17 ms·

Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter?

144 points by michaelhoffman 12y ago

nikatwork 12y ago
And this is why I got out of organic SEO. You have essentially one client, and that is El Goog. A site can see product sales revenue drop 50% overnight after a bad Google dance, and it can take weeks to work out how you've offended it. I only used whitehat techniques mind. Most people bleat "just write good conteeeeent" and have no idea how Google ranking actually works. I guess what was most galling was seeing certain retail sites getting away with blatant spam while your own sites got mysteriously slammed. I don't blame Google though - it's a direct result of having a single player market. So go, duckduck, go :)
- whoismua 12y ago
  Especially now that Google is a "content provider," sites like Metafilter have to battle Youtube, Google+ etc for ranking. Guess who's winning? Traffic is going away from other sites to Google's own properties and there's isn't a damn thing metafilter et al can do: Google handles ranking, display and ads. Commercial sites now have to deal with a full page of ads before the real results so their fate is sealed another way. In other words, we need 4-5 search engines, not one giant monopoly that seeks to increase ad clicks by underhanded methods each quarter.
  - nikatwork 12y ago
    I sifted through a lot of traffic data, and it must be noted that I saw zero evidence of El Goog manually weighting any results. Everything was 100% above board - they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual. I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos and not just the usual voodoo bullcrap. The site is probably just tripping a few red flags, it could be something as stupid as an accidental link loop in their dynamic content. I'll give it to Google, once you find your sin and fix it, your traffic will come back, maybe not 100% but a significant recovery. (Unless you have done something really dumb/blackhat like paid links.)
    - riffraff 12y ago
      a link loop is a red flag? I guess I am misunderstanding, as that would mean I can't have a "artticles like this <link> <link>" block in my blog, which seems very weird.
      - nikatwork 12y ago
        A link loop as in a dynamically generated menu structure that creates an endless loop for the crawler, or accidentally makes large numbers of very similar pages with similar URLs, etc. (Yes this can happen legitimately and by accident on retail/commercial sites).
        jmpe 12y ago
        ... or one of those plugins that generates fake mails for email-harvesting bots?
        nikatwork 12y ago
        I haven't used one of those myself, but yeah that does sound dangerous - however you could just tell the Googlebot to ignore the link in GA and it should be fine. I've seen people do similar things to create infinitely deep directories to screw with evil crawlers, since the Googlebot should obey your directives.
        maaarghk 12y ago
        would using rel=canonical protect against this?
    - hueving 12y ago
      > they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual. This is not always the case. Look at the Rapgenius event. That was triggered by manual intervention. >I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos There isn't anyone on the outside that truly understands them because they constantly adjust them to deal with abuse. It is possible that one of these adjustments killed MeFi and it wasn't a recent mistake on MeFi's part.
hayksaakian 12y ago
The author admits that his survey was anecdotal. I'd be interested in seeing a more rigorous data set. Keyword Phrase, bing ranking, google ranking
- franze 12y ago
  google webmaster tools
programminggeek 12y ago
You know what, Google forsakes many sites fairly frequently, even sites that a lot of people like. Why would MetaFilter be spared? Because it's popular with techies and Google can do no evil in their eyes?
- nether 12y ago
  As a MeFite of several years, I've gotten a lot of useless/terrible advice through Ask MeFi. Basically for any subject remotely esoteric, you'll get a lot of "subject 101" answers and ones that are totally wrong. For general/life advice it's pretty good though, mostly because of the number of older users there.
  - mbrock 12y ago
    Everyone on there is a 30-something linguist, musician, or grad student; is an experienced fetishist; is a traveller who goes off the beaten track; is involved in several local community organizations; and has a long history of therapy.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Disruptions, unpredictability, and random swings in support are all harmful to the ecosystem. Google's actions have consequences. Alternatives are to make yourself far less dependent on Google (all the more reason to support search alternatives, including DDG). But so long as your business is eyeball aggregation, you're going to be at the whim of the aggregators (and that is a control point).
  - adventured 12y ago
    I don't disagree with what you said, but it's constantly pointed out that start-ups (etc) should avoid being dependent on x y z for traffic. There isn't a single business on earth that is not dependent on a 'platform' of one sort or another. Even Google is dependent on other platforms. You merely pick your poison, if you're so lucky, when you run a business. There are always gatekeepers and always will be; and they can cripple you if they choose to, the only variable is how much of an incentive they have to do so, and the damage they'll take by doing so. Make yourself less dependent on Google? Ok, which means you're going to make yourself more dependent on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or DuckDuckGo, or radio ads, or television ads, or newspaper ads, or billboards, or etc. None of those are benevolent lords just looking out for your own well being. DDG can still chop you up with an algorithm change just as easily as Google can, and at Google's scale every little change would impact businesses just as Google's present changes do, and there would be just as many claims of unfair treatment. DDG can be as transparent and open as they like, that wouldn't change the sour grapes that would be derived from algorithm changes.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
chasing 12y ago
Metafilter's founder mathowie takes a much more measured tone about Google's role: "A year and a half ago, we woke up one day to see a 40% decrease in revenue and traffic to Ask MetaFilter, likely the result of ongoing Google index updates." (http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-MetaFilter http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-MetaFilter) Google changes. The web itself changes. As seminal as Metafilter has been, it doesn't "deserve" the top slots any more than any other content. So I find it a little irritating that David Auerbach at Slate has attempted to overdramatize this into something it's really not.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Even if the prior position were unearned, the point that, perhaps, small changes in Google's algorithms can have dramatic influences over site rankings, with all the concomitant disruption that can entail, argues for conservatism on Google's part. Otherwise you're in the position of the philanthropist who, out of the goodness of his heart, supports some cause unreservedly ... until he doesn't. Suddenly withdrawn support has very real impacts. If there _was_ a specific strike against Metafilter, Google really ought explain. Actually, even if there wasn't. And it argues again against digital sharecropping, though that's harder and harder to avoid.
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  I think Auerbach laid out some cogent reasons why this should be questioned. A gradual decrease over time? Sure, expected. A sudden drop? That's an algorithmic hit, and when a site with good content (that is ranked well by other search engines) is hit negatively by the algorithm, it should be questioned. And, unfortunately, the only way to get Google to consider such a question is if enough people start echoing it.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Maybe webmasters have to take a "measured tone", lest they anger the "black box" further.
- pbreit 12y ago
  What do you mean it doesn't "deserve the top slot any more than any other content"? That doesn't make any sense at all. Obviously if it is the "best" answer to the search, then of course it "deserves" a high result. The author lists out some examples where this doesn't seem to be the case. I didn't find the article overdramatizing at all. In fact it was quite measured and completely reasonable. And the timing is obviously consistent with Metafilter's recent announcement. That a high quality site gets chopped in half doesn't bother you at all? And that Google's results seem off? Really, this doesn't deserve a mention?
unreal37 12y ago
I think Metafilter needs to spend more time exploring SEO and perhaps a site redesign. It may be a great site (people say it is), but if it has a poor backlink profile, stale content, and a high bounce rate, it's not going to rank as well even for better content. Craigslist is a great site too, and you don't see it highly ranked in Google for many queries.
- carbocation 12y ago
  Craigslist auto-expires content. MeFi's content seems a bit more evergreen.
  - unreal37 12y ago
    It may seem, but I would bet that Google takes freshness into account, preferring 1 year old content over 8 year old content...
    - Donzo 12y ago
      It does for QDFs (queries that deserve freshness).
- hnriot 12y ago
  absolutely, the website looks very 90s, none of the links look like links and its too myspace in appearance (old myspace) - I would bounce if results landed me on that site without even reading the content.
  - rhizome 12y ago
    Are you saying that Google ranks sites based on appearance?
    - ENGNR 12y ago
      They take immediate bounces into account, so if people bounce based on appearance then yes.
joshwa 12y ago
mathowie goes into detail: https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0 https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0
credo 12y ago
>>One last one: Searching for “most amazing woman ever” on Bing will give you MetaFilter’s helpful “Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived” as the third result. >>Google puts it at the bottom of the second page of results, in 19th place. Google’s top result? A list of “the 100 most beautiful women ever.” Unfortunately, American culture (and many cultures around the world) objectify women and value them based on their looks. So Google's search results may just be a true reflection of what people are interested in looking at. Perhaps Bing's algorithms aren't as good as Google's algorithms in estimating what people might be more interested in. To be clear, I didn't intend my statement as a feminist critique of society (though personally I would agree with this feminist critique). I just used this example as a roundabout way of defending Google's algorithm and saying that Google gives us the search results we deserve (and ask for) and not the search results that (from Auerback's perspective and mine) we should probably be more interested in.
- jlcummings 12y ago
  There probably is something to this. Perhaps if a different, more specific, standard of measure is applied during query, results will be more applicible for the intended purpose. For instance substituting accomplished for amazing seems to provide more pointed results.
- rhizome 12y ago
  That's the crux of the argument, though: Google search results are ranked according to a value system. What does that system prioritize? Not Metafilter; not Harriet Tubman. "Beautiful Women." This is neither right nor wrong, it just is, but Google has to live with what that says about them, and that's entirely fair.
joostdevries 12y ago
"Searching for “most amazing woman ever” on Bing will give you MetaFilter’s helpful “Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived” as the third result. (Answers, by the way, included British spy and French Resistance leader Nancy Wake, world’s first programmer Ada Lovelace, slave rescuer and activist Harriet Tubman, and Chinese pirate Ching Shih.) Google puts it at the bottom of the second page of results, in 19th place. Google’s top result? A list of “the 100 most beautiful women ever.” " That made me wonder whether Google has shifted its products from being the kind of thing that their own employee corps would enjoy to things for the general public. I personally f.i. enjoyed the from: to: keywords in Google Maps search. That feature disappeared and probably the majority of users wouldn't use those anyway. Personally I scorn at a search result of the '100 most beautiful women'. But in the large population it will probably lead to a much higher click through. So I wonder if Google Search was oriented towards the smart crowd niche and that they changed focus towards the common and the populous. To put it differently: a shift from an emphasis in information as high value search result towards including entertainment, gossip etc. High brow to low brow.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I get for "most amazing woman ever" (including quotes) images, then tumblr, pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, then MetaFilter. Sub-optimal, but not terrible. Removing the quotes gives me similar reaults to you. But there are a few results about interesting women based on achievement not appearance. Google is trained by the crowd, and the crowd is stupid. See for example the numbers of searches using + operator correctly.
  - joostdevries 12y ago
    I was quoting the article...
- tedivm 12y ago
  This is by far the best reason I've heard for the decline in quality of Google search results. There's no doubt that when I first started using Google it was for technical things, and I feel like most of the people online during their first few years of life were doing the same. I'm guessing we're no longer their target market, although I wouldn't be surprised if an algorithm made that decision instead of a person. At the same time, they are trying to do targeted search and I feel like that should be able to help far more than it is.
franze 12y ago
sorry to spoil the fun, but metafilter's SEO / search performance was broken way before the 40% drop. http://replycam.com/i/MetaFilter_layoffs__Why_has_Google_forsaken_the_legendary_Internet_forum%3F-20140522-093436.png http://replycam.com/i/MetaFilter_layoffs__Why_has_Google_for... where is the growth, man? and i don't mean the dropoff. the dropoff is just, you know, change. google changes, all the time, user behaviour changes, user expectation changes, the way google treats sites changes, the internet changes. so yes, 40% less traffic via google organic search happens. you don't have any "right" to google traffic, there are a lot of sites out there. but the thing that seems to be really broken is the "lack of growth" before the dropoff and after it. SEO overall has these business cases * a) if we add x% more landingpages to our site, we gain y% more trafﬁc. * b) if we add x% more content to y% of our landingpages, we gain z% more trafﬁc. * c) if other sites point x% more links to our landingpages, we gain y% more trafﬁc. * d) if we make the user experience of our site better, our traffic gets more sustainable. as metafilter is a quite popular site with an active community, they should at least do a) and b) quite well, probably doesn't have an issue with c) as there is and was not growth, then there is probably something rotten going on on the platform level. some issues from a 5 min check i have outlined here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770414 additionally they seem to completely disregard mobile https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fask.metafilter.com%2Ftags%2Fapartment&tab=mobile https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=... and missing out on the probably most important market like ever. so basically before firing their staff they should have listen to a decent SEO (and implemented some changes) and / or mobile guy. tl;dr: if your have a popular site with lots and lots of content, but you don't see (organic search) growth then your site is broken, even before google turns of some of your traffic because you know, google. p.s.: i would love a look into meta-filters google webmaster tools
kristofferR 12y ago
I'll be honest - I've been avoiding MetaFilter for years due to the horrific UI/design. I actually didn't know that the content MetaFilter has supposedly is good because the design is so off-putting that I've never been able to read much of it. MetaFilter should really do a redesign to a more readable and friendly interface, that is likely to increase usage/reduce bounce rates (and maybe increase the Google rankings).
- mbrock 12y ago
  What's so bad about it?
  - iopq 12y ago
    It has an awful color scheme and looks like it was made in 1999. I looked it up and it was in fact made in 1999. I doubt anything changed since then.
  - kristofferR 12y ago
    I'm far from a designer, but I still like to think I appreciate good design. 1. The color combinations are really bad. Dirty-yellow on blue/dirty-yellow on green is close to what a designer would chose if they were planning to make something deliberately look ugly. 2. The titles are in grey while the content text is in white. Why tone down the most important thing on the page? 3. The spacing between all the objects is weird. The space between the comments is huge - it was likely made that large since they would otherwise flow into each other. They should have separated the comments using other methods in addition to just making the space between them huge. 4. For long comments with multiple paragraphs and links it can be hard to see where the next comment begin, since the links (in the comment) and the links to the user profile/permalink to post look almost the same.
    - simoncion 12y ago
      I am not a designer, but I know that I do appreciate good design. Even back in the early 2000's, Metafilter's simple, clean, relatively information-dense design was a welcome change from most news aggregators out there. Metafilter is supposed to be a place for thoughtful medium-to-long-form discussion. I feel that its clean, consistent, text-focused design serves that purpose well. Honestly, remove comment nesting, move the comment credit line under the comment, and change the color scheme to white and gold on blue, and HN's comment page looks pretty much exactly the same as Metafilter's.
pja 12y ago
I see Matt Cutts has been talking to Mathowie about Metafilter's problems: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/469235750932725761 https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/469235750932725761 I can't help feeling that there's something wrong when the only way to find out why Google has downgraded your site is to attract the attention of one of the core search developers. I get that Google wants to keep it's ranking algorithms secret for fear of black hat SEO poisoning the well even more than it does already. Given Google's dominant position in the search market at the same time it seems wrong to downgrade sites in this fashion with no clarity or visibility over the process whatsoever.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Matt Cutts got absolutely slammed here on Sunday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763923 It felt like they'd been some sort of tipping point reached and people were just furious with Google for being so opaque. I've never seen people be so antagonistic with him. Then again the w/e HN crowd seems to be pretty vicious compared to the week one. (and I honestly feel less intelligent).
  - pja 12y ago
    Wow: That really was a pile on wasn't it? Looks like mcutts is catching some of the backdraft from Google's infamous lack of customer service (to paying advertisers, content providers and everyone else) here to a certain extent.
    - gress 12y ago
      Well Matt is a relentless explainer of Google's position. That earns him a lot of credibility and support when the position makes sense, but if what they are doing ultimately is considered harmful, then he's going to look like an apologist.
    - rhizome 12y ago
      mcutts is pretty much the only thing resembling customer service for google search, so he's going to catch all of it. while mcutts has put himself into this position willingly, it's google's fault for making him a solitary target.
chris_wot 12y ago
Hmmm... so Google is becoming less relevant to me. When I search for content, I expect to see more MetaFilter than "100 most beautiful women in the world". Duck Duck Go... perhaps it's time to switch my search engine?
mariehaynes 12y ago
I feel like a few people are missing the point as to why MetaFilter dropped in their rankings. It was likely not a manual penalty but rather a change in regards to the Panda algorithm. According to this article (https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0 https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0) the drop happened in November of 2012. It doesn't say which date, but November 5 and November 21 were both days that Google refreshed the Panda algorithm. Panda was created to filter down poor content and filter up good content. Sometimes it gets it wrong, but generally if a site is being filtered down it's because there are too many pages of the site in the index that are apparently not helpful to users. I do think that the design has a lot to do with MetaFilter's demise. I have landed on this site, and, not knowing what I know now after reading articles about the quality information that is on MetaFilter, I have immediately clicked away because it looked like a spammy page. If enough users do this then this shows Google that users don't want to engage with this site. I haven't had a deep look into the technical structure of the site but there's a good possibility that with a redesign and a review of their architecture, the site could see a return to normal levels with the next Panda refresh.
- odiv 12y ago
  Looks like it was November 17th according to this: http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized-google-192168 http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized-google-1921... Any additional insight based on that date? Full disclosure: MetaFilter member reading about this stuff everywhere with interest who joined here to comment. HN seems right up my alley with the simple design though I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be a threaded comments kind of guy.

144 points by michaelhoffman 12y ago

And this is why I got out of organic SEO. You have essentially one client, and that is El Goog. A site can see product sales revenue drop 50% overnight after a bad Google dance, and it can take weeks to work out how you've offended it. I only used whitehat techniques mind. Most people bleat "just write good conteeeeent" and have no idea how Google ranking actually works. I guess what was most galling was seeing certain retail sites getting away with blatant spam while your own sites got mysteriously slammed. I don't blame Google though - it's a direct result of having a single player market. So go, duckduck, go :)

whoismua 12y ago
Especially now that Google is a "content provider," sites like Metafilter have to battle Youtube, Google+ etc for ranking. Guess who's winning? Traffic is going away from other sites to Google's own properties and there's isn't a damn thing metafilter et al can do: Google handles ranking, display and ads. Commercial sites now have to deal with a full page of ads before the real results so their fate is sealed another way. In other words, we need 4-5 search engines, not one giant monopoly that seeks to increase ad clicks by underhanded methods each quarter.
- nikatwork 12y ago
  I sifted through a lot of traffic data, and it must be noted that I saw zero evidence of El Goog manually weighting any results. Everything was 100% above board - they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual. I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos and not just the usual voodoo bullcrap. The site is probably just tripping a few red flags, it could be something as stupid as an accidental link loop in their dynamic content. I'll give it to Google, once you find your sin and fix it, your traffic will come back, maybe not 100% but a significant recovery. (Unless you have done something really dumb/blackhat like paid links.)
  - riffraff 12y ago
    a link loop is a red flag? I guess I am misunderstanding, as that would mean I can't have a "artticles like this <link> <link>" block in my blog, which seems very weird.
    - nikatwork 12y ago
      A link loop as in a dynamically generated menu structure that creates an endless loop for the crawler, or accidentally makes large numbers of very similar pages with similar URLs, etc. (Yes this can happen legitimately and by accident on retail/commercial sites).
      - jmpe 12y ago
        ... or one of those plugins that generates fake mails for email-harvesting bots?
        nikatwork 12y ago
        I haven't used one of those myself, but yeah that does sound dangerous - however you could just tell the Googlebot to ignore the link in GA and it should be fine. I've seen people do similar things to create infinitely deep directories to screw with evil crawlers, since the Googlebot should obey your directives.
      - maaarghk 12y ago
        would using rel=canonical protect against this?
  - hueving 12y ago
    > they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual. This is not always the case. Look at the Rapgenius event. That was triggered by manual intervention. >I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos There isn't anyone on the outside that truly understands them because they constantly adjust them to deal with abuse. It is possible that one of these adjustments killed MeFi and it wasn't a recent mistake on MeFi's part.

hayksaakian 12y ago

The author admits that his survey was anecdotal. I'd be interested in seeing a more rigorous data set. Keyword Phrase, bing ranking, google ranking

franze 12y ago
google webmaster tools

programminggeek 12y ago

You know what, Google forsakes many sites fairly frequently, even sites that a lot of people like. Why would MetaFilter be spared? Because it's popular with techies and Google can do no evil in their eyes?

nether 12y ago
As a MeFite of several years, I've gotten a lot of useless/terrible advice through Ask MeFi. Basically for any subject remotely esoteric, you'll get a lot of "subject 101" answers and ones that are totally wrong. For general/life advice it's pretty good though, mostly because of the number of older users there.
- mbrock 12y ago
  Everyone on there is a 30-something linguist, musician, or grad student; is an experienced fetishist; is a traveller who goes off the beaten track; is involved in several local community organizations; and has a long history of therapy.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Disruptions, unpredictability, and random swings in support are all harmful to the ecosystem. Google's actions have consequences. Alternatives are to make yourself far less dependent on Google (all the more reason to support search alternatives, including DDG). But so long as your business is eyeball aggregation, you're going to be at the whim of the aggregators (and that is a control point).
- adventured 12y ago
  I don't disagree with what you said, but it's constantly pointed out that start-ups (etc) should avoid being dependent on x y z for traffic. There isn't a single business on earth that is not dependent on a 'platform' of one sort or another. Even Google is dependent on other platforms. You merely pick your poison, if you're so lucky, when you run a business. There are always gatekeepers and always will be; and they can cripple you if they choose to, the only variable is how much of an incentive they have to do so, and the damage they'll take by doing so. Make yourself less dependent on Google? Ok, which means you're going to make yourself more dependent on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or DuckDuckGo, or radio ads, or television ads, or newspaper ads, or billboards, or etc. None of those are benevolent lords just looking out for your own well being. DDG can still chop you up with an algorithm change just as easily as Google can, and at Google's scale every little change would impact businesses just as Google's present changes do, and there would be just as many claims of unfair treatment. DDG can be as transparent and open as they like, that wouldn't change the sour grapes that would be derived from algorithm changes.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

chasing 12y ago

Metafilter's founder mathowie takes a much more measured tone about Google's role: "A year and a half ago, we woke up one day to see a 40% decrease in revenue and traffic to Ask MetaFilter, likely the result of ongoing Google index updates." (http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-MetaFilter http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-MetaFilter) Google changes. The web itself changes. As seminal as Metafilter has been, it doesn't "deserve" the top slots any more than any other content. So I find it a little irritating that David Auerbach at Slate has attempted to overdramatize this into something it's really not.

dredmorbius 12y ago
Even if the prior position were unearned, the point that, perhaps, small changes in Google's algorithms can have dramatic influences over site rankings, with all the concomitant disruption that can entail, argues for conservatism on Google's part. Otherwise you're in the position of the philanthropist who, out of the goodness of his heart, supports some cause unreservedly ... until he doesn't. Suddenly withdrawn support has very real impacts. If there _was_ a specific strike against Metafilter, Google really ought explain. Actually, even if there wasn't. And it argues again against digital sharecropping, though that's harder and harder to avoid.
SoftwareMaven 12y ago
I think Auerbach laid out some cogent reasons why this should be questioned. A gradual decrease over time? Sure, expected. A sudden drop? That's an algorithmic hit, and when a site with good content (that is ranked well by other search engines) is hit negatively by the algorithm, it should be questioned. And, unfortunately, the only way to get Google to consider such a question is if enough people start echoing it.
gojomo 12y ago
Maybe webmasters have to take a "measured tone", lest they anger the "black box" further.
pbreit 12y ago
What do you mean it doesn't "deserve the top slot any more than any other content"? That doesn't make any sense at all. Obviously if it is the "best" answer to the search, then of course it "deserves" a high result. The author lists out some examples where this doesn't seem to be the case. I didn't find the article overdramatizing at all. In fact it was quite measured and completely reasonable. And the timing is obviously consistent with Metafilter's recent announcement. That a high quality site gets chopped in half doesn't bother you at all? And that Google's results seem off? Really, this doesn't deserve a mention?

unreal37 12y ago

I think Metafilter needs to spend more time exploring SEO and perhaps a site redesign. It may be a great site (people say it is), but if it has a poor backlink profile, stale content, and a high bounce rate, it's not going to rank as well even for better content. Craigslist is a great site too, and you don't see it highly ranked in Google for many queries.

carbocation 12y ago
Craigslist auto-expires content. MeFi's content seems a bit more evergreen.
- unreal37 12y ago
  It may seem, but I would bet that Google takes freshness into account, preferring 1 year old content over 8 year old content...
  - Donzo 12y ago
    It does for QDFs (queries that deserve freshness).
hnriot 12y ago
absolutely, the website looks very 90s, none of the links look like links and its too myspace in appearance (old myspace) - I would bounce if results landed me on that site without even reading the content.
- rhizome 12y ago
  Are you saying that Google ranks sites based on appearance?
  - ENGNR 12y ago
    They take immediate bounces into account, so if people bounce based on appearance then yes.

joshwa 12y ago

mathowie goes into detail: https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0 https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0

credo 12y ago

>>One last one: Searching for “most amazing woman ever” on Bing will give you MetaFilter’s helpful “Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived” as the third result. >>Google puts it at the bottom of the second page of results, in 19th place. Google’s top result? A list of “the 100 most beautiful women ever.” Unfortunately, American culture (and many cultures around the world) objectify women and value them based on their looks. So Google's search results may just be a true reflection of what people are interested in looking at. Perhaps Bing's algorithms aren't as good as Google's algorithms in estimating what people might be more interested in. To be clear, I didn't intend my statement as a feminist critique of society (though personally I would agree with this feminist critique). I just used this example as a roundabout way of defending Google's algorithm and saying that Google gives us the search results we deserve (and ask for) and not the search results that (from Auerback's perspective and mine) we should probably be more interested in.

jlcummings 12y ago
There probably is something to this. Perhaps if a different, more specific, standard of measure is applied during query, results will be more applicible for the intended purpose. For instance substituting accomplished for amazing seems to provide more pointed results.
rhizome 12y ago
That's the crux of the argument, though: Google search results are ranked according to a value system. What does that system prioritize? Not Metafilter; not Harriet Tubman. "Beautiful Women." This is neither right nor wrong, it just is, but Google has to live with what that says about them, and that's entirely fair.

joostdevries 12y ago

"Searching for “most amazing woman ever” on Bing will give you MetaFilter’s helpful “Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived” as the third result. (Answers, by the way, included British spy and French Resistance leader Nancy Wake, world’s first programmer Ada Lovelace, slave rescuer and activist Harriet Tubman, and Chinese pirate Ching Shih.) Google puts it at the bottom of the second page of results, in 19th place. Google’s top result? A list of “the 100 most beautiful women ever.” " That made me wonder whether Google has shifted its products from being the kind of thing that their own employee corps would enjoy to things for the general public. I personally f.i. enjoyed the from: to: keywords in Google Maps search. That feature disappeared and probably the majority of users wouldn't use those anyway. Personally I scorn at a search result of the '100 most beautiful women'. But in the large population it will probably lead to a much higher click through. So I wonder if Google Search was oriented towards the smart crowd niche and that they changed focus towards the common and the populous. To put it differently: a shift from an emphasis in information as high value search result towards including entertainment, gossip etc. High brow to low brow.

DanBC 12y ago
I get for "most amazing woman ever" (including quotes) images, then tumblr, pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, then MetaFilter. Sub-optimal, but not terrible. Removing the quotes gives me similar reaults to you. But there are a few results about interesting women based on achievement not appearance. Google is trained by the crowd, and the crowd is stupid. See for example the numbers of searches using + operator correctly.
- joostdevries 12y ago
  I was quoting the article...
tedivm 12y ago
This is by far the best reason I've heard for the decline in quality of Google search results. There's no doubt that when I first started using Google it was for technical things, and I feel like most of the people online during their first few years of life were doing the same. I'm guessing we're no longer their target market, although I wouldn't be surprised if an algorithm made that decision instead of a person. At the same time, they are trying to do targeted search and I feel like that should be able to help far more than it is.

franze 12y ago

sorry to spoil the fun, but metafilter's SEO / search performance was broken way before the 40% drop. http://replycam.com/i/MetaFilter_layoffs__Why_has_Google_forsaken_the_legendary_Internet_forum%3F-20140522-093436.png http://replycam.com/i/MetaFilter_layoffs__Why_has_Google_for... where is the growth, man? and i don't mean the dropoff. the dropoff is just, you know, change. google changes, all the time, user behaviour changes, user expectation changes, the way google treats sites changes, the internet changes. so yes, 40% less traffic via google organic search happens. you don't have any "right" to google traffic, there are a lot of sites out there. but the thing that seems to be really broken is the "lack of growth" before the dropoff and after it. SEO overall has these business cases * a) if we add x% more landingpages to our site, we gain y% more trafﬁc. * b) if we add x% more content to y% of our landingpages, we gain z% more trafﬁc. * c) if other sites point x% more links to our landingpages, we gain y% more trafﬁc. * d) if we make the user experience of our site better, our traffic gets more sustainable. as metafilter is a quite popular site with an active community, they should at least do a) and b) quite well, probably doesn't have an issue with c) as there is and was not growth, then there is probably something rotten going on on the platform level. some issues from a 5 min check i have outlined here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770414 additionally they seem to completely disregard mobile https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fask.metafilter.com%2Ftags%2Fapartment&tab=mobile https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=... and missing out on the probably most important market like ever. so basically before firing their staff they should have listen to a decent SEO (and implemented some changes) and / or mobile guy. tl;dr: if your have a popular site with lots and lots of content, but you don't see (organic search) growth then your site is broken, even before google turns of some of your traffic because you know, google. p.s.: i would love a look into meta-filters google webmaster tools

kristofferR 12y ago

I'll be honest - I've been avoiding MetaFilter for years due to the horrific UI/design. I actually didn't know that the content MetaFilter has supposedly is good because the design is so off-putting that I've never been able to read much of it. MetaFilter should really do a redesign to a more readable and friendly interface, that is likely to increase usage/reduce bounce rates (and maybe increase the Google rankings).

mbrock 12y ago
What's so bad about it?
- iopq 12y ago
  It has an awful color scheme and looks like it was made in 1999. I looked it up and it was in fact made in 1999. I doubt anything changed since then.
- kristofferR 12y ago
  I'm far from a designer, but I still like to think I appreciate good design. 1. The color combinations are really bad. Dirty-yellow on blue/dirty-yellow on green is close to what a designer would chose if they were planning to make something deliberately look ugly. 2. The titles are in grey while the content text is in white. Why tone down the most important thing on the page? 3. The spacing between all the objects is weird. The space between the comments is huge - it was likely made that large since they would otherwise flow into each other. They should have separated the comments using other methods in addition to just making the space between them huge. 4. For long comments with multiple paragraphs and links it can be hard to see where the next comment begin, since the links (in the comment) and the links to the user profile/permalink to post look almost the same.
  - simoncion 12y ago
    I am not a designer, but I know that I do appreciate good design. Even back in the early 2000's, Metafilter's simple, clean, relatively information-dense design was a welcome change from most news aggregators out there. Metafilter is supposed to be a place for thoughtful medium-to-long-form discussion. I feel that its clean, consistent, text-focused design serves that purpose well. Honestly, remove comment nesting, move the comment credit line under the comment, and change the color scheme to white and gold on blue, and HN's comment page looks pretty much exactly the same as Metafilter's.

pja 12y ago

I see Matt Cutts has been talking to Mathowie about Metafilter's problems: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/469235750932725761 https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/469235750932725761 I can't help feeling that there's something wrong when the only way to find out why Google has downgraded your site is to attract the attention of one of the core search developers. I get that Google wants to keep it's ranking algorithms secret for fear of black hat SEO poisoning the well even more than it does already. Given Google's dominant position in the search market at the same time it seems wrong to downgrade sites in this fashion with no clarity or visibility over the process whatsoever.

mattmanser 12y ago
Matt Cutts got absolutely slammed here on Sunday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763923 It felt like they'd been some sort of tipping point reached and people were just furious with Google for being so opaque. I've never seen people be so antagonistic with him. Then again the w/e HN crowd seems to be pretty vicious compared to the week one. (and I honestly feel less intelligent).
- pja 12y ago
  Wow: That really was a pile on wasn't it? Looks like mcutts is catching some of the backdraft from Google's infamous lack of customer service (to paying advertisers, content providers and everyone else) here to a certain extent.
  - gress 12y ago
    Well Matt is a relentless explainer of Google's position. That earns him a lot of credibility and support when the position makes sense, but if what they are doing ultimately is considered harmful, then he's going to look like an apologist.
  - rhizome 12y ago
    mcutts is pretty much the only thing resembling customer service for google search, so he's going to catch all of it. while mcutts has put himself into this position willingly, it's google's fault for making him a solitary target.

chris_wot 12y ago

Hmmm... so Google is becoming less relevant to me. When I search for content, I expect to see more MetaFilter than "100 most beautiful women in the world". Duck Duck Go... perhaps it's time to switch my search engine?

mariehaynes 12y ago

I feel like a few people are missing the point as to why MetaFilter dropped in their rankings. It was likely not a manual penalty but rather a change in regards to the Panda algorithm. According to this article (https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0 https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0) the drop happened in November of 2012. It doesn't say which date, but November 5 and November 21 were both days that Google refreshed the Panda algorithm. Panda was created to filter down poor content and filter up good content. Sometimes it gets it wrong, but generally if a site is being filtered down it's because there are too many pages of the site in the index that are apparently not helpful to users. I do think that the design has a lot to do with MetaFilter's demise. I have landed on this site, and, not knowing what I know now after reading articles about the quality information that is on MetaFilter, I have immediately clicked away because it looked like a spammy page. If enough users do this then this shows Google that users don't want to engage with this site. I haven't had a deep look into the technical structure of the site but there's a good possibility that with a redesign and a review of their architecture, the site could see a return to normal levels with the next Panda refresh.

odiv 12y ago
Looks like it was November 17th according to this: http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized-google-192168 http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized-google-1921... Any additional insight based on that date? Full disclosure: MetaFilter member reading about this stuff everywhere with interest who joined here to comment. HN seems right up my alley with the simple design though I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be a threaded comments kind of guy.