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Having been on the fringes of the SEO industry for many years, my theory is that the spammers and algorithm gamers have slowly but surely won out. This has forc

Having been on the fringes of the SEO industry for many years, my theory is that the spammers and algorithm gamers have slowly but surely won out. This has forced Google to de-emphasize keyword relevancy and instead prioritize content source--large and well known brands with high domain authority have captured increasingly larger numbers of queries over the years. Someone at Google will probably disagree emphatically, but it seems to me like this represents a bit of an existential threat to web search. There's so much money in being #1 for popular queries that countless actors will throw enormous resources into getting there.

shadowgovt 7y ago
Spammers and algorithmic gamers are / were also an existential threat to web search.
- calibas 7y ago
  Google and SEO are a fundamental issue with the web itself. It's been a while since Google could simply search for websites, but that's no longer possible in the same manner it used to be. Google has become so dominant that the web itself changes to accommodate Google. Google can no longer be an independent observer, as the act of observation changes the results!
doublekill 7y ago
I do not think it is the SEO, but Google adapting to its less-technical userbase (people who search for "facebook" and click the first result). It makes sense for this target audience to give broad results. They seem to be relying more on neural language models to accomplish this. Google also surfaces more authoritative results than Bing, Google thus favors bigger commercial sites. Google is suprisingly good on vague searches (for instance, describing a singer's appearance and song themes will return the name), but getting worse on "conspiracy"-type searches (you will not find many amateur sites discussing the high-class escort past of the First Lady, because these lack authority, all results focus instead on the massive fine for posting allegations).
- curious_fella1 7y ago
  Google has been introducing a new parser for natural language queries https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert/ https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-unde...
- keenmaster 7y ago
  Then why not further personalize search? I know that search results already vary according to things like the user’s location, but the entire search algorithm should be tweaked according to the user. Machine learning could potentially do a good job of this. Google can also allow users to self-select. The way to do this would be to have a survey with multiple sliders that allow the user to demonstrate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much they care about a certain parameter. There would be default profiles that automatically set the sliders for you, like “academic.” Even if Google doesn’t take this route for global search, they can add more features to advanced search. Google Advanced Search is underpowered, given Google’s technological capabilities. Finally, with regards to the Advanced Search approach, Google can allow the user to create several search buttons that always appear on the Google front page. For example, an Arab American researcher may have a default search button, an Academic search button, and an Arabic search button, all of which can be tweaked along multiple parameters, as described above.
  - UweSchmidt 7y ago
    There seem to be very few "sliders" in today's web. I suspect all kinds of advanced functionality would go directly against what those companies are all about.
drak0n1c 7y ago
That's really unfortunate. If this type of brand-reliant search ranking continues it will only accelerate the centralization of the web toward big entities.

shadowgovt 7y ago

Spammers and algorithmic gamers are / were also an existential threat to web search.

calibas 7y ago
Google and SEO are a fundamental issue with the web itself. It's been a while since Google could simply search for websites, but that's no longer possible in the same manner it used to be. Google has become so dominant that the web itself changes to accommodate Google. Google can no longer be an independent observer, as the act of observation changes the results!

doublekill 7y ago

I do not think it is the SEO, but Google adapting to its less-technical userbase (people who search for "facebook" and click the first result). It makes sense for this target audience to give broad results. They seem to be relying more on neural language models to accomplish this. Google also surfaces more authoritative results than Bing, Google thus favors bigger commercial sites. Google is suprisingly good on vague searches (for instance, describing a singer's appearance and song themes will return the name), but getting worse on "conspiracy"-type searches (you will not find many amateur sites discussing the high-class escort past of the First Lady, because these lack authority, all results focus instead on the massive fine for posting allegations).

curious_fella1 7y ago
Google has been introducing a new parser for natural language queries https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert/ https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-unde...
keenmaster 7y ago
Then why not further personalize search? I know that search results already vary according to things like the user’s location, but the entire search algorithm should be tweaked according to the user. Machine learning could potentially do a good job of this. Google can also allow users to self-select. The way to do this would be to have a survey with multiple sliders that allow the user to demonstrate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much they care about a certain parameter. There would be default profiles that automatically set the sliders for you, like “academic.” Even if Google doesn’t take this route for global search, they can add more features to advanced search. Google Advanced Search is underpowered, given Google’s technological capabilities. Finally, with regards to the Advanced Search approach, Google can allow the user to create several search buttons that always appear on the Google front page. For example, an Arab American researcher may have a default search button, an Academic search button, and an Arabic search button, all of which can be tweaked along multiple parameters, as described above.
- UweSchmidt 7y ago
  There seem to be very few "sliders" in today's web. I suspect all kinds of advanced functionality would go directly against what those companies are all about.

drak0n1c 7y ago

That's really unfortunate. If this type of brand-reliant search ranking continues it will only accelerate the centralization of the web toward big entities.