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It kind of ruined content too. Why it ruined content? You are not the only one that is searching for the answer to that question. Keep reading to know why SEO

It kind of ruined content too. Why it ruined content? You are not the only one that is searching for the answer to that question. Keep reading to know why SEO ruined content. Many people think that SEO ruined content, in this post, we are goin to explain why SEO ruined content. When you finish reading this post, you will know why SEO ruined content. In the last years we have observed a grown in the quantity of content created, unfortunately, as we are going to explain in a moment, it has been ruined by SEO. ¿Is it SEO really the reason content was ruined? Some people argue that SEO is not really the reason content was ruined, we will review all the reason why SEO could be really ruining content. Please, click "next" to know why SEO could be ruining content.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
meesterdude 7y ago
this x1000! By pandering to the algorithm of google, a lot of great content has become watered down, softened, or impacted in other ways. Titles have to be worded a certain way, article length has to be a certain length... hoping someone else chimes in with other thoughts because I used to know more about this, and SEO cheapening quality content was one of the key takeaways I had.
- owlninja 7y ago
  Recipe blogs are the worst! Just get to the goods already!
  - awithrow 7y ago
    Many now have an anchor directly to the recipe. I try to book mark those so I don't have to read about the author pontificating on the changing of the seasons or how an ingredient in the dish reminds them of childhood for the 800th time.
  - taberiand 7y ago
    It's like we've flipped APIs on their heads - humans use tools to obtain the minimal data (just the recipe), while the bots make requests and receive the whole dump of pointless, extraneous fluff in return.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      And here comes the business trick: API access is paid and restricted and requires you to enter a relationship with the data provider. Websites are purposefully made machine-unreadable, because otherwise a lot of people would use third-party scripts to avoid viewing ads and filler content. The Internet is the exact opposite of what it was meant to be. Instead of giving efficient access to high-quality information, it gives inefficient access to watered down, spread-down, low-quality interaction. Site after site, query after query, we all continuously pay a little tax with our time.
      - zozbot234 7y ago
        This only really applies to the commercially-focused part of the Internet, though. Many Internet sites are still hosting academically-focused, non-commercial or broadly pro-social efforts, and those seem to be among the quickest adopters of Linked Open Data standards which are precisely meant to make content machine-readable, sometimes with standardized and freely available API-like endpoints for querying the underlying datastore.
      - DeathArrow 7y ago
        That is because the ad revenue model. Not many people would pay for subscription and I don't know of other working revenue models.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        More people would be willing to pay for subscription, directly or indirectly, if ad revenue model didn't exist. Otherwise, "free with ads" outcompetes all. That's why I'm in favor of banning "free with ads" wholesale.
  - warent 7y ago
    Years ago when I was a child growing up in the icy woods of Alaska, my parents ... ... And that was when we realized that the kindling was all damp. What to do! Four hours we ... ... it reminded of our travels in Italy ... ... And that brings us to our famous three-ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe:
    - ip26 7y ago
      I once came across a "world's most amazing curry recipe" that had two ingredients; rice, and a jar of storebought curry sauce. It was actually kind of tragic.
    - DeathArrow 7y ago
      Google has transformed any webmaster into a writer. After a few years of writing recipes, one can transition to screenplays and novels. :)
  - bgrainger 7y ago
    There's a Chrome extension to fix that: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter > This Chrome browser extension helps cut through to the chase when browsing food blogs. It is born out of my frustration in having to scroll through a prolix life story before getting to the recipe card that I really want to check out.
- bgva 7y ago
  If I never have to read another article with "XYZ Is Happening. Here's What it Means" or anything to that effect as a headline, it will be too soon. SEO has created lazy writing, and as a former journalist, I hate what it's happened to my one-time profession. I can also do without sites that think they're being quirky with their newsletter popups. "Click here to subscribe" or "I'm not interested in staying informed/saving money/being in shape". Stop. You're trying too hard.
RobertoG 7y ago
I just searched (1) "SEO ruined content" in duck duck go and this Hacker news page is the first entry. We are very lucky that, as far as we know, an accumulation of irony doesn't create black holes. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=SEO+ruined+content&t=canonical&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=SEO+ruined+content&t=canonical&ia=...
- humanbeinc 7y ago
  Awesome.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Currently page 2 on Google. To be fair, "SEO ruined content" is a pretty specific search string and doesn't even show up in the results that out-rank this submission. This comment specifically talks about "SEO ruined content" and is, correctly, a good results candidate.
  - bolasanibk 7y ago
    >Currently page 2 on Google. And now on first page
    - abakker 7y ago
      5th result.
      - oldtapwater 7y ago
        It's the first one for me now.
        arushisomani 7y ago
        Likewise.
  - seobuddy 7y ago
    Very specific indeed, no data on Ahrefs for this keyword. Keyword Difficulty < 15 Ahrefs estimate that you’ll need backlinks from ~17 websites to rank in top 10 for this keyword
spiritplumber 7y ago
Thanks, I hate it
MisterBastahrd 7y ago
Yep. Say I want a recipe. A tried and true delicious recipe. Can I search and just find a recipe? Nope. Through the magic of SEO, I now have to scroll through 15 paragraphs of somebody's life story before being able to examine the time and ingredients. How much time and energy was wasted on building "tag" systems? All those fun little term link clouds that sites used to have. I know I wasted time on it. I had something that would scan for words and their synonyms and tag articles, a rescan feature for tags that got added after the fact, and various other utilities.
- lerchmo 7y ago
  I find this particular example particularly gross. Recipe's are no doubt a heavily searched category. Why does google allow pure CPM hacking garbage websites to win the top spots? does it have to do with the google ads from top to bottom?
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    >Why does google allow pure CPM hacking garbage websites to win the top spots? Something bothered me about this question, and I think it's the way it frames Google's role as being a passive participant. Google doesn't "allow" anything. Google writes the rules and picks the winners. When you search for "chocolate chip cookie recipe," Google's search algorithm goes "Here's a nice webpage with Grandma Betty's life story and a paragraph about how to make chocolate chip cookies at the bottom. This is what you were looking for." Recipe sites look like they do because Google forces them to look like that if they want Google to send them any search traffic. Is there a different algorithm that would give more useful results? Is there a way to rank the sites on how well they present the information you were searching for? Is there a way to factor in whether a site has good recipes or terrible ones? I don't know, but I don't have a giant advertising money fountain and teams of very well paid engineers. Like you hinted at, I think it's reasonable to suspect Google for not having an incentive to fix this. They get their ad money either way, and they probably get more of it from worse sites. As long as it's good enough to keep people from switching to other search engines en masse, they're not losing anything.
octocop 7y ago
This is sooo true, every time i look for a recipe online it's all i ever see.
- arkitaip 7y ago
  Recipes have become hilarious as they have transitioned into storytelling pieces for whoever is trying to promote their lifestyle blog.
  - ruytlm 7y ago
    This is because of a quirk of copyright; in the US at least, a recipe itself is not considered copyrightable if it is a mere listing of ingredients; however, they can be covered by copyright when they have "substantial literary expression – a description, explanation, or illustration, for example – that accompanies a recipe or formula…”. If you want some recipes that don't have all that nonsense associated, I'd recommend the BBC's Food site[0]. [0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes
    - markdown 7y ago
      Which for some reason competes with another BBC website, https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/ https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/
- nullc 7y ago
  Don't look for crafting-ish instructions... the number of outright false farmed content is astonishing. "Here is this stock photo of something near, we're going to teach you how to make it!" {4 unrelated steps} {stock photo again} "Tada!"
  - vintermann 7y ago
    And it's surprising how many sites that are half decent on its own, if you visit it without an ad blocker they still have Taboola ads about how person in {your location} got rich in the way they don't want you to know.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Deary me. I wish I'd be around to see what future historians / archaeologists make of this.
randomdude402 7y ago
I like your good article about content click here to see how I think about good content also
cookiengineer 7y ago
Every time I land on websites that have such content I am wondering why anybody would want that kind of traffic. I mean, don't they have server costs? It's like they own an infinite amount of money bucket that constantly gets refilled somehow. Why are advertisers even paying them for such impressions? Are they so ridiculously retarded in their business model? Can we all hurt advertisers by setting up a website like this?
- ip26 7y ago
  I know little about the ad business but the insinuation I've heard is that the advertisers don't want those impressions, but struggle to block these sites for one reason or another. In other words, it's basically a scam.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    I think most advertisers aren't even aware, the ad platforms are so full of dark patterns it's hard to avoid this stuff.
- pbz 7y ago
  Seems to me like you have it backwards. The reason you even got a chance to click on it is because they wrote it that way. If they didn't, it wouldn't be as visible in Google = nobody would see it. When most websites do this (to survive) folks don't have a choice. Also, advertisers don't pay for something that's invisible.
  - DeathArrow 7y ago
    To base your income and your future on something as volatile as Google search seem to me a terrible idea. What if algorithm changes will tank your all your fleet of poor content websites you've spent last few years on?
    - ori_b 7y ago
      Then you shut down the servers and move on. You got the ad dollars at that point, what do you care?
tincholio 7y ago
This reads a lot like Webb and Mitchell's gift shop skit. https://youtu.be/7MFtl2XXnUc https://youtu.be/7MFtl2XXnUc
vintermann 7y ago
We have the lyrics to the sad song you're singing right now. That is, we will have them, once someone adds them.
nicbou 7y ago
This is especially prevalent for simple questions that would normally have simple answers. I'd like to know when to water my mint plant without reading about the whole history of mint.
ludsan 7y ago
hilarious... reminds me of my favorite Mitchell/web parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

meesterdude 7y ago

this x1000! By pandering to the algorithm of google, a lot of great content has become watered down, softened, or impacted in other ways. Titles have to be worded a certain way, article length has to be a certain length... hoping someone else chimes in with other thoughts because I used to know more about this, and SEO cheapening quality content was one of the key takeaways I had.

owlninja 7y ago
Recipe blogs are the worst! Just get to the goods already!
- awithrow 7y ago
  Many now have an anchor directly to the recipe. I try to book mark those so I don't have to read about the author pontificating on the changing of the seasons or how an ingredient in the dish reminds them of childhood for the 800th time.
- taberiand 7y ago
  It's like we've flipped APIs on their heads - humans use tools to obtain the minimal data (just the recipe), while the bots make requests and receive the whole dump of pointless, extraneous fluff in return.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    And here comes the business trick: API access is paid and restricted and requires you to enter a relationship with the data provider. Websites are purposefully made machine-unreadable, because otherwise a lot of people would use third-party scripts to avoid viewing ads and filler content. The Internet is the exact opposite of what it was meant to be. Instead of giving efficient access to high-quality information, it gives inefficient access to watered down, spread-down, low-quality interaction. Site after site, query after query, we all continuously pay a little tax with our time.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      This only really applies to the commercially-focused part of the Internet, though. Many Internet sites are still hosting academically-focused, non-commercial or broadly pro-social efforts, and those seem to be among the quickest adopters of Linked Open Data standards which are precisely meant to make content machine-readable, sometimes with standardized and freely available API-like endpoints for querying the underlying datastore.
    - DeathArrow 7y ago
      That is because the ad revenue model. Not many people would pay for subscription and I don't know of other working revenue models.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        More people would be willing to pay for subscription, directly or indirectly, if ad revenue model didn't exist. Otherwise, "free with ads" outcompetes all. That's why I'm in favor of banning "free with ads" wholesale.
- warent 7y ago
  Years ago when I was a child growing up in the icy woods of Alaska, my parents ... ... And that was when we realized that the kindling was all damp. What to do! Four hours we ... ... it reminded of our travels in Italy ... ... And that brings us to our famous three-ingredient peanut butter cookie recipe:
  - ip26 7y ago
    I once came across a "world's most amazing curry recipe" that had two ingredients; rice, and a jar of storebought curry sauce. It was actually kind of tragic.
  - DeathArrow 7y ago
    Google has transformed any webmaster into a writer. After a few years of writing recipes, one can transition to screenplays and novels. :)
- bgrainger 7y ago
  There's a Chrome extension to fix that: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter > This Chrome browser extension helps cut through to the chase when browsing food blogs. It is born out of my frustration in having to scroll through a prolix life story before getting to the recipe card that I really want to check out.
bgva 7y ago
If I never have to read another article with "XYZ Is Happening. Here's What it Means" or anything to that effect as a headline, it will be too soon. SEO has created lazy writing, and as a former journalist, I hate what it's happened to my one-time profession. I can also do without sites that think they're being quirky with their newsletter popups. "Click here to subscribe" or "I'm not interested in staying informed/saving money/being in shape". Stop. You're trying too hard.

RobertoG 7y ago

I just searched (1) "SEO ruined content" in duck duck go and this Hacker news page is the first entry. We are very lucky that, as far as we know, an accumulation of irony doesn't create black holes. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=SEO+ruined+content&t=canonical&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=SEO+ruined+content&t=canonical&ia=...

humanbeinc 7y ago
Awesome.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Currently page 2 on Google. To be fair, "SEO ruined content" is a pretty specific search string and doesn't even show up in the results that out-rank this submission. This comment specifically talks about "SEO ruined content" and is, correctly, a good results candidate.
- bolasanibk 7y ago
  >Currently page 2 on Google. And now on first page
  - abakker 7y ago
    5th result.
    - oldtapwater 7y ago
      It's the first one for me now.
      - arushisomani 7y ago
        Likewise.
- seobuddy 7y ago
  Very specific indeed, no data on Ahrefs for this keyword. Keyword Difficulty < 15 Ahrefs estimate that you’ll need backlinks from ~17 websites to rank in top 10 for this keyword

spiritplumber 7y ago

Thanks, I hate it

MisterBastahrd 7y ago

Yep. Say I want a recipe. A tried and true delicious recipe. Can I search and just find a recipe? Nope. Through the magic of SEO, I now have to scroll through 15 paragraphs of somebody's life story before being able to examine the time and ingredients. How much time and energy was wasted on building "tag" systems? All those fun little term link clouds that sites used to have. I know I wasted time on it. I had something that would scan for words and their synonyms and tag articles, a rescan feature for tags that got added after the fact, and various other utilities.

lerchmo 7y ago
I find this particular example particularly gross. Recipe's are no doubt a heavily searched category. Why does google allow pure CPM hacking garbage websites to win the top spots? does it have to do with the google ads from top to bottom?
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  >Why does google allow pure CPM hacking garbage websites to win the top spots? Something bothered me about this question, and I think it's the way it frames Google's role as being a passive participant. Google doesn't "allow" anything. Google writes the rules and picks the winners. When you search for "chocolate chip cookie recipe," Google's search algorithm goes "Here's a nice webpage with Grandma Betty's life story and a paragraph about how to make chocolate chip cookies at the bottom. This is what you were looking for." Recipe sites look like they do because Google forces them to look like that if they want Google to send them any search traffic. Is there a different algorithm that would give more useful results? Is there a way to rank the sites on how well they present the information you were searching for? Is there a way to factor in whether a site has good recipes or terrible ones? I don't know, but I don't have a giant advertising money fountain and teams of very well paid engineers. Like you hinted at, I think it's reasonable to suspect Google for not having an incentive to fix this. They get their ad money either way, and they probably get more of it from worse sites. As long as it's good enough to keep people from switching to other search engines en masse, they're not losing anything.

octocop 7y ago

This is sooo true, every time i look for a recipe online it's all i ever see.

arkitaip 7y ago
Recipes have become hilarious as they have transitioned into storytelling pieces for whoever is trying to promote their lifestyle blog.
- ruytlm 7y ago
  This is because of a quirk of copyright; in the US at least, a recipe itself is not considered copyrightable if it is a mere listing of ingredients; however, they can be covered by copyright when they have "substantial literary expression – a description, explanation, or illustration, for example – that accompanies a recipe or formula…”. If you want some recipes that don't have all that nonsense associated, I'd recommend the BBC's Food site[0]. [0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes
  - markdown 7y ago
    Which for some reason competes with another BBC website, https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/ https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/
nullc 7y ago
Don't look for crafting-ish instructions... the number of outright false farmed content is astonishing. "Here is this stock photo of something near, we're going to teach you how to make it!" {4 unrelated steps} {stock photo again} "Tada!"
- vintermann 7y ago
  And it's surprising how many sites that are half decent on its own, if you visit it without an ad blocker they still have Taboola ads about how person in {your location} got rich in the way they don't want you to know.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

Deary me. I wish I'd be around to see what future historians / archaeologists make of this.

randomdude402 7y ago

I like your good article about content click here to see how I think about good content also

cookiengineer 7y ago

Every time I land on websites that have such content I am wondering why anybody would want that kind of traffic. I mean, don't they have server costs? It's like they own an infinite amount of money bucket that constantly gets refilled somehow. Why are advertisers even paying them for such impressions? Are they so ridiculously retarded in their business model? Can we all hurt advertisers by setting up a website like this?

ip26 7y ago
I know little about the ad business but the insinuation I've heard is that the advertisers don't want those impressions, but struggle to block these sites for one reason or another. In other words, it's basically a scam.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I think most advertisers aren't even aware, the ad platforms are so full of dark patterns it's hard to avoid this stuff.
pbz 7y ago
Seems to me like you have it backwards. The reason you even got a chance to click on it is because they wrote it that way. If they didn't, it wouldn't be as visible in Google = nobody would see it. When most websites do this (to survive) folks don't have a choice. Also, advertisers don't pay for something that's invisible.
- DeathArrow 7y ago
  To base your income and your future on something as volatile as Google search seem to me a terrible idea. What if algorithm changes will tank your all your fleet of poor content websites you've spent last few years on?
  - ori_b 7y ago
    Then you shut down the servers and move on. You got the ad dollars at that point, what do you care?

tincholio 7y ago

This reads a lot like Webb and Mitchell's gift shop skit. https://youtu.be/7MFtl2XXnUc https://youtu.be/7MFtl2XXnUc

vintermann 7y ago

We have the lyrics to the sad song you're singing right now. That is, we will have them, once someone adds them.

nicbou 7y ago

This is especially prevalent for simple questions that would normally have simple answers. I'd like to know when to water my mint plant without reading about the whole history of mint.

ludsan 7y ago

hilarious... reminds me of my favorite Mitchell/web parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc