4 ms·

> why get their site to the top of the rankings if they can't put any advertisements on it? You would need to penalize any website that accepts money from use

by cj 2y ago

> why get their site to the top of the rankings if they can't put any advertisements on it? You would need to penalize any website that accepts money from users. There are a lot of SaaS companies out there writing blog spam to promote subscription products.

iamacyborg 2y ago
Some of that blog spam is genuinely useful, so you need to differentiate between content quality with brands writing content to promote their saas product.
lelanthran 2y ago
> You would need to penalize any website that accepts money from users. There are a lot of SaaS companies out there writing blog spam to promote subscription products. I don't see that as a problem, because blog-spam without advertisements is going to get down-ranked until it is exactly where it needs to be. If a single site dominates too much, then a hard cap on how how often a specific site can appear in the results is feasible, or weighing each page with a percentage of all the pages on a site (thereby penalising sites that have millions of pages). Specific exceptions can be made for wikipedia, or similar. For example, lets look at digital-ocean: Is that constant blogging something that users find helpful? Well, if a page is relevant to the search term then there's no problem. If it's not then the numbers of 'irrelevant to this search' feedback from logged-in users will gradually down-vote it until it is correctly ranked. If it's relevant but is one of 30k pages on the site that matches relevancy with that search term then it gets down-ranked. Basically, the motivation to do nothing but spam is completely eliminated. People spamming "How to do $TRIVIAL-THING" to drive engagement with their SaaS product is, I feel, a completely valid result if the search term matches relevancy with the specific blog post, and the site isn't doing a barrage of postings. Humans respond to incentives. Taking away the incentive to generate endless drivel and replacing it with the incentive to provide good content is the intention behind my proposal.
- chongli 2y ago
  Specific exceptions can be made for wikipedia, or similar. Once you go down the dark path of white-listing sites, you’ve admitted defeat. How are you going to find that upstart Reddit competitor or federated Wikipedia competitor?

by cj 2y ago

iamacyborg 2y ago

Some of that blog spam is genuinely useful, so you need to differentiate between content quality with brands writing content to promote their saas product.

lelanthran 2y ago

> You would need to penalize any website that accepts money from users. There are a lot of SaaS companies out there writing blog spam to promote subscription products. I don't see that as a problem, because blog-spam without advertisements is going to get down-ranked until it is exactly where it needs to be. If a single site dominates too much, then a hard cap on how how often a specific site can appear in the results is feasible, or weighing each page with a percentage of all the pages on a site (thereby penalising sites that have millions of pages). Specific exceptions can be made for wikipedia, or similar. For example, lets look at digital-ocean: Is that constant blogging something that users find helpful? Well, if a page is relevant to the search term then there's no problem. If it's not then the numbers of 'irrelevant to this search' feedback from logged-in users will gradually down-vote it until it is correctly ranked. If it's relevant but is one of 30k pages on the site that matches relevancy with that search term then it gets down-ranked. Basically, the motivation to do nothing but spam is completely eliminated. People spamming "How to do $TRIVIAL-THING" to drive engagement with their SaaS product is, I feel, a completely valid result if the search term matches relevancy with the specific blog post, and the site isn't doing a barrage of postings. Humans respond to incentives. Taking away the incentive to generate endless drivel and replacing it with the incentive to provide good content is the intention behind my proposal.

chongli 2y ago
Specific exceptions can be made for wikipedia, or similar. Once you go down the dark path of white-listing sites, you’ve admitted defeat. How are you going to find that upstart Reddit competitor or federated Wikipedia competitor?