4 ms·

Is this new? Near-gibberish "blogs" that are part of link rings have been around for at least a decade or so. Places used to sell "SEO" services where they'd ha

Is this new? Near-gibberish "blogs" that are part of link rings have been around for at least a decade or so. Places used to sell "SEO" services where they'd have hundreds of automated wordpress blogs that would link to each other (to increase their inbound link count which affected Google SERP placement and PageRank) and to the target site / product. It worked quite well. The modern equivalent I see a ton of is when I search for something like "best _____ 2023" looking for reviews, I get a bunch of sites that just list a dozen terrible Amazon products with affiliate links to each. They're not actual reviews, they just re-state the product description but frame it as a review. It's obvious that the person / machine writing these "posts" has zero experience with the product, as they tend to point out irrelevant features and basically just say that every single one is a great choice, when none of the products mentioned are any mainstream known-good brands. Of course, when I just tried a few examples ("hammocks", "work boots", "steam irons", "backpacks") I couldn't find any of these sites, so maybe they've cleaned up lately, but I swear for the past few years it seemed like every search result for products led inevitably to an Amazon affiliate link farm blog.

bandrami 3y ago
Don't forget the asinine translation sites with page descriptions like "Have you ever wondered what the Sinhalese word for 'monitor lizard' is[1]? Millions of users have searched for this. In this page you will find..." at which poing the summary cuts off. Somebody generated those in an afternoon with a set of concordances and a Perl script, and they've been sucking traffic ever since. [1] For the curious, "Thalagoya" for the terrestrial species, "Kabaragoya" for the swimming species
- xxr 3y ago
  “You won’t believe how many words the Sinhalese have for monitor lizards!”
  - bandrami 3y ago
    "Slow lorises hate this one simple trick!"
  - kleene_op 3y ago
    "Find hot lonely monitor lizards in your area today!"
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  And the sites that list every possible phone number in a given area code, just so that they'll be a search hit for someone searching for a phone number. Zero value provided there.
  - Szpadel 3y ago
    those are usually for "is this a spam" vote, so I would argue that there is some value there
    - JoshTriplett 3y ago
      I'm not talking about the ones that provide a user-contributable database of "what business owns this number, is it spam"; those are great. I'm talking about sites that just list all possible phone numbers in a range, for SEO purposes, with no useful information about each number, and then try to sell you access to their invasive databases of personal information.
- rycomb 3y ago
  Ha! Somewhat unrelated, but that reminded me of a homeless guy in Portland whose intro line was "do you know how you say dragonfly in Spanish?", to which I responded "libélula" (I knew it because Spanish is my mother tongue). Interesting, he seemed kinda pissed off, as I spoiled his soliciting routine. Maybe he's the human version of those sites!
- vintermann 3y ago
  And if you click through, you'll find that they don't have the Sinhalese word for monitor lizard, but you can contribute it for them to monetize.
- nraynaud 3y ago
  I see automatic translation of normal websites a lot too. I'm French and doing some home renovations, and according to google our houses are built in a way that is vastly different from my experience on the ground, and it's really frustrating, because our regulations and customs are different, and I really need to do things the local way.
duskwuff 3y ago
> I get a bunch of sites that just list a dozen terrible Amazon products with affiliate links to each. [...] maybe they've cleaned up lately The faucet turned off in 2020, when Amazon reduced affiliate payouts for many products [1] and cut off third-party affiliate networks [2]. There are still a lot of those sites around, but there's no longer the same level of incentives for them to be created. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-rates-for-affiliate-program.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-ra... [2]: https://www.adexchanger.com/ecommerce-2/amazon-removes-third-party-vendors-from-its-affiliate-program/ https://www.adexchanger.com/ecommerce-2/amazon-removes-third...
KSPAtlas 3y ago
Ive seen actual gibberish blogs consisting of random Unicode characters (often within a specific rangr(). What are those
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
YouTube removing the dislike count destroyed that site's usefulness for reviews. Now there's no good way to tell the algorithmically created videos from genuine reviews without watching them, which then inflates the generated crap videos higher. Big channels can still do product reviews but reviews from average people are now unfindable under a sea of generated sewage content. Since big channels often are sponsored (and not always disclosed regardless of YouTube policy) and have a very narrow range of products they review, a huge chunk of functionality died the day YouTube decided to protect the feelings of political campaign staffers while tossing an enormous amount of content completely unrelated to US political ideological struggles into the void.
- ItsBob 3y ago
  There's an addon called Return YouTube Dislike. I use it on FF and it seems to have put the thumbs-down count back... not sure how they get the numbers but it looks right to me
- rchaud 3y ago
  Is this specific to a genre of videos? Upvotes/Downvotes never told me anything useful. The thumbmnail image, subject line and number of views are usually enough for me to know whether I want to give it a shot or not.
  - propogandist 3y ago
    [dead]

bandrami 3y ago

Don't forget the asinine translation sites with page descriptions like "Have you ever wondered what the Sinhalese word for 'monitor lizard' is[1]? Millions of users have searched for this. In this page you will find..." at which poing the summary cuts off. Somebody generated those in an afternoon with a set of concordances and a Perl script, and they've been sucking traffic ever since. [1] For the curious, "Thalagoya" for the terrestrial species, "Kabaragoya" for the swimming species

xxr 3y ago
“You won’t believe how many words the Sinhalese have for monitor lizards!”
- bandrami 3y ago
  "Slow lorises hate this one simple trick!"
- kleene_op 3y ago
  "Find hot lonely monitor lizards in your area today!"
JoshTriplett 3y ago
And the sites that list every possible phone number in a given area code, just so that they'll be a search hit for someone searching for a phone number. Zero value provided there.
- Szpadel 3y ago
  those are usually for "is this a spam" vote, so I would argue that there is some value there
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    I'm not talking about the ones that provide a user-contributable database of "what business owns this number, is it spam"; those are great. I'm talking about sites that just list all possible phone numbers in a range, for SEO purposes, with no useful information about each number, and then try to sell you access to their invasive databases of personal information.
rycomb 3y ago
Ha! Somewhat unrelated, but that reminded me of a homeless guy in Portland whose intro line was "do you know how you say dragonfly in Spanish?", to which I responded "libélula" (I knew it because Spanish is my mother tongue). Interesting, he seemed kinda pissed off, as I spoiled his soliciting routine. Maybe he's the human version of those sites!
vintermann 3y ago
And if you click through, you'll find that they don't have the Sinhalese word for monitor lizard, but you can contribute it for them to monetize.
nraynaud 3y ago
I see automatic translation of normal websites a lot too. I'm French and doing some home renovations, and according to google our houses are built in a way that is vastly different from my experience on the ground, and it's really frustrating, because our regulations and customs are different, and I really need to do things the local way.

duskwuff 3y ago

> I get a bunch of sites that just list a dozen terrible Amazon products with affiliate links to each. [...] maybe they've cleaned up lately The faucet turned off in 2020, when Amazon reduced affiliate payouts for many products [1] and cut off third-party affiliate networks [2]. There are still a lot of those sites around, but there's no longer the same level of incentives for them to be created. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-rates-for-affiliate-program.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-ra... [2]: https://www.adexchanger.com/ecommerce-2/amazon-removes-third-party-vendors-from-its-affiliate-program/ https://www.adexchanger.com/ecommerce-2/amazon-removes-third...

KSPAtlas 3y ago

Ive seen actual gibberish blogs consisting of random Unicode characters (often within a specific rangr(). What are those

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

YouTube removing the dislike count destroyed that site's usefulness for reviews. Now there's no good way to tell the algorithmically created videos from genuine reviews without watching them, which then inflates the generated crap videos higher. Big channels can still do product reviews but reviews from average people are now unfindable under a sea of generated sewage content. Since big channels often are sponsored (and not always disclosed regardless of YouTube policy) and have a very narrow range of products they review, a huge chunk of functionality died the day YouTube decided to protect the feelings of political campaign staffers while tossing an enormous amount of content completely unrelated to US political ideological struggles into the void.

ItsBob 3y ago
There's an addon called Return YouTube Dislike. I use it on FF and it seems to have put the thumbs-down count back... not sure how they get the numbers but it looks right to me
rchaud 3y ago
Is this specific to a genre of videos? Upvotes/Downvotes never told me anything useful. The thumbmnail image, subject line and number of views are usually enough for me to know whether I want to give it a shot or not.
- propogandist 3y ago
  [dead]