3 ms·

I'd argue it only demonstrates that it doesn't produce much value for the creator.

lolinder 2y ago
The Google summaries (before whatever LLM stuff they're doing now) are 2-3 sentences tops. The content on most of these websites is much, much longer than that for SEO reasons. It sucks that Google created the problem on both ends, but the content OP is referring to costs way more to produce than it adds value to the world because it has to be padded out to show up in search. Then Google comes along and extracts the actual answer that the page is built around and the user skips both the padding and the site as a whole. Google is terrible, the attention economy that Google created is terrible. This was all true before LLMs and tools like Perplexity are a reaction to the terrible content world that Google created.
- newaccount74 2y ago
  It would be a lot better if Google just prioritised concise websites. If Google preferred websites that cut the fluff, then website operators would have an incentive to make useful websites, and Google wouldn't have as much of an incentive to provide the answer in a snippet, and everyone wins. I guess it's hard to rank website quality, so Google just prefers verbose websites.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > Google wouldn't have as much of an incentive to provide the answer in a snippet, and everyone wins. Google has at least two incentives to provide that answer, both of which wouldn't change. The bad one: they want to keep you on their page too, for usual bullshit attention economy reasons. The good one: users prefer the snippets too. The user searching for information usually isn't there to marvel at beauty of random websites hiding that information in piles of noise surrounded by ads. They don't care about websites in the first place. They want an answer to the question, so they can get on with whatever it is they're doing. When Google can give them an answer, and this stops them from going from SERP to any website, then that's just few seconds or minutes of life that user doesn't have to waste. Lifespans are finite.
    - newaccount74 2y ago
      I strongly disagree with you. The only reason that users prefer snippets is because websites hide the info you are looking for. The problem is that the top ranked search results are ad-infested SEO crap. If the top ranked website were actually designed with the user in mind, they would not hide the important info. They would present the most important info at the top, and contain additional details below. They would offer the user exactly what they want immediately, and provide further details that the user can read if they want to. Think of a well written wikipedia article. The summary is probably all that you need, but it's good that the rest of the article with all the detail is there as well. I'm pretty sure that most people prefer a well designed user-centric article to the stupid Google snippet that may or may not answer the question you asked. Most people looking for info don't look for just a single answer. Often, the answer leads to the next question, or if the answer is surprising, you might want to check out if the source looks credible, etc. Even ads would be helpful, if they were actually relevant (eg. if I am looking for low profile graphic cards, I'd appreciate an ad for a local retailer that has them in stock). But the problem is that website operators (and Google) just want to distract you, capture your attention, and get you to click on completely irrelevant bullshit, because that is more profitable than actually helping you.
      - rcxdude 2y ago
        I think optimising for that just leads to another kind of SEO slop. I mostly use the summaries for answers to questions like "what's the atomic number of aluminium". The sensible way of laying this out on a website is as a table or something like that, which requires another click, load, and manual lookup in the table. The summaries are useful for that, and if the websites want to answer that question directly, it means they want to make a bunch of tiny pages with a question like that and the answer, which is not something I want to browse through normally. (And indeed, I have seen SEO slop in this vein)

The Google summaries (before whatever LLM stuff they're doing now) are 2-3 sentences tops. The content on most of these websites is much, much longer than that for SEO reasons. It sucks that Google created the problem on both ends, but the content OP is referring to costs way more to produce than it adds value to the world because it has to be padded out to show up in search. Then Google comes along and extracts the actual answer that the page is built around and the user skips both the padding and the site as a whole. Google is terrible, the attention economy that Google created is terrible. This was all true before LLMs and tools like Perplexity are a reaction to the terrible content world that Google created.

newaccount74 2y ago
It would be a lot better if Google just prioritised concise websites. If Google preferred websites that cut the fluff, then website operators would have an incentive to make useful websites, and Google wouldn't have as much of an incentive to provide the answer in a snippet, and everyone wins. I guess it's hard to rank website quality, so Google just prefers verbose websites.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > Google wouldn't have as much of an incentive to provide the answer in a snippet, and everyone wins. Google has at least two incentives to provide that answer, both of which wouldn't change. The bad one: they want to keep you on their page too, for usual bullshit attention economy reasons. The good one: users prefer the snippets too. The user searching for information usually isn't there to marvel at beauty of random websites hiding that information in piles of noise surrounded by ads. They don't care about websites in the first place. They want an answer to the question, so they can get on with whatever it is they're doing. When Google can give them an answer, and this stops them from going from SERP to any website, then that's just few seconds or minutes of life that user doesn't have to waste. Lifespans are finite.
  - newaccount74 2y ago
    I strongly disagree with you. The only reason that users prefer snippets is because websites hide the info you are looking for. The problem is that the top ranked search results are ad-infested SEO crap. If the top ranked website were actually designed with the user in mind, they would not hide the important info. They would present the most important info at the top, and contain additional details below. They would offer the user exactly what they want immediately, and provide further details that the user can read if they want to. Think of a well written wikipedia article. The summary is probably all that you need, but it's good that the rest of the article with all the detail is there as well. I'm pretty sure that most people prefer a well designed user-centric article to the stupid Google snippet that may or may not answer the question you asked. Most people looking for info don't look for just a single answer. Often, the answer leads to the next question, or if the answer is surprising, you might want to check out if the source looks credible, etc. Even ads would be helpful, if they were actually relevant (eg. if I am looking for low profile graphic cards, I'd appreciate an ad for a local retailer that has them in stock). But the problem is that website operators (and Google) just want to distract you, capture your attention, and get you to click on completely irrelevant bullshit, because that is more profitable than actually helping you.
    - rcxdude 2y ago
      I think optimising for that just leads to another kind of SEO slop. I mostly use the summaries for answers to questions like "what's the atomic number of aluminium". The sensible way of laying this out on a website is as a table or something like that, which requires another click, load, and manual lookup in the table. The summaries are useful for that, and if the websites want to answer that question directly, it means they want to make a bunch of tiny pages with a question like that and the answer, which is not something I want to browse through normally. (And indeed, I have seen SEO slop in this vein)