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Curious, isn't SEO the thing that ruined search to a big extent. A 1000 word article where the actual answer needs a fraction of that size. Or interesting conte

by capybara_2020 4y ago

Curious, isn't SEO the thing that ruined search to a big extent. A 1000 word article where the actual answer needs a fraction of that size. Or interesting content buried because it is not "SEO optimized". Or companies writing blog content and making it look helpful while actually shilling and highlighting their own product. Plus tons of other things. So now you need something like ChatGPT to cut through the noise?

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
There are various ways of looking at it and, of course, all sorts of people involved. My focus has always just been to encourage people to treat the search engines as an index that will pick up and rank quality content if you treat them that way. It still works very well today.
dazc 4y ago
> So now you need something like ChatGPT to cut through the noise? I once employed a journalist to write about the pros and cons of wedding insurance. Just to give you a clue how long ago this was, it was a unique article at the time. Many years years later, every article you will read about wedding insurance (there will be many thousands) is around 90% similar in style and content to the one I paid for. I dare say you could use any other topic as an example, one thoroughly researched original and many thousand similar copies. I can't see how ChatGPT is not going to make this situation much worse?
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  My guess is that ChatGPT is going to solve the SEO spam problem by changing the way we search for things. Instead of searching for webpages that have information about a topic, we're going to ask an AI. It'll tell you what the pros and cons of wedding insurance are, and because eventually it'll have access to your calendar, it'll tailor that answers to the specifics of the fact that you're having a destination wedding during monsoon season in the area. Once this kind of AI search becomes the default way we look for information, there won't be a point to creating SEO spam anymore. It'll create other problems, of course, but that's the way it goes with new technology.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    > Instead of searching for webpages that have information about a topic, we're going to ask an AI. I think this is probably true for some people, the same sort of person who sees something on Facebook and assumes that it's true. [1] But there are quite a lot of people for whom "according to whom?" is the next question after being told something factual. For them, I think search's job is to find relevant sources and get out of the way. But I think even finding out is a long way away. The main thing that ChatGPT has nailed is glibness. It produces text that sounds authoritative, whether or not it's correct. And it's often incorrect. People may try ChatGPT search out of novelty or because it feels human. But if they depend on it and feel the real-world impact of a confidently wrong answer, they're going to treat it as a human that's untrustworthy. A blowhard, a liar, a fool. So I'm sure the major search players are going to be very cautious rolling out chat-like things. Google has spent decades building up consumer trust, and the don't need a zillion articles about people who a too-confident chat steered wrong. [1] E.g., That men in white vans are kidnappers: vhttps://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/inde...
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      > But if they depend on it and feel the real-world impact of a confidently wrong answer, they're going to treat it as a human that's untrustworthy. A blowhard, a liar, a fool. Maybe that's good. There are glib liars on the net, and not all of them are ChatGPT. If people learn to be skeptical of fine-sounding content on the net, maybe they'll apply it to humans, too.
      - xg15 4y ago
        Yes, but how would you practically do that? The most basic technique for estimating trust in an answer today is to check the sources, see who said it, why, who is agreeing with them, etc. It some AI just spits out an answer without any references, you cannot do that. You either have to blindly trust the answer, which will be dangerous, or you'll have to blindly distrust the answer, at which point the AI will be useless.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

There are various ways of looking at it and, of course, all sorts of people involved. My focus has always just been to encourage people to treat the search engines as an index that will pick up and rank quality content if you treat them that way. It still works very well today.

dazc 4y ago

> So now you need something like ChatGPT to cut through the noise? I once employed a journalist to write about the pros and cons of wedding insurance. Just to give you a clue how long ago this was, it was a unique article at the time. Many years years later, every article you will read about wedding insurance (there will be many thousands) is around 90% similar in style and content to the one I paid for. I dare say you could use any other topic as an example, one thoroughly researched original and many thousand similar copies. I can't see how ChatGPT is not going to make this situation much worse?

idopmstuff 4y ago
My guess is that ChatGPT is going to solve the SEO spam problem by changing the way we search for things. Instead of searching for webpages that have information about a topic, we're going to ask an AI. It'll tell you what the pros and cons of wedding insurance are, and because eventually it'll have access to your calendar, it'll tailor that answers to the specifics of the fact that you're having a destination wedding during monsoon season in the area. Once this kind of AI search becomes the default way we look for information, there won't be a point to creating SEO spam anymore. It'll create other problems, of course, but that's the way it goes with new technology.
- wpietri 4y ago
  > Instead of searching for webpages that have information about a topic, we're going to ask an AI. I think this is probably true for some people, the same sort of person who sees something on Facebook and assumes that it's true. [1] But there are quite a lot of people for whom "according to whom?" is the next question after being told something factual. For them, I think search's job is to find relevant sources and get out of the way. But I think even finding out is a long way away. The main thing that ChatGPT has nailed is glibness. It produces text that sounds authoritative, whether or not it's correct. And it's often incorrect. People may try ChatGPT search out of novelty or because it feels human. But if they depend on it and feel the real-world impact of a confidently wrong answer, they're going to treat it as a human that's untrustworthy. A blowhard, a liar, a fool. So I'm sure the major search players are going to be very cautious rolling out chat-like things. Google has spent decades building up consumer trust, and the don't need a zillion articles about people who a too-confident chat steered wrong. [1] E.g., That men in white vans are kidnappers: vhttps://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/inde...
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    > But if they depend on it and feel the real-world impact of a confidently wrong answer, they're going to treat it as a human that's untrustworthy. A blowhard, a liar, a fool. Maybe that's good. There are glib liars on the net, and not all of them are ChatGPT. If people learn to be skeptical of fine-sounding content on the net, maybe they'll apply it to humans, too.
    - xg15 4y ago
      Yes, but how would you practically do that? The most basic technique for estimating trust in an answer today is to check the sources, see who said it, why, who is agreeing with them, etc. It some AI just spits out an answer without any references, you cannot do that. You either have to blindly trust the answer, which will be dangerous, or you'll have to blindly distrust the answer, at which point the AI will be useless.