8 ms·

I think one of the fundamental things that make search work well about 1-2 decades ago was that web sites would link to each other, and that those links could v

I think one of the fundamental things that make search work well about 1-2 decades ago was that web sites would link to each other, and that those links could vaguely correlate with reputation. There were link spammers, but there was actually a some decent organic content as well. What's happened since then is that almost all the normal "people linking to things they like" has gone behind walled gardens (chiefly Facebook), and vast majority of what remains on the open web are SEO spammers.

dpeck 5y ago
I agree very much with this. It seems that between the walled gardens and also people being so reluctant to have “their” audience leave their site/page/etc the discoverability of the web has dropped dramatically.
prepend 5y ago
I wish FB would be more open, but since they have all this walled garden info, are they well placed to start a competing search engine? Would be interesting if their activity could help filter out seo hackers.
- kritiko 5y ago
  FB search seems to have gotten worse and worse. Unless I can remember the specific Group where I saw something, it's very unlikely that I can find it again. And they know which posts I've been highly engaged on...
wodenokoto 5y ago
Why has blogs and articles stopped linking to things? I'm reading a restaurant review site, and they won't link to the restaurant. The chef name is a link to a list of all articles tagged with the chefs name, rather a wikipedia link or something useful that can tell me who that person is.
- ufo 5y ago
  There aren't as many blogs now as there used to be.
  - nkrisc 5y ago
    I find that claim surprising considering how many more people there are simply using the internet at all. Fewer unique blog domains due to “blogging” sites that aggregate users? Sounds plausible. Fewer people blogging overall? I’m not convinced yet.
    - lethologica 5y ago
      I wonder if the majority are moving to vlogging instead?
    - ufo 5y ago
      I think the bigger issue now is that more content is inside social media "silos" like twitter, instagram or youtube. I don't have the numbers though.
      - Volker_W 5y ago
        Why is this a problem? Can't google index social media silos?
        bluGill 5y ago
        Which ones. They can index their own, but for the others only the public stuff. Facebook has a lot of things private so nobody can see them except your friends. (they are by no means perfect, but a lot of things are private and only seen by friends - most of it isn't of interest to a search engine anyway but comments of the form "I love X product" could in a perfect world be indexed as a sign of what people find good)
    - Baeocystin 5y ago
      I'd believe it. As an IT consultant, I interact with a lot of people who are semi-techs themselves- mostly small business owners who are used to wearing a lot of hats, and also the type to have been motivated to run their own personal blogs about diving/photography/conlangs/quilting/gardening/whatever their personal hobbies are. Ten years ago, the majority(!) had at least something up and running, where they would post essays, thoughts, whatever came to mind. Nowadays? All gone. All! When asked why, the answer almost always is along a mix of ever-increasing negative feedback and harassment from randos, and aggressive automated spamming of their forums. Loss of the pseudo-anonymity plays a large role as well. Many have deleted years' worth of work, simply because they are afraid of someone trolling through their posts to find something to harass them with. I was never a blogger myself, but I am sad about the change. There was a lot of good stuff out there for a while, and sometimes it just plain made me happy to read someone joyfully nerding out on a favorite subject of theirs.
Mezzie 5y ago
Yup, early Google relied on a lot of unpaid , unseen human intervention and choices. I ran some weblinks and curatorial sites during the search wars, and PageRank could only work because there were people behind the sites choosing links based on their usefulness to their audience.
ZetaZero 5y ago
That's an interesting observation. IMO, we stopped linking to good content because Google was good at finding it. Now Google is suffering, and we need to go back to doing more links.
inlined 5y ago
Does this mean that Facebook is the only company well poised to take on google search?
snowwrestler 5y ago
This explains why running a search engine on the original Google PageRank algorithm would not work as well today as it did back then. But Google doesn’t run on PageRank anymore. PageRank is merely one of hundreds of signals they use to sort results.

dpeck 5y ago

I agree very much with this. It seems that between the walled gardens and also people being so reluctant to have “their” audience leave their site/page/etc the discoverability of the web has dropped dramatically.

prepend 5y ago

I wish FB would be more open, but since they have all this walled garden info, are they well placed to start a competing search engine? Would be interesting if their activity could help filter out seo hackers.

kritiko 5y ago
FB search seems to have gotten worse and worse. Unless I can remember the specific Group where I saw something, it's very unlikely that I can find it again. And they know which posts I've been highly engaged on...

wodenokoto 5y ago

Why has blogs and articles stopped linking to things? I'm reading a restaurant review site, and they won't link to the restaurant. The chef name is a link to a list of all articles tagged with the chefs name, rather a wikipedia link or something useful that can tell me who that person is.

ufo 5y ago
There aren't as many blogs now as there used to be.
- nkrisc 5y ago
  I find that claim surprising considering how many more people there are simply using the internet at all. Fewer unique blog domains due to “blogging” sites that aggregate users? Sounds plausible. Fewer people blogging overall? I’m not convinced yet.
  - lethologica 5y ago
    I wonder if the majority are moving to vlogging instead?
  - ufo 5y ago
    I think the bigger issue now is that more content is inside social media "silos" like twitter, instagram or youtube. I don't have the numbers though.
    - Volker_W 5y ago
      Why is this a problem? Can't google index social media silos?
      - bluGill 5y ago
        Which ones. They can index their own, but for the others only the public stuff. Facebook has a lot of things private so nobody can see them except your friends. (they are by no means perfect, but a lot of things are private and only seen by friends - most of it isn't of interest to a search engine anyway but comments of the form "I love X product" could in a perfect world be indexed as a sign of what people find good)
  - Baeocystin 5y ago
    I'd believe it. As an IT consultant, I interact with a lot of people who are semi-techs themselves- mostly small business owners who are used to wearing a lot of hats, and also the type to have been motivated to run their own personal blogs about diving/photography/conlangs/quilting/gardening/whatever their personal hobbies are. Ten years ago, the majority(!) had at least something up and running, where they would post essays, thoughts, whatever came to mind. Nowadays? All gone. All! When asked why, the answer almost always is along a mix of ever-increasing negative feedback and harassment from randos, and aggressive automated spamming of their forums. Loss of the pseudo-anonymity plays a large role as well. Many have deleted years' worth of work, simply because they are afraid of someone trolling through their posts to find something to harass them with. I was never a blogger myself, but I am sad about the change. There was a lot of good stuff out there for a while, and sometimes it just plain made me happy to read someone joyfully nerding out on a favorite subject of theirs.

Mezzie 5y ago

Yup, early Google relied on a lot of unpaid , unseen human intervention and choices. I ran some weblinks and curatorial sites during the search wars, and PageRank could only work because there were people behind the sites choosing links based on their usefulness to their audience.

ZetaZero 5y ago

That's an interesting observation. IMO, we stopped linking to good content because Google was good at finding it. Now Google is suffering, and we need to go back to doing more links.

inlined 5y ago

Does this mean that Facebook is the only company well poised to take on google search?

snowwrestler 5y ago

This explains why running a search engine on the original Google PageRank algorithm would not work as well today as it did back then. But Google doesn’t run on PageRank anymore. PageRank is merely one of hundreds of signals they use to sort results.