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Blame Google. A few years ago, it started prioritizing pages that had a high word count. So SEOs had no option but to pad up their pages with filler content. I

Blame Google. A few years ago, it started prioritizing pages that had a high word count. So SEOs had no option but to pad up their pages with filler content. I've personally seen a page go from #20 to #2 just by adding 1000 extra words of content.

akiselev 6y ago
It's more than that. Google tracks how long you stay on a page whenever you use the back button to go back to the search results. The longer you stay on that page, the better the page will rank so once everyone figured it out, we started getting all that useless fluff before recipes because it increases the time spent on pages.
- puranjay 6y ago
  Longer content also means you can cram more keywords in there, which means that your page can rank for a broader range of queries. It works from an SEO perspective but as a user, I really wish they'd do away with it.
- kohtatsu 6y ago
  I've thought a lot about how Google is fucking privacy over, but I haven't appreciated how badly they've managed to hamper the web. It's not entirely their fault, SEO hacking isn't an easy problem, but the open web has certainly faltered under their stewardship. It's so incompetent it almost looks like an effort to make it harder to find things without having Google's AI cut it into small bite sized pieces. I think Google and Facebook have a lot to atone for.
  - puranjay 6y ago
    And they're not even trying to pretend to be subtle about it anymore. AMP is the best example. Google is acting almost like malware, taking over a site and destroying the experience. It's honestly sad. Google could have gone in such a different direction. They're sitting on a gold mine but they caved into investor pressure to keep on pumping more gold instead of being happy with just the billions they would have made anyway.
    - 1propionyl 6y ago
      As an experiment, try adding ampproject.org and google.com/amp to your blacklist and living with it for a week. I've been doing this for quite a while now, and it's placed in stark relief how bad the problem is getting. It used to be that a few results were AMP, usually news sites, but you could easily bypass it via the (i) icon. Then it was that most results that were content focused (not dynamic sites or web apps) were were AMP, but you could easily bypass it. Today, most results are AMP, even for sites which are dynamic (e.g. Reddit), and to make matters worse, the (i) links of many websites have now started linking to AMP pages themselves. You might be thinking "ah, well those are their self-hosted copies. Shouldn't that be fine? The problem is Google's use of AMP, not the format itself, right?" Funny thing that: those "self-hosted" AMP pages also won't load with the above two blacklist rules. Also, many image search results are now somehow AMP (...how does that even make sense? It's just an image, so just serve me the image!). And for a while, you couldn't bypass it at all.
  - basch 6y ago
    >SEO hacking isn't an easy problem It isnt and it is. With how many employees they have, it wouldnt be that hard to come up with a "preferlist" that always outranks other content, and have that list constantly maintained, verified, and checked. Googler runs across a high quality site, it gets nominated for the preferlist. Preferred site descends into clickbait, they get removed. The problem both Google and Facebook have is because of their attempt to maintain the illusion of impartiality, that they refuse to just say "we decided these sites are just better" like they should. The whole reason I go to google is because they are supposed to return better results.
    - mercer 6y ago
      > The problem both Google and Facebook have is because of their attempt to maintain the illusion of impartiality, that they refuse to just say "we decided these sites are just better" like they should. Isn't the problem worse than that, though? These 'SEO hacked' pages probably have google ads on them, and that seems like an even better reason for google to not lowering their ranking.
      - puranjay 6y ago
        I logged into Google Adsense again after years yesterday and good God has that thing changed radically. I remember when you would have to insert ad codes manually into each page or template. Google would discourage having more than 4 ad units/page, and 3 was recommended. Now Google has something called Auto Ads where it automatically inserts ads in your pages. And at the default setting, it inserts a lot of ads. In my test page, there were 7 ads on the page, and not even small ones.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Jesus we need to free this technology from corporate control.

akiselev 6y ago

It's more than that. Google tracks how long you stay on a page whenever you use the back button to go back to the search results. The longer you stay on that page, the better the page will rank so once everyone figured it out, we started getting all that useless fluff before recipes because it increases the time spent on pages.

puranjay 6y ago
Longer content also means you can cram more keywords in there, which means that your page can rank for a broader range of queries. It works from an SEO perspective but as a user, I really wish they'd do away with it.
kohtatsu 6y ago
I've thought a lot about how Google is fucking privacy over, but I haven't appreciated how badly they've managed to hamper the web. It's not entirely their fault, SEO hacking isn't an easy problem, but the open web has certainly faltered under their stewardship. It's so incompetent it almost looks like an effort to make it harder to find things without having Google's AI cut it into small bite sized pieces. I think Google and Facebook have a lot to atone for.
- puranjay 6y ago
  And they're not even trying to pretend to be subtle about it anymore. AMP is the best example. Google is acting almost like malware, taking over a site and destroying the experience. It's honestly sad. Google could have gone in such a different direction. They're sitting on a gold mine but they caved into investor pressure to keep on pumping more gold instead of being happy with just the billions they would have made anyway.
  - 1propionyl 6y ago
    As an experiment, try adding ampproject.org and google.com/amp to your blacklist and living with it for a week. I've been doing this for quite a while now, and it's placed in stark relief how bad the problem is getting. It used to be that a few results were AMP, usually news sites, but you could easily bypass it via the (i) icon. Then it was that most results that were content focused (not dynamic sites or web apps) were were AMP, but you could easily bypass it. Today, most results are AMP, even for sites which are dynamic (e.g. Reddit), and to make matters worse, the (i) links of many websites have now started linking to AMP pages themselves. You might be thinking "ah, well those are their self-hosted copies. Shouldn't that be fine? The problem is Google's use of AMP, not the format itself, right?" Funny thing that: those "self-hosted" AMP pages also won't load with the above two blacklist rules. Also, many image search results are now somehow AMP (...how does that even make sense? It's just an image, so just serve me the image!). And for a while, you couldn't bypass it at all.
- basch 6y ago
  >SEO hacking isn't an easy problem It isnt and it is. With how many employees they have, it wouldnt be that hard to come up with a "preferlist" that always outranks other content, and have that list constantly maintained, verified, and checked. Googler runs across a high quality site, it gets nominated for the preferlist. Preferred site descends into clickbait, they get removed. The problem both Google and Facebook have is because of their attempt to maintain the illusion of impartiality, that they refuse to just say "we decided these sites are just better" like they should. The whole reason I go to google is because they are supposed to return better results.
  - mercer 6y ago
    > The problem both Google and Facebook have is because of their attempt to maintain the illusion of impartiality, that they refuse to just say "we decided these sites are just better" like they should. Isn't the problem worse than that, though? These 'SEO hacked' pages probably have google ads on them, and that seems like an even better reason for google to not lowering their ranking.
    - puranjay 6y ago
      I logged into Google Adsense again after years yesterday and good God has that thing changed radically. I remember when you would have to insert ad codes manually into each page or template. Google would discourage having more than 4 ad units/page, and 3 was recommended. Now Google has something called Auto Ads where it automatically inserts ads in your pages. And at the default setting, it inserts a lot of ads. In my test page, there were 7 ads on the page, and not even small ones.
monadic2 6y ago
Jesus we need to free this technology from corporate control.