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There used to be a wealth of smaller "labor-of-love" websites from individuals doing interesting things. The weeds have grown over them and made it difficult to

There used to be a wealth of smaller "labor-of-love" websites from individuals doing interesting things. The weeds have grown over them and made it difficult to find these from the public web because these individuals cannot devote the same resources to SEO and SEM as teams of adtech affiliate marketers with LLM-generated content. When Google first came out, it was amazing how effective it was. In the years following, we have had a feedback loop of adtech bullshit.

waveBidder 3y ago
such websites still get made all the time, they're just not useful for Google to surface. https://blog.kagi.com/small-web https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
- Groxx 3y ago
  I've pretty much just seen evidence that this segment keeps growing, and is now much MUCH larger than the Internet in The Good Old Days. Discovering them is indeed hard, but it has always been hard - that's why search engines were such a gigantic improvement initially, they found more than the zero that most people had seen. But searches only ever skimmed the surface, and there's almost certainly no mechanical way to accurately identify the hidden gems - it's just straight chaos, there's a lot of good and bad and insane. Find a small site or two, and explore their webring links, like The Good Old Days. They're still alive and healthy because it keeps getting easier to create and host them.
  - rchaud 3y ago
    Sites today don't have blogrolls. Back in the '00s it was sacrilege not to have one on the sidebar of your site. That massively improved discoverability. Today you have to go to another service like Twitter to see this kind of cross-pollination.
    - Groxx 3y ago
      tbh I have only ever seen a couple in an omnipresent sidebar in my lifetime. The vast majority I encountered around then and earlier were just in the "about" (or possibly "links") pages of people's websites, and occasionally a footer explicitly mentioning "webring". Also if you squint hard enough, they're massively more common now. They're just usually hidden by adblockers because they're run by Disqus or Outbrain or similar (i.e. complete junk).
- stemlord 3y ago
  Parent didn't say that they don't still get made, just that they are now much more difficult to discover which you repeated
josh-sematic 3y ago
This search engine is designed to find such sites: https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/
rchaud 3y ago
> There used to be a wealth of smaller "labor-of-love" websites from individuals doing interesting things Those websites are long gone. First, because search engines defaulted to promoting 'recent content' on HTTPS websites, which eliminates a lot of informational sites that were not SSL-secured and archived on university web servers for example. Second, because the time and effort required to compile this information today feels wasted because it can be essentially copied wholesale and reproduced on a content-hungry blogspam website, often without attribution to the original author. In its place are cynical Substacks, Twitters or Tiktoks doing growth marketing ahead of an inevitable book deal or online course sales pitch.
- mangodrunk 3y ago
  Not only are the search engines promoting newer content but they are also (at least Google is) penalizing sites with “old” content [1]. Somewhat related, it’s outrageous to me when a university takes down a professor’s page when they are no longer employed or come up with a standard site for all faculty that is devoid of anything interesting, just boring bios. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37068464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37068464
6510 3y ago
They made this wild mistake where moderation (which is a good thing) grew into dictating what websites should look like. Search is a struggle to index the web as~is. Like biologists look at a species from afar and document their behavior. It's not like, hey if you want to be in the bird book you can lay 6 eggs at most, they should be smooth egg shaped, light in color and no larger than 12 cm. You must be able to fly and make bird sounds only and only during the day. Most important you must build your own nest! Little Jimmy has many references under his articles, he is not paginating his archives properly, he has many citation.... Lets just take him behind the barn and shoot him.
sanroot99 3y ago
What are current search strategy one employees to find such articles. Nowadays I find it increasingly hard to find such articles.

waveBidder 3y ago

such websites still get made all the time, they're just not useful for Google to surface. https://blog.kagi.com/small-web https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

Groxx 3y ago
I've pretty much just seen evidence that this segment keeps growing, and is now much MUCH larger than the Internet in The Good Old Days. Discovering them is indeed hard, but it has always been hard - that's why search engines were such a gigantic improvement initially, they found more than the zero that most people had seen. But searches only ever skimmed the surface, and there's almost certainly no mechanical way to accurately identify the hidden gems - it's just straight chaos, there's a lot of good and bad and insane. Find a small site or two, and explore their webring links, like The Good Old Days. They're still alive and healthy because it keeps getting easier to create and host them.
- rchaud 3y ago
  Sites today don't have blogrolls. Back in the '00s it was sacrilege not to have one on the sidebar of your site. That massively improved discoverability. Today you have to go to another service like Twitter to see this kind of cross-pollination.
  - Groxx 3y ago
    tbh I have only ever seen a couple in an omnipresent sidebar in my lifetime. The vast majority I encountered around then and earlier were just in the "about" (or possibly "links") pages of people's websites, and occasionally a footer explicitly mentioning "webring". Also if you squint hard enough, they're massively more common now. They're just usually hidden by adblockers because they're run by Disqus or Outbrain or similar (i.e. complete junk).
stemlord 3y ago
Parent didn't say that they don't still get made, just that they are now much more difficult to discover which you repeated

josh-sematic 3y ago

This search engine is designed to find such sites: https://search.marginalia.nu/ https://search.marginalia.nu/

rchaud 3y ago

> There used to be a wealth of smaller "labor-of-love" websites from individuals doing interesting things Those websites are long gone. First, because search engines defaulted to promoting 'recent content' on HTTPS websites, which eliminates a lot of informational sites that were not SSL-secured and archived on university web servers for example. Second, because the time and effort required to compile this information today feels wasted because it can be essentially copied wholesale and reproduced on a content-hungry blogspam website, often without attribution to the original author. In its place are cynical Substacks, Twitters or Tiktoks doing growth marketing ahead of an inevitable book deal or online course sales pitch.

mangodrunk 3y ago
Not only are the search engines promoting newer content but they are also (at least Google is) penalizing sites with “old” content [1]. Somewhat related, it’s outrageous to me when a university takes down a professor’s page when they are no longer employed or come up with a standard site for all faculty that is devoid of anything interesting, just boring bios. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37068464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37068464

6510 3y ago

They made this wild mistake where moderation (which is a good thing) grew into dictating what websites should look like. Search is a struggle to index the web as~is. Like biologists look at a species from afar and document their behavior. It's not like, hey if you want to be in the bird book you can lay 6 eggs at most, they should be smooth egg shaped, light in color and no larger than 12 cm. You must be able to fly and make bird sounds only and only during the day. Most important you must build your own nest! Little Jimmy has many references under his articles, he is not paginating his archives properly, he has many citation.... Lets just take him behind the barn and shoot him.

sanroot99 3y ago

What are current search strategy one employees to find such articles. Nowadays I find it increasingly hard to find such articles.