7 ms·

I don't trust Ahrefs at all. The whole SEO industry is tainted, and Ahrefs is not a good part of it. I don't want a search engine that pays "creators" (a searc

• hackernewds 4y ago
  exactly. as a consumer, I want to find good content. if the content is good there will be monetization prospects at the destination vs at the source doing this at scale makes it an economically viable as well as pleasant interface which Google does quite well already
• nacs 4y ago
  This needs to be higher up. If you go to the about section of Yep.com, you can see this is powered by the "Ahrefs" bot (not just for sourcing crawler data but also run by the same people). Ahrefs is a sleazy "SEO tool" ( https://ahrefs.com/pricing https://ahrefs.com/pricing ) that basically exists to exploit weaknesses in search engine algorithms and other shady things (and make lots of money doing it -- $99/mo to $999/mo).
  • fooey 4y ago
    This whole yep.com thing feels like an attempt to get everyone to please stop blocking their bot
    • blinding-streak 4y ago
      100% this right here. Ahrefs and Yep is not some altruistic endeavor.
    • moneywoes 4y ago
      Dumb question but would they not rotate bots in a situation like this? Or do they have a specific crawler
      • archerx 4y ago
        They have am aggressive crawler that I block. Why would I let a company use my resources to gather my data just so they can sell it to others for a premium at my expense?
      • ricardo81 4y ago
        They use a specific UA which is in the spirit of robots.txt, you're able to identify and allow/disallow access. Trying to masquerade as another agent would be considered bad form, but obviously happens a lot. There's a similar bot, MJ12Bot that powers Majestic's index which is similar to ahrefs. IIRC they have a user agent but their crawling is distributed, it's impossible to verify whether someone with that UA is them or someone else masquerading. Good practice by bot owners is having a UA and known IPs they crawl from which can be verified by DNS and reverse DNS lookups.
  • swinnipeg 4y ago
    Been using ahrefs for years, not sure what is sleazy about it. It audits your site for issues, shows Google rankings for keywords, estimated volume for keywords, backlinks to specific sites, backlinks to specific pages...etc. It doesn't do anything for SEO (no content, no links...etc), it simply reports on the state of affairs.
    • colordrops 4y ago
      SEO itself is sleazy. Any gaming of search is sleazy, whether active or passive. The NSA is sleazy, even though they simply report on "the state of affairs".
      • richardpetersen 4y ago
        SEO is a skill set that helps algorithms understand content. Google even lists it as a required skill for some of their roles: https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/83882884131103430-product-marketing-manager-seo-growth-lab/ https://careers.google.com/jobs/results/83882884131103430-pr...
        • Goronmon 4y ago
          Google even lists it as a required skill for some of their roles: I don't know if I'd use Google as a great example of sleazy vs non-sleazy...
          • deleted 4y ago
            [deleted]
      • wonderbore 4y ago
        I get this sentiment. "SEO" is basically an euphemism for spamming at this point. It's no longer just "Let's repeat this keyword 3 times" but "let's add 120 footer links and spam 35 blog comment sections per day"
        • 4y ago
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • encoderer 4y ago
    ah yes the sleazy underbelly of “researching what users are actually searching for”
    • Spivak 4y ago
      • puranjay 4y ago
        Yeah, a bad article ranking higher is obviously graverobbing /s
        • drdeca 4y ago
          what part of the analogy do you object to? Is it just that it isn't literally desecrating a corpse? Do you have an alternative example of "something which a shove is especially useful for and which which could be lucrative, but which is widely regarded as bad" ?
  • patrickstox 4y ago
    Folks here have a really strange view of SEO. These days it's really following guidelines, creating content that people want to see and is useful to searchers, linking to sources, etc.
    • account42 4y ago
      Content that people want to see ... plastered with affiliate links and/or biased to sell those people what you want them to buy. This is about extracting value and that value has to come from somewhere. Searchers are not benefiting here, they are the ones ultimately paying for it.
    • wonderbore 4y ago
      It really depends on who you ask. The most "successful" companies don't whitehat their way there. Just open any modern social media website and tell me if they are respectful of the users — and you can see that part. SEO is mostly invisible so they really don't have to care about you.
    • endless1234 4y ago
      The massive amount of github/stackoverflow content clones sitting at the top of the results for programming related queries seem to disagree with this sentiment. Ok I guess they are "creating content people want to see", but if just copypasting everyting from another source is enough for that...
      • rapnie 4y ago
        Also the large amount of bots creating fake accounts on forums (my experience is with Discourse) with profiles and spam posts to SEO boost some site indicate a whole shady background business going here.
        • popcorncowboy 4y ago
          Yeah, reminds me of anecdotes from the Dan Lyons book [0] about Hubspot. There was the shiny fun stuff happening "front of house", but back in the boiler-room it was ugly. And everyone gets shown only what they need to see to make them feel happy/sign/pay, and nothing else. No-one actually wants to know how the sausage is made. [0] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26030703-disrupted
  • puranjay 4y ago
    What exactly is “sleazy” about Ahrefs? Its literally just data.
  • dewey 4y ago
    It sounds like you never actually used ahrefs, or even know what it does. You just read “SEO” and sent straight to “these are the people spamming Google with content marketing fluff posts when I search for a product review!” What it does is showing you errors on your page 404, slow urls, pages that link to your site, missing tags, images that are too big and load slowly, keyword research and other things. I use it even for my small projects (the free version) because it helps me fix broken links or improve the page speed which is all good for users.
• al_borland 4y ago
  What are your thoughts on Neeva?
  • u2077 4y ago
    Not OP, but I loved Neeva’s results. That being said, it’s a bit too personalized to my liking. For example, it automatically detected my location to display the weather, and the app’s search history cannot be disabled without private mode. For a “private” search engine, it did way too many personalizations by default. These few things, and a somewhat confusing UI made me switch to Orion (Kagi).
    • al_borland 4y ago
      I just started giving Kagi (and Orion) a try. I'm liking it so far. Thanks for the tip.
  • whyrenee 4y ago
    I personally use neeva and like it so far. High quality results, some fun UI to interact with on cooking and sports topic. Also like the feature to create spaces for sites interested.
• gofkdpgokfd 4y ago
  I didn't realize more consumer choice is a bad thing.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  It is tainted because the entire premise of "web search" is flawed. IMHO. Sure, one can provide "free web search", and this existed before search engine advertising was a thing, but over time one can see that the concept is flawed. The database being searched is public information. Every web user should have access to it. However, access to a database of public www content is generally not free. An single exception is Common Crawl. In practice one is more likely to pay for access to a web index. I would bet even the alternative search engine mentioned is paying for access. An analogous situation is DNS. It is public information. Generally some of the database is made available for free, e.g., https://czds.icann.org/home https://czds.icann.org/home. In practice many people get the information piecemeal via lookups from a third party via a shared DNS cache, e.g., an ISP DNS cache. However there are other ways to get the information. It is public information. There should not be a restriction, real or imagined, that one has to go through a third party to get it. A further analogous situation is scans of www ports that check for httpds. If one runs a server that listens for connections on a public network, one should expect that the public may try to connect to it. This again is public information. No one should have to pay for access to it. However, often we see that bulk access is restricted to "security researchers". For example, censys.io will allow the public to search for free, with limits. The trend I am seeing is that the public is being trained to view the web as something opaque. People pay ISP's to access the web yet they are led to believe there is no way to view what it contains. At least, not for free. The public is led to believe the only way to see what the web contains is to do naive searches through third party that is Hoovering up the data and trying to sell advertising services. Imagine person A has a list of public information. Person B asks, "May I see the list." Person A says, "Sorry, but I compiled the list and therefore access to it requires a subscription. However I will let you search the list for free." The problem is that Person B will never know what is on the list, even though it is public information. Person B cannot even copy a small portion of the ordered list. IMHO, coupled with the perverse motivation of Person A to collect data and sell advertising services, this makes the concept of "search" flawed. If Person A said, "Sure, have a look at the list. If you need help searching through it, I can provide that service for a fee," then I would not see search as flawed. In other words, I want to see more work like Common Crawl to share public information. Seeing the list, so to speak, can influence how one chooses to search it, so I want to see the list first. One of the flaws of today's "web search" is that it hides list entries that are not "popular" because non-popular entries have no value to advertisers. The web seems to be becoming more and more opaque to its users. Like a Yellow Pages where no one can see past the first page. The competition to reach the first page is controlled by a third party "search provider" who can manipulate it to collect data and sell advertising services. However I want to be able to see the first page, the last page and all the pages in between. I want to be able to copy portions of the full list. I want to search a subset of the list without the use of a third party. It is a strange business to commercialise access to public information.
• jfoster 4y ago
  Can you explain what ahrefs have done wrong prior to this? Not challenging it, but not aware of anything.
• rmdoss 4y ago
  What's wrong with ahrefs? Besides having a pretty annoying crawler?
• Giorgi 4y ago
  and why would anyone run a search engine that runs exactly as many ads as are needed to pay for itself? This is so stupid.