5 ms·

Able looks promising: Higher information density than Medium, syntax highlighting in code blocks, no big-ass modal interrupting when I just want to read a silly

Able looks promising: Higher information density than Medium, syntax highlighting in code blocks, no big-ass modal interrupting when I just want to read a silly blog post. Besides, Medium in its current state is one of the most annoying sites and I don't get why it enjoys such a strong SERP ranking. I mean blog posts are a commodity and Medium thinks they are Netflix showing the latest Disney property. If Google search devs read this: Demote all Medium results.

all2 7y ago
High SERP ratings come from multiple things: 1. If you use Google signed in, they know (I assume) you preference technical material (which is the bucket Medium falls in) 2. On-site links; one of the most powerful (and underutilized methods of SEO) is interlinking pages on a site. I'm not sure why this is the case, but it can be a determining factor in top-ranked sites (see Wikipedia as the canonical example of onsite linking). 3. Inbound links; lots of people link to Medium content. If Medium uses Google's tracking tools, Google has a good idea of the inbound traffic and can adjust based on the site's popularity. None of this has to do with user experience. Unfortunately. I'm sure there is more (like page load times, how information is organized in the HTML, etc.) that factors in, but these are the ones that occurred to me.
- whsheet 7y ago
  Thanks for giving us a 101 lesson on the basics of SEO and SERP. Glad that we have some witty minds on HN. You forgot one thing though: This modal is unnecessarily hiding content and pissing off everyone. It is reason enough to give Medium a heavy SERP penalty for many months.
  - all2 7y ago
    You asked why. I answered. I don't think that merits a personal attack. As for modals, that's UI. Google's algorithm doesn't care that I've seen.
    - whsheet 7y ago
      Apologies for the attack, couldn’t resist. However, what you wrote is common sense and you should assume that anyone lurking around on HN knows that stuff. I mean you actually described the page rank algorithm which was the foundation of Google but there are many more signals nowadays. So your post felt like a (small) attack too. FYI, Google runs quite a large spam team which flags scammy sites manually. Sites with such a modal are usually rather on the spammy side of life and gets flagged by the team. If you get too many flags you get severe penalties slowly eating your traffic in a way that it’s not clearly obvious and it can take years to recover. But since it’s Medium such UI seems to be tolerated. If I ran that team I would have killed Medium's, Quora's and Pinterest's search traffic. And soon maybe StackOverflows as well.
      - all2 7y ago
        > So your post felt like a (small) attack too. Certainly not my intent. I come across stuff like GGP and I have a gut reaction "Oh! I know a thing! Here, see what I know?! I am helpful!" I do this occasionally at work, too: where I explain something fundamental to people who have been doing the work for 20+ years. Part of it is that I'm reinforcing my mental model, and part is I'm trying to be helpful. I suppose this can come across as patronizing or insulting. That's never my intent. I try not to assume what people do or don't know, because I don't know quite a lot and the asides that people make are super helpful to me (especially in fields that I know nothing about).
        whsheet 7y ago
        All good and thanks for the explanation. I was def a bit grumpy and you really wanted just to help.
- jetrink 7y ago
  Page load time should include the time it takes to clear away the nag screen before you can see the content. That is easily 2000ms for most people.

all2 7y ago

High SERP ratings come from multiple things: 1. If you use Google signed in, they know (I assume) you preference technical material (which is the bucket Medium falls in) 2. On-site links; one of the most powerful (and underutilized methods of SEO) is interlinking pages on a site. I'm not sure why this is the case, but it can be a determining factor in top-ranked sites (see Wikipedia as the canonical example of onsite linking). 3. Inbound links; lots of people link to Medium content. If Medium uses Google's tracking tools, Google has a good idea of the inbound traffic and can adjust based on the site's popularity. None of this has to do with user experience. Unfortunately. I'm sure there is more (like page load times, how information is organized in the HTML, etc.) that factors in, but these are the ones that occurred to me.

whsheet 7y ago
Thanks for giving us a 101 lesson on the basics of SEO and SERP. Glad that we have some witty minds on HN. You forgot one thing though: This modal is unnecessarily hiding content and pissing off everyone. It is reason enough to give Medium a heavy SERP penalty for many months.
- all2 7y ago
  You asked why. I answered. I don't think that merits a personal attack. As for modals, that's UI. Google's algorithm doesn't care that I've seen.
  - whsheet 7y ago
    Apologies for the attack, couldn’t resist. However, what you wrote is common sense and you should assume that anyone lurking around on HN knows that stuff. I mean you actually described the page rank algorithm which was the foundation of Google but there are many more signals nowadays. So your post felt like a (small) attack too. FYI, Google runs quite a large spam team which flags scammy sites manually. Sites with such a modal are usually rather on the spammy side of life and gets flagged by the team. If you get too many flags you get severe penalties slowly eating your traffic in a way that it’s not clearly obvious and it can take years to recover. But since it’s Medium such UI seems to be tolerated. If I ran that team I would have killed Medium's, Quora's and Pinterest's search traffic. And soon maybe StackOverflows as well.
    - all2 7y ago
      > So your post felt like a (small) attack too. Certainly not my intent. I come across stuff like GGP and I have a gut reaction "Oh! I know a thing! Here, see what I know?! I am helpful!" I do this occasionally at work, too: where I explain something fundamental to people who have been doing the work for 20+ years. Part of it is that I'm reinforcing my mental model, and part is I'm trying to be helpful. I suppose this can come across as patronizing or insulting. That's never my intent. I try not to assume what people do or don't know, because I don't know quite a lot and the asides that people make are super helpful to me (especially in fields that I know nothing about).
      - whsheet 7y ago
        All good and thanks for the explanation. I was def a bit grumpy and you really wanted just to help.
jetrink 7y ago
Page load time should include the time it takes to clear away the nag screen before you can see the content. That is easily 2000ms for most people.