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> Why not try writing a search engine specifically for some category dominated by SEO spam? Back in the olden days, there were lots of organizations that colla
by Veen 5y ago
> Why not try writing a search engine specifically for some category dominated by SEO spam?
Back in the olden days, there were lots of organizations that collated high quality content from the best writers. They nurtured expert writers and paid them well. They fact-checked the content and employed diligent editors and proofreaders so it was accurate and well-written. Over the years, they'd build a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness that kept people coming back for more. If you wanted to learn about fitness, or cars, or cooking, or science, you'd find a reputable author and publisher and buy their magazines or books.
But then, in the early 2000s, the geniuses from SV "disrupted" the publishing industry and its financial model. They brought us a much better way to find content, the search engine. Because they were so much better than the old-fashioned publishers, search engines gobbled up the advertising money and became the dominant gateway to content. Publishers had to abandon expensive high-quality writing because rankings and eyeballs now mattered more than quality and trustworthiness. Instead of investing in writers, they invested in marketers and SEO specialists.
The result: worthless content, writers banging out garbage for peanuts, and useless search engines.
Two decades later, looking at the barren wasteland they had created, the SV geniuses thought: I know what we need, more search engines, but smaller ones that collate high-quality content from the best writers. There must be money in that, right?
- dehrmann 5y agoI think you're unfairly putting blame on Silicon Valley. Publishers were only able to produce high-quality content because, with no conversion metrics, advertisers were willing to overpay for placement. Tech undermined publishers' revenue, but what it revealed was that people don't actually want high-quality journalism, they want entertainment, and they're definitely not going to pay a premium for it. This was hidden behind publishers' business model.
- nemothekid 5y ago>Publishers were only able to produce high-quality content because, with no conversion metrics, advertisers were willing to overpay for placement. This implies that big budget advertisers (the CPGs, like Coke and P&G), are buying Google/FB because they have better conversion metrics. That isn't true today; only SMBs and gaming companies care about conversion metrics. There are interns in LA/NY probably collectively spending millions on FB for P&G and only reporting the number of likes back to their bosses. Google and FB has never meaningfully delivered on conversions past anything like app downloads. Tech undermined publisher's revenue because the internet cratered distribution costs. Advertising revenues for big media crashed because the eyeballs moved away, not because it was any less efficient.
- dehrmann 5y ago> the CPGs, like Coke and P&G Did any of these heavily buy newspaper ads before 2000? Definitely TV, possibly magazine, but newspaper? I just don't remember seeing ads for Tide in newspapers.
- throwaway2037 5y agoI thought for a moment about your reply. Do you remember Saturday / Sunday coupon sections? These are essentially adverts. Those are 100% consumables -- like branded health, food, and cleaning products.
- dehrmann 5y agoThat's a fair point; I forgot about those. That said, the earlier comment was on conversion metrics. Unlike brand advertising, brands track conversion metrics on coupons closely. I stand by my point that tech just exposed a bad business model. Newspapers were only viable because they were the ~only game in town. Now what actually killed newspapers wasn't search, it was Craigslist killing the classifieds...at least according to a study Google paid for.
- salt-thrower 5y agoIt's been really sad to grow up and watch the cool techie optimism of the 2000's internet get sucked dry by profit motives and left to rot. The change has occurred pretty much entirely within my adult lifetime (I'm only 27 and I still remember when Google was the cool new thing on the internet). It went from "search engines and the web will usher in a new era of wisdom and democracy" to "useful content is dying at the hands of monetization schemes, and also the internet will be the death of liberal democracy, woe unto us all" in about 15 years.
- renewiltord 5y agoThose guys covered literally nothing compared to what I can get recommendations for with “product type Reddit”. No thanks.
- Veen 5y agoYou may not be aware, but the written word can be used for more than product reviews.
- renewiltord 5y agoOh, they were just usually wrong on everything else. Fortunately, these days we have individuals debunking the nonsense. Back then, people just uncritically believed total horseshit. The invariant has always been: find people who make falsifiable predictions and improve. Back then the pool was small and you had no choice. Now, fortunately we have a choice.
- GarlicToum 5y agoI tried creating a search engine for recipes. It works well and people like it, but the struggle is no one remembers that it exists and Google is just their default for search. So from an individual developer perspective, it's very hard to get people to change their habits. And Google/duck/Bing is the one stop shop. It's still out there, but I haven't worked on it much lately. I always think that if I had some good advertisers, a better UI, and a salary coming in, maybe it could take over some of Google's usage!
- mkl 5y agoI think the name may be part of the problem there. Most things people want recipes for probably don't contain or go with garlic. E.g. if I wanted to make a cake, garlic is one of the last things I'd think of.
- citizenkeen 5y ago(1) What is it? (2) Do you have a bang on DuckDuckGo? I'm pretty aggressive with bangs, and I suspect a lot of DDG users end up being aggressive with them as well.
- GarlicToum 5y agoLinked above, I didn't know you could just submit a random site to a DDG to be included in bangs
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Volker_W 5y ago> I tried creating a search engine for recipes. It works well and people like it, but the struggle is no one remembers that it exists and Google is just their default for search. Link please
- GarlicToum 5y agohttps://garlictoum.com/ https://garlictoum.com/
- mistermann 5y agoSomething else that has largely disappeared is that there used to be a fair amount of organization of content, whereas now a lot of content is just thrown into a big pile and the user is left to go fishing on their own with search engines, whose ability to search seems to be declining (ie: Google often seems to no longer support mandatory include/exclude search parameters). Generally speaking, the result seems to be decreasing order and increasing chaos. Of course, the massive volume of content creates a fundamental problem, but user curation & categorization on sites like Youtube would be possible, were Google to provide the software support so people could do that. Whether this and similar decisions are deliberate or accidental is likely one of those things that we will never know.
- allochthon 5y ago> Google often seems to no longer support mandatory include/exclude search parameters I've noticed this, and it's frustrating. I have assumed it's intentional. I am left to guess as to what a change in this behavior would accomplish.
- Volker_W 5y agoWhat does SV stand for?
- smk_ 5y agoSilicon Valley
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- allochthon 5y agoSilicon Valley, i.e., the California tech scene.
- KarlKemp 5y agoGreed, mostly.
- jayd16 5y agoI guess there's also the rise of influencers in the mix here. The commoditization of publishing means content creators can more easily work independently.
- DaveExeter 5y ago>Because they were so much better than the old-fashioned publishers, search engines gobbled up the advertising money No, what happened is that the publishing industry lost their monopoly. They could no longer extract monopoly rents from advertisers. One problem with search engines is affiliate marketing. If Google de-indexed the junk affiliate sites, the web would be much less polluted with affiliate spam.
- KarlKemp 5y agoAn "industry" can, almost by definition, not be a monopoly.
- AussieWog93 5y agoIt can if there are only a few big players and they're all in cahoots.
- earthboundkid 5y ago> No, what happened is that the publishing industry lost their monopoly. They could no longer extract monopoly rents from advertisers. Publishing was not a monopoly. Google/FB are a duopoly. If publishers capture rent from advertisers, they plow it back into content, aka the thing consumers actually want. If Google/FB capture rent, they don’t provide a living wage to content creators and plow the money into buying other startups and whatever “metaverse” is.
- throwaway2037 5y agoI cannot find the link now, but there is great one page graph / chart that shows all the categories of Craigslist that have been cloned/displaced by start-ups. Does anyone have a link to that report?
- rapind 5y agoPopular HN post circa 2015: “Content Marketing Handbook“ Popular HN post in 2022: “Search engines and SEO spam”. Inevitable popular HN post 2025: “How to avoid getting flagged when content marketing“.