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Because, years ago, linking to lower reputation sites would drain your page rank. So everyone worried about SEO became afraid to link to anything except: 1) T

by ijidak 5y ago

Because, years ago, linking to lower reputation sites would drain your page rank. So everyone worried about SEO became afraid to link to anything except: 1) Their own website 2) High reputation sites like NYTimes, etc. It's sad. Makes it harder to navigate the web.

chongli 5y ago
Bang on. Saying that "there isn't anything out there anymore" is missing the point: Google's algorithms created this situation, intentionally or not. Before Google, people linked to what they wanted and communities would naturally cluster around topics of interest. Google came in and made reputation into a currency which effectively destroyed all these communities through incentivizing selfishness.
- wussboy 5y ago
  Surely there is just a different algo that could bring about better communities?
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Only if implemented by the monopolist. People's best chance is stopping using Google and pushing for it to be broken-up.
    - ajmurmann 5y ago
      I wonder if punishing presence of advertisements would filter out most pages that are SEO'd to the max and instead promote "labors of love" type pages.
      - AlexandrB 5y ago
        This is an interesting idea because it would create a type of non- or anti-commercial SEO that could counteract the commercial one. However, Google would never do it because they sell most of the ads that would be (not) hosted on these sites.
      - naravara 5y ago
        Google owns the largest online advertising network though, so that’s definitely not where their bread is buttered.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    Different, but not better. The incentives to game the algo remain. People adapt to the environment.
    - kilburn 5y ago
      That's why mechanism design [1] exists as a field of study. The whole idea of that field is to provide the proper incentives to steer the participants towards your objective. Yes, considering they will try to "game" the system however they can. I'm pretty sure google could do strictly better (i.e.: better in all reasonable accounts) than they do now if they focused on the users' experience instead of revenue for a couple terms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design
    - amelius 5y ago
      > The incentives to game the algo remain. People adapt to the environment. Perhaps it could work if the algorithm changed its algorithm all the time.
      - jonathankoren 5y ago
        You don’t think Google does this already?
        wyclif 5y ago
        Paul Graham says Google doesn't want to follow anybody down that road (human intervention in search). But ISTM the problem is that even though they don't, they can just throw a giant pile of money at it if they needed to crush a competitor. Also, VC will refuse to invest in anybody doing it because Google.
        jonathankoren 5y ago
        PaulG doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
- Beldin 5y ago
  "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" -- Goodhart's Law. Google's algorithms didn't create this situation; people chasing high Google rankings did. Had Google used completely different algorithms yet became equally dominant, people still would have poured their hearts and souls into getting higher rankings. Basically, an application of the tragedy of the commons. Or: "why we can't have nice things".
  - mrkramer 5y ago
    >Google's algorithms didn't create this situation; people chasing high Google rankings did. But lowkey Google incentivized such behaviour by not being open and transparent on how exactly their algorithms work.
    - B-Con 5y ago
      That would have allowed people to artificially chase rankings even faster and more efficiently. It makes the problem worse, not better.
      - mrkramer 5y ago
        How is transparency worse than smoke screen that we have today? For example healthy and good websites could rank according to good content, good optimization, variety of multimedia content, decent design and UI etc. You can't have too much of good things and qualities. That would be something like writing a too good book or making a too good product.
        B-Con 5y ago
        Because the rank algorithms are subjective heuristics, not absolute metrics. All rank algorithms always have been. It started with the link metrics, then people started gaming that. It's been a signal/noise war ever since. It's also dangerous to ask for the exact criteria because they are ever changing. Google et al don't want to be prescriptive about what a good site is, they want to recognize what a good one is. You make a good one, they'll figure out how to recognize it. They can't sit down and publish "The Definitive Guide to a Good Website". That's just not their role and it will be out of date before it's published.
- xbmcuser 5y ago
  A big problem is that a lot of community content went behind Facebook. Instead of creating webpages or forums people started using Facebook pages and Facebook groups. This is the main reason I have been anti Facebook for over a decade. Not because of privacy reasons as many are but because I saw that Facebook will put the web behind it's closed doors. Even today some of the best reviews about any product or service are usually in enthusiast community forums. But a lot of that activity has gone behind closed doors of facebook and now reddit. Most of the current thriving forums are those that pre existed Facebook.
freeflight 5y ago
> It's sad. Makes it harder to navigate the web. Some would even say it killed the web by centralizing all the content in the hands of a few [0]. Which is the direct consequence of everybody optimizing to better show up on Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft and ultimately even migrating all their hosting to these companies. [0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...
mrkramer 5y ago
Wouldn't it be reasonable from Google to show how their ranking algorithms work so all webmasters and content creators know how to behave on the web. Now we have black box that's causing confusion and is misdirecting websites and web users.
- wyattpeak 5y ago
  I don't think so. If the problem is people gaming the system, making it easier to game isn't going to improve the situation. It's not going to put good content creators on a level playing field with spammers, because good content creators simply don't care as much as spammers about search engine gaming.
  - rtsil 5y ago
    But people are already gaming the system, and on any search from product reviews to code snippets, I see SEO-optimized spams populating the top results. Good content creator don't have the time or the technical inclination to reverse-engineer the ranking algorithm (or to brute-force by creating tens of thousands of sites and see what sticks in a giant multivariate test). Knowing the actual rules might give them a fighting chance, since the bad guys already know these rules anyway.

by ijidak 5y ago

chongli 5y ago

Bang on. Saying that "there isn't anything out there anymore" is missing the point: Google's algorithms created this situation, intentionally or not. Before Google, people linked to what they wanted and communities would naturally cluster around topics of interest. Google came in and made reputation into a currency which effectively destroyed all these communities through incentivizing selfishness.

wussboy 5y ago
Surely there is just a different algo that could bring about better communities?
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Only if implemented by the monopolist. People's best chance is stopping using Google and pushing for it to be broken-up.
  - ajmurmann 5y ago
    I wonder if punishing presence of advertisements would filter out most pages that are SEO'd to the max and instead promote "labors of love" type pages.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      This is an interesting idea because it would create a type of non- or anti-commercial SEO that could counteract the commercial one. However, Google would never do it because they sell most of the ads that would be (not) hosted on these sites.
    - naravara 5y ago
      Google owns the largest online advertising network though, so that’s definitely not where their bread is buttered.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  Different, but not better. The incentives to game the algo remain. People adapt to the environment.
  - kilburn 5y ago
    That's why mechanism design [1] exists as a field of study. The whole idea of that field is to provide the proper incentives to steer the participants towards your objective. Yes, considering they will try to "game" the system however they can. I'm pretty sure google could do strictly better (i.e.: better in all reasonable accounts) than they do now if they focused on the users' experience instead of revenue for a couple terms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design
  - amelius 5y ago
    > The incentives to game the algo remain. People adapt to the environment. Perhaps it could work if the algorithm changed its algorithm all the time.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      You don’t think Google does this already?
      - wyclif 5y ago
        Paul Graham says Google doesn't want to follow anybody down that road (human intervention in search). But ISTM the problem is that even though they don't, they can just throw a giant pile of money at it if they needed to crush a competitor. Also, VC will refuse to invest in anybody doing it because Google.
        jonathankoren 5y ago
        PaulG doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Beldin 5y ago
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" -- Goodhart's Law. Google's algorithms didn't create this situation; people chasing high Google rankings did. Had Google used completely different algorithms yet became equally dominant, people still would have poured their hearts and souls into getting higher rankings. Basically, an application of the tragedy of the commons. Or: "why we can't have nice things".
- mrkramer 5y ago
  >Google's algorithms didn't create this situation; people chasing high Google rankings did. But lowkey Google incentivized such behaviour by not being open and transparent on how exactly their algorithms work.
  - B-Con 5y ago
    That would have allowed people to artificially chase rankings even faster and more efficiently. It makes the problem worse, not better.
    - mrkramer 5y ago
      How is transparency worse than smoke screen that we have today? For example healthy and good websites could rank according to good content, good optimization, variety of multimedia content, decent design and UI etc. You can't have too much of good things and qualities. That would be something like writing a too good book or making a too good product.
      - B-Con 5y ago
        Because the rank algorithms are subjective heuristics, not absolute metrics. All rank algorithms always have been. It started with the link metrics, then people started gaming that. It's been a signal/noise war ever since. It's also dangerous to ask for the exact criteria because they are ever changing. Google et al don't want to be prescriptive about what a good site is, they want to recognize what a good one is. You make a good one, they'll figure out how to recognize it. They can't sit down and publish "The Definitive Guide to a Good Website". That's just not their role and it will be out of date before it's published.
xbmcuser 5y ago
A big problem is that a lot of community content went behind Facebook. Instead of creating webpages or forums people started using Facebook pages and Facebook groups. This is the main reason I have been anti Facebook for over a decade. Not because of privacy reasons as many are but because I saw that Facebook will put the web behind it's closed doors. Even today some of the best reviews about any product or service are usually in enthusiast community forums. But a lot of that activity has gone behind closed doors of facebook and now reddit. Most of the current thriving forums are those that pre existed Facebook.

freeflight 5y ago

> It's sad. Makes it harder to navigate the web. Some would even say it killed the web by centralizing all the content in the hands of a few [0]. Which is the direct consequence of everybody optimizing to better show up on Google/Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft and ultimately even migrating all their hosting to these companies. [0] https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.htm...

mrkramer 5y ago

Wouldn't it be reasonable from Google to show how their ranking algorithms work so all webmasters and content creators know how to behave on the web. Now we have black box that's causing confusion and is misdirecting websites and web users.

wyattpeak 5y ago
I don't think so. If the problem is people gaming the system, making it easier to game isn't going to improve the situation. It's not going to put good content creators on a level playing field with spammers, because good content creators simply don't care as much as spammers about search engine gaming.
- rtsil 5y ago
  But people are already gaming the system, and on any search from product reviews to code snippets, I see SEO-optimized spams populating the top results. Good content creator don't have the time or the technical inclination to reverse-engineer the ranking algorithm (or to brute-force by creating tens of thousands of sites and see what sticks in a giant multivariate test). Knowing the actual rules might give them a fighting chance, since the bad guys already know these rules anyway.