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The example is the way that the dominance of Google changed the web. It's "manipulate the results", by way of "be careful what you wish for" - if there's money

by dflock 4y ago

The example is the way that the dominance of Google changed the web. It's "manipulate the results", by way of "be careful what you wish for" - if there's money to be made in pandering to a search engines whims, then that will happen at scale and that content will swamp the good stuff that you wanted in the first place.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Google is arguable exceptional, in that they are in a position to shape a significant amount of web traffic. Their largest competitor doesn't even have 1% market share.
- dflock 4y ago
  I agree with this - Google is so dominant and so large, that it distorts the entire web. But I think this is probably just a historical accident, more or less. This is just [Goodharts Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) write large: > When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So, when you try to measure content quality in some way, that becomes a target, and starts to distort the quality of the content. I think this applies equally in any niche, at any scale where people find it worthwhile. If you have a niche search engine that has different content requirements, and it becomes worthwhile to SEO niche content for that engine, then it will happen, eventually. I think it just has to become worthwhile (and then for this fact to become known) - but that threshold is going to vary a lot, in different niches, times, places, etc... There are plenty of people (~everyone?) gaming/SEO'ing the search on Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, etc... for example, by doing niche & platform specific SEO on their listings on those platforms. I also think that people's definition of "worthwhile" differs too. For the broad SEO industry, it monetary. For people making posts on HN or Reddit, it's Karma, or Discussion or something - and people will optimize their content towards that, just for "fun". Actually, I think this applies pretty boardly to making _anything_, more or less, once you have someone or something evaluating/measuring your output? How _harmful_ this is, depends on what's being optimized for; scale & rewards probably change how "hard" the optimization arms race gets - as well as how many people are affected.

by dflock 4y ago

marginalia_nu 4y ago

Google is arguable exceptional, in that they are in a position to shape a significant amount of web traffic. Their largest competitor doesn't even have 1% market share.

dflock 4y ago
I agree with this - Google is so dominant and so large, that it distorts the entire web. But I think this is probably just a historical accident, more or less. This is just [Goodharts Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) write large: > When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So, when you try to measure content quality in some way, that becomes a target, and starts to distort the quality of the content. I think this applies equally in any niche, at any scale where people find it worthwhile. If you have a niche search engine that has different content requirements, and it becomes worthwhile to SEO niche content for that engine, then it will happen, eventually. I think it just has to become worthwhile (and then for this fact to become known) - but that threshold is going to vary a lot, in different niches, times, places, etc... There are plenty of people (~everyone?) gaming/SEO'ing the search on Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, etc... for example, by doing niche & platform specific SEO on their listings on those platforms. I also think that people's definition of "worthwhile" differs too. For the broad SEO industry, it monetary. For people making posts on HN or Reddit, it's Karma, or Discussion or something - and people will optimize their content towards that, just for "fun". Actually, I think this applies pretty boardly to making _anything_, more or less, once you have someone or something evaluating/measuring your output? How _harmful_ this is, depends on what's being optimized for; scale & rewards probably change how "hard" the optimization arms race gets - as well as how many people are affected.