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Remember when websites would have a long list of keywords in the background color and tiny font at the bottom? I keep seeing these "AI will destroy X" articles

Remember when websites would have a long list of keywords in the background color and tiny font at the bottom? I keep seeing these "AI will destroy X" articles, I've never seen one that wasn't ultimately referring to a minor incremental extension of something already prevalent. Keywords gave way to link farms gave way to shitty outsourced "content" and now LLMs will be part of SEO. It's not really different from getting a content farm to write you a bunch of crap, just cheaper and faster. Search companies will adapt, and seo scammers will find some new thing. It's all such a minor part of the internet anyway.

instagib 3y ago
I still do the tiny font keyword list for my resume. I have occasionally left out certain keywords but then hear back from recruiters that if I had keyword x or y then I would be perfect for the job. Back to a 5 page resume.
- zonkerdonker 3y ago
  I've heard from recruiters that some software will export submitted resumes in plain text in a standard format for review, I wonder if the tiny white font tags show up as well
JKCalhoun 3y ago
> It's not really different from getting a content farm to write you a bunch of crap, just cheaper and faster. Search companies will adapt Not sure they have adapted. Most of the links on the front page of a search are crap.
- vuln 3y ago
  > Not sure they have adapted. Most of the links on the front page of a search is crap. That’s by design. They load the results with crap so you click on the ads instead of the result. Ads generate revenue for Alphabet, search _results_ less so. Simple as.
munificent 3y ago
> It's not really different from getting a content farm to write you a bunch of crap, just cheaper and faster. Using a gillnet to catch 1,000 fish in an hour is not really different from using a rod and reel to catch a few a day. It's just cheaper and faster. But the gillnetting can easily lead to extinction and death of an ecosystem whereas recreational fishing rarely does. Scale matters.
- TillE 3y ago
  We already have plenty of non-AI autogenerated spam which is apparently good enough to please Google, LLMs just make that slightly better. So the scale already exists, and we're really just talking about quality.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    SEO spam has already made a tremendous impact on the quality of google results (it used to be that a bad result was a good website about the wrong topic, now a bad result is a bad website about the right topic, and there are A LOT of them). Being able to generate 100x the spam will certainly hurt things even more.

instagib 3y ago

I still do the tiny font keyword list for my resume. I have occasionally left out certain keywords but then hear back from recruiters that if I had keyword x or y then I would be perfect for the job. Back to a 5 page resume.

zonkerdonker 3y ago
I've heard from recruiters that some software will export submitted resumes in plain text in a standard format for review, I wonder if the tiny white font tags show up as well

JKCalhoun 3y ago

> It's not really different from getting a content farm to write you a bunch of crap, just cheaper and faster. Search companies will adapt Not sure they have adapted. Most of the links on the front page of a search are crap.

vuln 3y ago
> Not sure they have adapted. Most of the links on the front page of a search is crap. That’s by design. They load the results with crap so you click on the ads instead of the result. Ads generate revenue for Alphabet, search _results_ less so. Simple as.

munificent 3y ago

> It's not really different from getting a content farm to write you a bunch of crap, just cheaper and faster. Using a gillnet to catch 1,000 fish in an hour is not really different from using a rod and reel to catch a few a day. It's just cheaper and faster. But the gillnetting can easily lead to extinction and death of an ecosystem whereas recreational fishing rarely does. Scale matters.

TillE 3y ago
We already have plenty of non-AI autogenerated spam which is apparently good enough to please Google, LLMs just make that slightly better. So the scale already exists, and we're really just talking about quality.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  SEO spam has already made a tremendous impact on the quality of google results (it used to be that a bad result was a good website about the wrong topic, now a bad result is a bad website about the right topic, and there are A LOT of them). Being able to generate 100x the spam will certainly hurt things even more.