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SEO has always been a war. Spammers automate spam. Google comes up with ingenious ways to combat it. Spammers adapt. I keep hearing that Google search is nothi

SEO has always been a war. Spammers automate spam. Google comes up with ingenious ways to combat it. Spammers adapt. I keep hearing that Google search is nothing but SEO optimized, affiliate link riddled content nowadays. I don’t disagree. I see it too. But what makes you think that the affiliate like riddled article is worse then what you would otherwise find if you’re searching for “best office chair” on Google? Google got so good at combating traditional SEO spam, that the only way to “cheat” google is to actually write valuable content and insert your affiliate links into it. This is what we see now I think. The spam SEO sites actually provide more value than random forum conversations.

cyanydeez 4y ago
It's not just Google immune system that's making it's search function useless, it's also that Google wants to advertise to it's users regardless of what kind of search is being performed.
AlexandrB 4y ago
> The spam SEO sites actually provide more value than random forum conversations. How so? The SEO sites are fundamentally dishonest because they are always trying to get you to buy the product in question. Random forum conversations don't have the same goal.
- lopatin 4y ago
  Imagine a hypothetical scenario: Someone is buying office chairs and Google has two search results for it. The first is a forum thread with 3 posts on it. A couple people posted their arm chair opinions (no pun intended) and experiences with their chairs. No affiliate links included. The second is a full blown encyclopedia style repository of useful information about all kinds of office chairs. The content here is unmatched. And yes, it has affiliate links. Why is this necessary less valuable? I’ll stop here because the next step is debating what capitalism even means.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    If no other information is known other than what you just wrote, I would assume that the second result is untrustworthy, because in the first result the authors have no financial incentive to deceive me and so I have to consider only that they might be mistaken or their subjective experience differs from mine, but in the second scenario it is a reasonable assumption that the whole content may be explicitly designed with an intent to mislead me - because we know for sure that at least for other types of products the vendors do put in the effort and marketing $$ to make such seemingly independent sites.
nosduhz 4y ago
In the case of "best office chair", the most valuable content is probably written by someone who's tried the product and is similar to you. I've had the most success finding those people hanging out in an obscure forum. The SEO spam sites might do a good job reading the office chair's product page and wordsmithing something compelling, but often they haven't tried it at all. They're incentivized to sell something and that incentive leads to less value (in my opinion).
- bagacrap 4y ago
  I find people hanging out in an obscure forum are good at having an opinion and less good at having an experience that matches my experience.

cyanydeez 4y ago

It's not just Google immune system that's making it's search function useless, it's also that Google wants to advertise to it's users regardless of what kind of search is being performed.

AlexandrB 4y ago

> The spam SEO sites actually provide more value than random forum conversations. How so? The SEO sites are fundamentally dishonest because they are always trying to get you to buy the product in question. Random forum conversations don't have the same goal.

lopatin 4y ago
Imagine a hypothetical scenario: Someone is buying office chairs and Google has two search results for it. The first is a forum thread with 3 posts on it. A couple people posted their arm chair opinions (no pun intended) and experiences with their chairs. No affiliate links included. The second is a full blown encyclopedia style repository of useful information about all kinds of office chairs. The content here is unmatched. And yes, it has affiliate links. Why is this necessary less valuable? I’ll stop here because the next step is debating what capitalism even means.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  If no other information is known other than what you just wrote, I would assume that the second result is untrustworthy, because in the first result the authors have no financial incentive to deceive me and so I have to consider only that they might be mistaken or their subjective experience differs from mine, but in the second scenario it is a reasonable assumption that the whole content may be explicitly designed with an intent to mislead me - because we know for sure that at least for other types of products the vendors do put in the effort and marketing $$ to make such seemingly independent sites.

nosduhz 4y ago

In the case of "best office chair", the most valuable content is probably written by someone who's tried the product and is similar to you. I've had the most success finding those people hanging out in an obscure forum. The SEO spam sites might do a good job reading the office chair's product page and wordsmithing something compelling, but often they haven't tried it at all. They're incentivized to sell something and that incentive leads to less value (in my opinion).

bagacrap 4y ago
I find people hanging out in an obscure forum are good at having an opinion and less good at having an experience that matches my experience.