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Yeah. This is a very good point. Overall I think the user experience of the web when accessed through google kinda sucks in an overtly annoying way. I also thi

Yeah. This is a very good point. Overall I think the user experience of the web when accessed through google kinda sucks in an overtly annoying way. I also think it's one of the big selling points of GPT-like search engines. It's not that they necessarily arrive at the answer quicker, they're just so much less annoying to use than Google, not only because you don't have to wrestle with an ambiguous syntax, but you also don't need to wade through bait-and-switch spam results, dismiss newsletter requests, get roped around by filler text, etc. The typewritered text is also a brilliant move to circumvent the sort of skimming-like reading pattern most of us have developed due to exposure to the spammier side of the web.

viraptor 4y ago
> but you also don't need to wade through bait-and-switch spam results, dismiss newsletter requests, get roped around by filler text All that content was created with existing SEO rules in mind. As soon as GPT-likes have established behaviour, we'll get new kind of content that specifically targets them. But at least we can enjoy better results in the meantime.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  It's tricky to extrapolate from Google. It's fairly obvious that there are things Google could do to fix this problem such as to penalize ads. They are never going to do as long as their main income is those very ads they would need to penalize to address the search engine spam problem. In general, a big part of why Google is struggling so much with search engine spam is that they are such a dominant force in directing web traffic that they're effectively re-shaping the web around them to optimize for their algorithm. If you had any sort of diversity in search, this would be much less of a problem because the economic incentives would be much smaller. I don't think it can be taken for granted that any search ecosystem would struggle in the same way Google has been struggling. I think their SEO-problems is a direct consequence of their monopoly on search and a lack of real competition.

viraptor 4y ago

> but you also don't need to wade through bait-and-switch spam results, dismiss newsletter requests, get roped around by filler text All that content was created with existing SEO rules in mind. As soon as GPT-likes have established behaviour, we'll get new kind of content that specifically targets them. But at least we can enjoy better results in the meantime.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
It's tricky to extrapolate from Google. It's fairly obvious that there are things Google could do to fix this problem such as to penalize ads. They are never going to do as long as their main income is those very ads they would need to penalize to address the search engine spam problem. In general, a big part of why Google is struggling so much with search engine spam is that they are such a dominant force in directing web traffic that they're effectively re-shaping the web around them to optimize for their algorithm. If you had any sort of diversity in search, this would be much less of a problem because the economic incentives would be much smaller. I don't think it can be taken for granted that any search ecosystem would struggle in the same way Google has been struggling. I think their SEO-problems is a direct consequence of their monopoly on search and a lack of real competition.