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I fear that Google also has a conflict of interest here. A lot of these non optimized sites are not interested in making money via ads. So Google wouldn't profi

I fear that Google also has a conflict of interest here. A lot of these non optimized sites are not interested in making money via ads. So Google wouldn't profit additionally from leading people there. And a lot of people (myself often times included) are looking for a quick answer. A good enough answer. So good enough, SEO optimized is being surfaced. The result of an optimization war on both sides combined with the inevitable monetary interests. I don't habe a solution. Sadly.

ratww 4y ago
I think there's two kinds of SEO spam going on. The black-hat kind is definitely made to extract money from ads. But those are easy to avoid for web veterans IMO. And I also feel that Google is doing its part, even though it's costing them money from those sweet ads! But the white-hat kind, also known as content marketing, is made to let legit companies save money. Instead of paying for Google Advertisement, they get traffic by means of organic content. Think "Michelin Guide" or "Red Bull". Which is a jolly fine idea and responsible for a lot of good stuff, but the problem is that this has been taken to extremes, and now the web is littered with low-effort content made by freelancer writers getting peanuts. I would personally prefer if those freelancer writers were doing 10 interesting Red Bull articles per month rather than 500 rehashes of contents from other websites. But who am I to judge. In the news industry things are also very similar.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  The "white-hat kind" can trivially be filtered out (or deterred) by downranking any of the crap these marketers use to measure their conversion rate - analytics, etc.
  - ratww 4y ago
    I love this idea. Would be nice to see it in a search engine, or at least a browser extension showing how much analytics junk a site has before you click it.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Kagi has a non-commercial filter that I suspect uses the presence of ads/analytics as a signal.
galangalalgol 4y ago
Does anyone have an ad free search engine? You'd start with blacklists from ublock origin, pi-hole, and similar, don't bother even crawling those, then have easy reporting for new or self hosted ads. Not much money in it if any, but it would be refreshing. Might even have a mode to nix anything with a payment method on the site, or that links to a site with a payment method.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  > Does anyone have an ad free search engine kagi.com search.marginalia.nu
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
Maybe back to Yahoo model of the 90s? Manually created collection of curated links?
- datavirtue 4y ago
  Yes. We have enough users now.

ratww 4y ago

I think there's two kinds of SEO spam going on. The black-hat kind is definitely made to extract money from ads. But those are easy to avoid for web veterans IMO. And I also feel that Google is doing its part, even though it's costing them money from those sweet ads! But the white-hat kind, also known as content marketing, is made to let legit companies save money. Instead of paying for Google Advertisement, they get traffic by means of organic content. Think "Michelin Guide" or "Red Bull". Which is a jolly fine idea and responsible for a lot of good stuff, but the problem is that this has been taken to extremes, and now the web is littered with low-effort content made by freelancer writers getting peanuts. I would personally prefer if those freelancer writers were doing 10 interesting Red Bull articles per month rather than 500 rehashes of contents from other websites. But who am I to judge. In the news industry things are also very similar.

Nextgrid 4y ago
The "white-hat kind" can trivially be filtered out (or deterred) by downranking any of the crap these marketers use to measure their conversion rate - analytics, etc.
- ratww 4y ago
  I love this idea. Would be nice to see it in a search engine, or at least a browser extension showing how much analytics junk a site has before you click it.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Kagi has a non-commercial filter that I suspect uses the presence of ads/analytics as a signal.

galangalalgol 4y ago

Does anyone have an ad free search engine? You'd start with blacklists from ublock origin, pi-hole, and similar, don't bother even crawling those, then have easy reporting for new or self hosted ads. Not much money in it if any, but it would be refreshing. Might even have a mode to nix anything with a payment method on the site, or that links to a site with a payment method.

ajmurmann 4y ago
> Does anyone have an ad free search engine kagi.com search.marginalia.nu

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

Maybe back to Yahoo model of the 90s? Manually created collection of curated links?

datavirtue 4y ago
Yes. We have enough users now.