago

(OP here) OpenAI recently demonstrated a frighteningly high quality text generator[1] which leaves me concerned about the future.. humanity of the web - no more of those sub-par English articles if a bot writes for you. Makes me think we'll inevitably see large tracts of the web near-fully automated - information gathering (research) and text generation (writing) for articles based on a simple prompt for that spark of creativity. Next ten years sure will be interesting on the web. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dangerous/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dang...

bhartzer 7y ago
Computer-generated content has been around for a long time... and I even tested creating websites with auto generated content in the 1990s. It's nothing new. In fact, the content has been so good for a long time that even scientific papers get accepted https://gizmodo.com/mathematics-journal-approves-paper-filled-with-computer-5953147 https://gizmodo.com/mathematics-journal-approves-paper-fille... and that was back in 2012.
- Swenrekcah 7y ago
  That was an example of a broken review process, not of good content.
Bombthecat 7y ago
Who says, that your comment isn't a bot already? Internet is really turning into a low trust society... I guess network sites with only your friends will become more important then. With probably even bigger niche conspiracy and antivaxx bubbles then now..
- dorgo 7y ago
  >Who says, that your comment isn't a bot already? Why do people care whether a human or a bot wrote a comment / draw a picture / developed software.. ? The only relevant metric is the quality of the comment / picture / software, isn't it? https://xkcd.com/810/ https://xkcd.com/810/

mrtksn 7y ago

I don’t know, maybe it’s expected that the legit businesses pay for advertising? It’s not like people going to switch to Goggle’s competition. Excuse my cynicism, it’s just that I can no longer find quality content/service/product in Google, I am over reliant on social media for discovering new things but apparently Google’s businesses is doing great.

Bombthecat 7y ago
That's what I figured about Facebook and Google. As a (new) firm. You are supposed to pay. And make it as hard as possible to get visibility. (the natural way)
donmcronald 7y ago
> It’s not like people going to switch to Goggle’s competition I started using Bing more than 6 months ago and haven’t switched back. I don’t think Bing is better, but it isn’t much worse.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  It really depends where you are. In the UK it's basically worthless.

ljm 7y ago

Google has become significantly less useful for me lately because of this. It’s like a distributed content farm. Stack Overflow is terrible for it. More often than not the whole first page becomes a bunch of links to the same original SO post, just hosted in different places with different ads on top. I’m not sure DDG and alternatives are any better, just because of the pure amount of noise that exists on the internet to beat google at their game.

cordite 7y ago
Ugh. These stack overflow scrapers are so frustrating. "This link isn't purple yet, I haven't clicked on it." So I click on it and bam in my fatigue I realize half way through it's the same thing I saw five minutes ago with tweaked search terms.

dsl 7y ago

> often written in sub-par English Poor english skills are often a stronger indicator that the content is genuine. Search Twitter for a trending hashtag as an example. The vast majority of people in this world can't string words together real good.

ddalex 7y ago
>string words together REALLY WELL FTFY
- appstorelottery 7y ago
  > string words together. FTFY

eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago

Companies "reviewing" their competitors, or at the very least, trying to tag on to their SEO is something I'm seeing a lot of lately. I just don't think most people, when they search for "[product] review" want to hear from the main competitor of said product. Some companies are even sketchier about it, by setting up separate domain names to appear that they are separate. I'm at the point where I now try to explicitly search sites like Reddit or Quora as Google seems to be full of so much trash and bias / affiliate spam before you find what you want.