6 ms·

SEO ruined the web, guided by Google's ranking algorithm. Things will get even worse as scammy companies start flooding the web with LLM generated content push

by m_ke 2y ago

SEO ruined the web, guided by Google's ranking algorithm. Things will get even worse as scammy companies start flooding the web with LLM generated content pushing their products to bias LLMs to increase the probability of outputing their name for keywords related to their business.

wwweston 2y ago
Libraries and librarians are starting to seem very relevant again. As are journalistic institutions.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  I wouldn't even be sure about libraries... Books or whatever you are storing have to come from somewhere. And you have to regularly enough get new items in. And if these are polluted by AI generated content in various ways... Being able to pick real things from fake is nearly impossible outside very specialised areas where you have gone to primary sources. And even then just look at science. Already buckling with various issues.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  What a relief then that those are all healthy, well-supported organizations with bright futures. It's not a coincidence that the solution to this problem is exactly the organizations that are being systematically undermined and dismantled.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    They aren't being undermined and dismantled, they're dying of the same cancer search is, and one they contracted voluntarily: advertising.
    - giraffe_lady 2y ago
      Libraries are?
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        I meant journalistic institutions. Libraries themselves are a special thing - they've been invented before intellectual property was a thing, and have been attacked by IP proponents ever since. In this way, they're very much like LLMs, and many of the arguments against LLMs trained on copyrighted material apply just as much to public libraries. Oh the irony.
        clejack 2y ago
        Wow, what a connection you've made here. I never made this connection, but you're right. I've occasionally thought to myself "once an idea is created it wants to be free," but in the back of my mind I've always had some sympathy for artist of any medium trying to profit off their talents or anyone trying to create anything and profit from their efforts. The library comparison is notable, but a library has a limited, physical nature. They can only hold a finite amount of books, while anything digital can be replicated indefinitely.
    - rfrey 2y ago
      My local library doesn't have ads posted all over the place, or anywhere for that matter.
- BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  Journalistic institutions have been requiring so much fact-checking, cross referencing and research lately it's a full time job to get informed. Whenever I read or hear anything from the medias now, I'm now always asking myself "what are their political inclinations? who is owning them ? what do they want me to believe? how much of a blind spot do they got ? how lazy or ignorant they are in that context ? etc." They killed the trust I had in them so many times I can't get any the benefit of the doubt anymore. It's exhausting.
  - beepbooptheory 2y ago
    What I was taught is this is just the labor of being critical, or just "having a critical mind about things." I can maybe see how it is exhausting, but I am not sure I understand the implication that it could be better or different. If it is particularly exhausting to you, it is perfectly fine to suspend your judgement about certain things!
    - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
      If running a marathon is not exhausting to you, I don't think expecting the rest of the world to feel fresh after it is the right way to see the world. Except given the noise/signal ratio and the sheer mass of information we have today, the workload is much higher than training for a 42 km run.
    - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
      It could be better and different - trust. Being critical is not the same thing as not trusting anyone at all. Media has by and large become not worthy of trusting at all. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The economics of just giving the news with little bias just aren't there anymore.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    That's not new, it's always been the case.
    - 2y ago
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Unfortunately, many of the “journalistic” institutions are owned by large corporations who aren’t going to “speak truth to power” in fear of retribution. We just saw this with ABC News’s settlement with Trump because its owner Disney wanted to stay in his good graces. We also saw this with Bezos owner Washington Post
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    Let's be honest: the major journalistic outlets only "speak truth to power" when it means they get to criticize their outgroup. Which means any time Republicans have power, they're falling over themselves to speak up. But when Democrats have power, they are conspicuously silent. Time and time again this happens, and they have completely undermined their own credibility by doing so.
  - bediger4000 2y ago
    You forgot LA Times oligarch, Patrick Soon-Shiong.
- debesyla 2y ago
  A library is similar to search engine - it can't have (display) all possible items (results), so there is also a bias for selection. It's not easy for a truly creative, new and unique content to get into your local library.
- joe_the_user 2y ago
  Libraries are booming but as gathering spots and place for people to get wifi to ... consume the web. Books remain but the selection is quite sparse. And journalism has been gutted, more gutted than is obvious. Especially, with mainstream journalists having few "feet on the ground" a lot can sneak by (what happened in East Palestine, for example, can be found on Youtube's Status Coup new but not the mainstream).
eastbound 2y ago
This. If Google kept at “Pages must be short and provide straight answers”, then we’d have much better search results today. Google is machine-gunning its foot since 2021, it’s really unclear to me whether they’re killing their baby just to make the job harder for competitors or something. For now… I open the Google Search results with a machete, and often don’t find any answer. Talk about severing your own foot to avoid gangrene.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Why ascribe to malice, what can be explained by ineptitude? I just don't think Google cares enough about the web as a whole to make strategic decisions for content quality in aggregate. Sure it cares about geeky nuances and standards (e.g. page structure / load times), but Pichai isn't considering the impact on web content quality when debating an algorithm change or feature. If Google continues driving web quality off the cliff? Well, the business KPIs stayed green.
  - n144q 2y ago
    > I just don't think Google cares enough about the web as a whole to make strategic decisions for content quality in aggregate. The only thing they care about is ad revenue. Google created Chrome which vastly improved browser user experience. Google is a major participant in web standard & JavaScript language evolution, among other work. That's all true, but not necessarily because they "care about the web", but rather it helps their ad business. If people put the entire world's information on websites, and people spend more time in browsers, Google ends up earning more money from ads.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  > If Google kept at “Pages must be short and provide straight answers”, then we’d have much better search results today. I disagree. Any prescription for what the ranking should be that isn't simply the most relevant result is a worse ranking. I don't care if the top search result is the fastest, leanest, shortest, straightest, most adless, most equitable answer to my query if it's not the best answer to my query. I'll take the slowest loading, most verbose, popup ridden, mobile-unfriendly site if it's the one that has what I asked for. Trying to add weights for things other than relevance is probably exactly where Google started going wrong. And then when it turned out badly, people propose yet more weights beyond relevance to fix the problem of irrelevance?
techdmn 2y ago
I would argue that advertising ruined the web. SEO for sites selling real products only goes so far. People are often searching for information, and monetizing that activity through advertising is what caused the disaster of low quality content flooding the web today. I'm not saying things would be perfect without advertising, just much better than they are now.
- pembrook 2y ago
  Advertising ruined the UX of Google’s search page, but I would argue the exact opposite when it comes to the web itself. The real thing that ruined the open web and viability of search was, ironically, when Google killed display advertising by cutting Adsense payouts to near zero. Now publishers monetize via the much more sinister “affiliate” marketing. You know, when you search for “Best [X]” and get assaulted with 1,000 listicles packed with affiliate links for junk the author has never even seen in person. At least in the old system, you knew that an ad was an ad! Now the content itself is corrupted to the core.
gscott 2y ago
Maybe, but Google in trying to stamp out seo spam just gravitates now to a few big company websites and shows them first because it no longer matters. Google is actively now trying to not even show you the organic results. Even better for Google the worse the organic results are the more you need to rely on ads or some sort of ai snippet.

by m_ke 2y ago

wwweston 2y ago

Libraries and librarians are starting to seem very relevant again. As are journalistic institutions.

Ekaros 2y ago
I wouldn't even be sure about libraries... Books or whatever you are storing have to come from somewhere. And you have to regularly enough get new items in. And if these are polluted by AI generated content in various ways... Being able to pick real things from fake is nearly impossible outside very specialised areas where you have gone to primary sources. And even then just look at science. Already buckling with various issues.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
What a relief then that those are all healthy, well-supported organizations with bright futures. It's not a coincidence that the solution to this problem is exactly the organizations that are being systematically undermined and dismantled.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  They aren't being undermined and dismantled, they're dying of the same cancer search is, and one they contracted voluntarily: advertising.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Libraries are?
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      I meant journalistic institutions. Libraries themselves are a special thing - they've been invented before intellectual property was a thing, and have been attacked by IP proponents ever since. In this way, they're very much like LLMs, and many of the arguments against LLMs trained on copyrighted material apply just as much to public libraries. Oh the irony.
      - clejack 2y ago
        Wow, what a connection you've made here. I never made this connection, but you're right. I've occasionally thought to myself "once an idea is created it wants to be free," but in the back of my mind I've always had some sympathy for artist of any medium trying to profit off their talents or anyone trying to create anything and profit from their efforts. The library comparison is notable, but a library has a limited, physical nature. They can only hold a finite amount of books, while anything digital can be replicated indefinitely.
  - rfrey 2y ago
    My local library doesn't have ads posted all over the place, or anywhere for that matter.
BiteCode_dev 2y ago
Journalistic institutions have been requiring so much fact-checking, cross referencing and research lately it's a full time job to get informed. Whenever I read or hear anything from the medias now, I'm now always asking myself "what are their political inclinations? who is owning them ? what do they want me to believe? how much of a blind spot do they got ? how lazy or ignorant they are in that context ? etc." They killed the trust I had in them so many times I can't get any the benefit of the doubt anymore. It's exhausting.
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  What I was taught is this is just the labor of being critical, or just "having a critical mind about things." I can maybe see how it is exhausting, but I am not sure I understand the implication that it could be better or different. If it is particularly exhausting to you, it is perfectly fine to suspend your judgement about certain things!
  - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
    If running a marathon is not exhausting to you, I don't think expecting the rest of the world to feel fresh after it is the right way to see the world. Except given the noise/signal ratio and the sheer mass of information we have today, the workload is much higher than training for a 42 km run.
  - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
    It could be better and different - trust. Being critical is not the same thing as not trusting anyone at all. Media has by and large become not worthy of trusting at all. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The economics of just giving the news with little bias just aren't there anymore.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  That's not new, it's always been the case.
  - 2y ago
scarface_74 2y ago
Unfortunately, many of the “journalistic” institutions are owned by large corporations who aren’t going to “speak truth to power” in fear of retribution. We just saw this with ABC News’s settlement with Trump because its owner Disney wanted to stay in his good graces. We also saw this with Bezos owner Washington Post
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Let's be honest: the major journalistic outlets only "speak truth to power" when it means they get to criticize their outgroup. Which means any time Republicans have power, they're falling over themselves to speak up. But when Democrats have power, they are conspicuously silent. Time and time again this happens, and they have completely undermined their own credibility by doing so.
- bediger4000 2y ago
  You forgot LA Times oligarch, Patrick Soon-Shiong.
debesyla 2y ago
A library is similar to search engine - it can't have (display) all possible items (results), so there is also a bias for selection. It's not easy for a truly creative, new and unique content to get into your local library.
joe_the_user 2y ago
Libraries are booming but as gathering spots and place for people to get wifi to ... consume the web. Books remain but the selection is quite sparse. And journalism has been gutted, more gutted than is obvious. Especially, with mainstream journalists having few "feet on the ground" a lot can sneak by (what happened in East Palestine, for example, can be found on Youtube's Status Coup new but not the mainstream).

eastbound 2y ago

This. If Google kept at “Pages must be short and provide straight answers”, then we’d have much better search results today. Google is machine-gunning its foot since 2021, it’s really unclear to me whether they’re killing their baby just to make the job harder for competitors or something. For now… I open the Google Search results with a machete, and often don’t find any answer. Talk about severing your own foot to avoid gangrene.

ethbr1 2y ago
Why ascribe to malice, what can be explained by ineptitude? I just don't think Google cares enough about the web as a whole to make strategic decisions for content quality in aggregate. Sure it cares about geeky nuances and standards (e.g. page structure / load times), but Pichai isn't considering the impact on web content quality when debating an algorithm change or feature. If Google continues driving web quality off the cliff? Well, the business KPIs stayed green.
- n144q 2y ago
  > I just don't think Google cares enough about the web as a whole to make strategic decisions for content quality in aggregate. The only thing they care about is ad revenue. Google created Chrome which vastly improved browser user experience. Google is a major participant in web standard & JavaScript language evolution, among other work. That's all true, but not necessarily because they "care about the web", but rather it helps their ad business. If people put the entire world's information on websites, and people spend more time in browsers, Google ends up earning more money from ads.
hombre_fatal 2y ago
> If Google kept at “Pages must be short and provide straight answers”, then we’d have much better search results today. I disagree. Any prescription for what the ranking should be that isn't simply the most relevant result is a worse ranking. I don't care if the top search result is the fastest, leanest, shortest, straightest, most adless, most equitable answer to my query if it's not the best answer to my query. I'll take the slowest loading, most verbose, popup ridden, mobile-unfriendly site if it's the one that has what I asked for. Trying to add weights for things other than relevance is probably exactly where Google started going wrong. And then when it turned out badly, people propose yet more weights beyond relevance to fix the problem of irrelevance?

techdmn 2y ago

I would argue that advertising ruined the web. SEO for sites selling real products only goes so far. People are often searching for information, and monetizing that activity through advertising is what caused the disaster of low quality content flooding the web today. I'm not saying things would be perfect without advertising, just much better than they are now.

pembrook 2y ago
Advertising ruined the UX of Google’s search page, but I would argue the exact opposite when it comes to the web itself. The real thing that ruined the open web and viability of search was, ironically, when Google killed display advertising by cutting Adsense payouts to near zero. Now publishers monetize via the much more sinister “affiliate” marketing. You know, when you search for “Best [X]” and get assaulted with 1,000 listicles packed with affiliate links for junk the author has never even seen in person. At least in the old system, you knew that an ad was an ad! Now the content itself is corrupted to the core.

gscott 2y ago

Maybe, but Google in trying to stamp out seo spam just gravitates now to a few big company websites and shows them first because it no longer matters. Google is actively now trying to not even show you the organic results. Even better for Google the worse the organic results are the more you need to rely on ads or some sort of ai snippet.