6 ms·

SEO is so broken, it's not about website content or website quality. It's about how much money you pay to some punks - "SEO experts" who are hacking a system. I

by shmiga 5y ago

SEO is so broken, it's not about website content or website quality. It's about how much money you pay to some punks - "SEO experts" who are hacking a system. I'm so sick of that.

topicseed 5y ago
True to some extent but it is improving with Google updates. Now, there is a way to go still, and some legit websites get hit by updates unfortunately, but overall fewer and fewer scams pass through. SEO used to be extremely gameable (seniority of site, keyword stuffing, backlinks), but these levers aren't as obvious now, if at all.
- shmiga 5y ago
  That is great, but can google change their algo to some point where it works differently? Their ad business is there in the web.
  - SquareWheel 5y ago
    Google changes their algo frequently. It's a cat and mouse game. Sometimes Google have the lead, and sometimes the Blackhat SEOs do.
    - 12ian34 5y ago
      the game doesn't change ... only the players
mrtksn 5y ago
If you Google stuff like "opening hours of ..." in Turkish(probably in other languages too), since many years the search results are only news websites spamming google, including the Turkish franchise of CNN, the CNN Turk. The format goes like this: Lately people are searching for XYZ but is it safe to search for XYZ? What experts say for XYZ? To find out continue to read our article. Then it's followed by wall of text made of keywords(in sentences that don't make sense), if you are lucky there would be the opening hours(which are often not accurate) somewhere down the text. But that doesn't stop there. Even actual news articles are written for the consumption of the Google bot, the sentences often don't make sence, they are repeated multiple times with the synonyms of one of the words, making it into a lengthy article that doesn't have any meat beyond the title. I argue that the problem is not SEO experts with low ethics, the problem is the way the business is structured. SEO experts don't do it for the sake of the art but because they are paid to do it. They are paid to do it because it has a positive ROI on bringing eyeballs and people pay Google for eyeballs, then Google pays those who generate the eyeballs. Isn't it better for Google and everyone involved if you can't find what you are looking for, continuing your search brings more eyeballs? It's not like you are going to switch to Bing? You are also not going to abandon the internet and go to a library.
- Avamander 5y ago
  > Then it's followed by wall of text made of keywords. I've noticed a rise of that as well. With some searches such spam is all I've received. But that's really a problem in all languages Google supports I think. There's even malware that infects websites and generates such content, not sure what's the point of that. Anyone knows?
  - vijayr02 5y ago
    I'm guessing if even legitimate websites have similar content it's difficult to distinguish between fake and real content for an automated system?
- eino 5y ago
  > It's not like you are going to switch to Bing From personal experience, I switched to another tool (DDG) a couple of years ago. When I occasionally try Google, for 95% of common requests I'm appalled by the results: the top is only SEO garbage. For very specific and precise searches (where people are not trying to game the system), Google is still the best, though.
  - simonbarker87 5y ago
    Huh, you've given me a realisation - I don't do 'generic searching' on google anymore. I hear people say "google is broken" and I always think "it's fine for me" but thats because I'm searching for specific things, error messages, function calls etc. If I am searching for general interest stuff I tend to search reddit, hacker news or some other topic specific community rather than just search google
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      I just realised I do something similar - almost every term I search will have the word "Reddit" appended to it. It's not perfect, but at least the content is intended for human consumption.
AtNightWeCode 5y ago
This is not how it generally works, I would say. It is more about how much you pay Google and how good your page is. I worked with several SEO experts and none of them suggested scams like this. The risk of doing something like this is too high for many companies.
DelightOne 5y ago
That's why for certain things Google is useless. Have to add certain keywords to avoid the SEO content to get comparisons, reviews, forums. One day Google may introduce multiple search rankings, where one of them is SEO and another is the "useful things". But I don't hold my breath.
- ma2rten 5y ago
  The useful thing would instantly become useless because people would start gaming it.
  - DelightOne 5y ago
    Agreed, I heard that before. What about trust-based systems. You choose who you trust and get information that they found not to be SEO-garbage, like trust-rings. When the system can't do it alone, user-centric feedback may work. That could give interesting inputs besides the ones Google already gets using its standard metrics.
    - randomswede 5y ago
      Yes, but it feels like an approach that would not allow you to do anon searches. I guess pseud searches may be good enough. I suspect this is actually one of those fundamentally hard problems.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      When you place a tangible value on trust, trust becomes a commodity to be bought and sold. See: 1. Old domain names bought solely for their old SEO rank. 2. Apps on mobile app stores are sold, and updates begin to include shady privacy-invading malware. 3. Old free software projects on various registries (npm etc.) are sold, with the same result as (2).
      - DelightOne 5y ago
        Agreed, being able to become part of any group makes this problematic. Without repercussions, it seems difficult. Detection of ownership and the following loss of trust seems to be also in order. Or make the trust innate, not sellable to others, under the assumption that you cannot sell yourself. Otherwise, it seems really like a cat and mouse game. Another option may be to force SEO to be indistinguishable from the best content. Is that the current goal?
maze-le 5y ago
I wonder why google is not more rigorous about that. Google search is riddled since years with "optimized" content nobody wants. It's become so bad even my non-techie friends are beginning to switch to DuckDuckGo -- which is not better per se (probably worse at contextualizig).
- bungle 5y ago
  Getting stuff on PagaRank feels a game. Getting stuff out of Google feels a game too. To the point that moving to an alternative feels worth it, at least to try.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  Everyone wonders about that. Googling most phone numbers return nothing but pages of spam links. A decade from now, Google will have made no improvement.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Fix the system? People who comment online seem to think the concept of the "search engine" cannot be improved, except by Google. The list of inactive search engines at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine is depressing. The problem for us is that the supposed innovator Google has little financial incentive to improve the system regarding "content" or "quality". As long as the traffic keeps coming, the ad revenue keeps coming. Their best bet is promote what's "popular" ("top-ranking"). Because the traffic keeps coming no matter what Google does, "content" and "quality" are not really their major concerns. There are no true alternatives for users. Bing is basically a Google clone. No new ideas. Other search engines, like DDG, just piggyback off Google or Bing crawlers. Not sure about Baidu, Yandex or others but I suspect they are more or less Google clones as well. In every case, advertising dictates design. No new ideas.
- apples_oranges 5y ago
  I'm trying alternative search engines from time to time and and they are much weaker than Google. So yeah, I'd bet on them to improve stage. The others first need to catch up.
  - JPLeRouzic 5y ago
    Long time ago (~2005) my French Telco employer had a search engine (Voila), and they were worried by Google's influence so they try a test campaign to see how Google's results were different from their own search engine. The result was astonishing: In the first page most results were similar, except for the order. Specifically a first result in Google was only second in the first page in the company's search engine. But in overall the difference was mostly in the presentation, not in the results. There was something Spartan in Google's page UI that made it more credible and informative. At the time for most people including academics, they were the good guys and us (Telcos) the bad boys. I guess academics advices were very influential on young adults who will shape the world the next years. I guess also the erratic management by France Telecom was for something in the demise of Voila.fr
    - 5y ago
enknamel 5y ago
Or .... how much money you pay Google. This is working as intended for a free search engine.

by shmiga 5y ago

SEO is so broken, it's not about website content or website quality. It's about how much money you pay to some punks - "SEO experts" who are hacking a system. I'm so sick of that.

topicseed 5y ago

True to some extent but it is improving with Google updates. Now, there is a way to go still, and some legit websites get hit by updates unfortunately, but overall fewer and fewer scams pass through. SEO used to be extremely gameable (seniority of site, keyword stuffing, backlinks), but these levers aren't as obvious now, if at all.

shmiga 5y ago
That is great, but can google change their algo to some point where it works differently? Their ad business is there in the web.
- SquareWheel 5y ago
  Google changes their algo frequently. It's a cat and mouse game. Sometimes Google have the lead, and sometimes the Blackhat SEOs do.
  - 12ian34 5y ago
    the game doesn't change ... only the players

mrtksn 5y ago

If you Google stuff like "opening hours of ..." in Turkish(probably in other languages too), since many years the search results are only news websites spamming google, including the Turkish franchise of CNN, the CNN Turk. The format goes like this: Lately people are searching for XYZ but is it safe to search for XYZ? What experts say for XYZ? To find out continue to read our article. Then it's followed by wall of text made of keywords(in sentences that don't make sense), if you are lucky there would be the opening hours(which are often not accurate) somewhere down the text. But that doesn't stop there. Even actual news articles are written for the consumption of the Google bot, the sentences often don't make sence, they are repeated multiple times with the synonyms of one of the words, making it into a lengthy article that doesn't have any meat beyond the title. I argue that the problem is not SEO experts with low ethics, the problem is the way the business is structured. SEO experts don't do it for the sake of the art but because they are paid to do it. They are paid to do it because it has a positive ROI on bringing eyeballs and people pay Google for eyeballs, then Google pays those who generate the eyeballs. Isn't it better for Google and everyone involved if you can't find what you are looking for, continuing your search brings more eyeballs? It's not like you are going to switch to Bing? You are also not going to abandon the internet and go to a library.

Avamander 5y ago
> Then it's followed by wall of text made of keywords. I've noticed a rise of that as well. With some searches such spam is all I've received. But that's really a problem in all languages Google supports I think. There's even malware that infects websites and generates such content, not sure what's the point of that. Anyone knows?
- vijayr02 5y ago
  I'm guessing if even legitimate websites have similar content it's difficult to distinguish between fake and real content for an automated system?
eino 5y ago
> It's not like you are going to switch to Bing From personal experience, I switched to another tool (DDG) a couple of years ago. When I occasionally try Google, for 95% of common requests I'm appalled by the results: the top is only SEO garbage. For very specific and precise searches (where people are not trying to game the system), Google is still the best, though.
- simonbarker87 5y ago
  Huh, you've given me a realisation - I don't do 'generic searching' on google anymore. I hear people say "google is broken" and I always think "it's fine for me" but thats because I'm searching for specific things, error messages, function calls etc. If I am searching for general interest stuff I tend to search reddit, hacker news or some other topic specific community rather than just search google
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    I just realised I do something similar - almost every term I search will have the word "Reddit" appended to it. It's not perfect, but at least the content is intended for human consumption.

AtNightWeCode 5y ago

This is not how it generally works, I would say. It is more about how much you pay Google and how good your page is. I worked with several SEO experts and none of them suggested scams like this. The risk of doing something like this is too high for many companies.

DelightOne 5y ago

That's why for certain things Google is useless. Have to add certain keywords to avoid the SEO content to get comparisons, reviews, forums. One day Google may introduce multiple search rankings, where one of them is SEO and another is the "useful things". But I don't hold my breath.

ma2rten 5y ago
The useful thing would instantly become useless because people would start gaming it.
- DelightOne 5y ago
  Agreed, I heard that before. What about trust-based systems. You choose who you trust and get information that they found not to be SEO-garbage, like trust-rings. When the system can't do it alone, user-centric feedback may work. That could give interesting inputs besides the ones Google already gets using its standard metrics.
  - randomswede 5y ago
    Yes, but it feels like an approach that would not allow you to do anon searches. I guess pseud searches may be good enough. I suspect this is actually one of those fundamentally hard problems.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    When you place a tangible value on trust, trust becomes a commodity to be bought and sold. See: 1. Old domain names bought solely for their old SEO rank. 2. Apps on mobile app stores are sold, and updates begin to include shady privacy-invading malware. 3. Old free software projects on various registries (npm etc.) are sold, with the same result as (2).
    - DelightOne 5y ago
      Agreed, being able to become part of any group makes this problematic. Without repercussions, it seems difficult. Detection of ownership and the following loss of trust seems to be also in order. Or make the trust innate, not sellable to others, under the assumption that you cannot sell yourself. Otherwise, it seems really like a cat and mouse game. Another option may be to force SEO to be indistinguishable from the best content. Is that the current goal?

maze-le 5y ago

I wonder why google is not more rigorous about that. Google search is riddled since years with "optimized" content nobody wants. It's become so bad even my non-techie friends are beginning to switch to DuckDuckGo -- which is not better per se (probably worse at contextualizig).

bungle 5y ago
Getting stuff on PagaRank feels a game. Getting stuff out of Google feels a game too. To the point that moving to an alternative feels worth it, at least to try.
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
Everyone wonders about that. Googling most phone numbers return nothing but pages of spam links. A decade from now, Google will have made no improvement.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

Fix the system? People who comment online seem to think the concept of the "search engine" cannot be improved, except by Google. The list of inactive search engines at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine is depressing. The problem for us is that the supposed innovator Google has little financial incentive to improve the system regarding "content" or "quality". As long as the traffic keeps coming, the ad revenue keeps coming. Their best bet is promote what's "popular" ("top-ranking"). Because the traffic keeps coming no matter what Google does, "content" and "quality" are not really their major concerns. There are no true alternatives for users. Bing is basically a Google clone. No new ideas. Other search engines, like DDG, just piggyback off Google or Bing crawlers. Not sure about Baidu, Yandex or others but I suspect they are more or less Google clones as well. In every case, advertising dictates design. No new ideas.

apples_oranges 5y ago
I'm trying alternative search engines from time to time and and they are much weaker than Google. So yeah, I'd bet on them to improve stage. The others first need to catch up.
- JPLeRouzic 5y ago
  Long time ago (~2005) my French Telco employer had a search engine (Voila), and they were worried by Google's influence so they try a test campaign to see how Google's results were different from their own search engine. The result was astonishing: In the first page most results were similar, except for the order. Specifically a first result in Google was only second in the first page in the company's search engine. But in overall the difference was mostly in the presentation, not in the results. There was something Spartan in Google's page UI that made it more credible and informative. At the time for most people including academics, they were the good guys and us (Telcos) the bad boys. I guess academics advices were very influential on young adults who will shape the world the next years. I guess also the erratic management by France Telecom was for something in the demise of Voila.fr
  - 5y ago

enknamel 5y ago

Or .... how much money you pay Google. This is working as intended for a free search engine.