[HN Gopher] Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Why Is the Web So Monotonous? Google
        
       Author : amf12
       Score  : 110 points
       Date   : 2022-08-04 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (reasonablypolymorphic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (reasonablypolymorphic.com)
        
       | marginalia_nu wrote:
       | > What I dream of is Google circa 2006. A time where a search
       | engine searched what you asked for. A time before aggressive SEO.
       | A time before social media, when the only people on the internet
       | had a reason to be there. A time before sticky headers and full-
       | screen modal pop-ups asking you to subscribe to a newsletter
       | before reading the article. A time before click-bait and
       | subscription-only websites which tease you with a paragraph
       | before blurring out the rest of the content.
       | 
       | Well, I built sort of exactly this: https://search.marginalia.nu/
       | 
       | It's not great, but it sure has its moments.
       | 
       | Should be noted, regarding Koh Lanta, that travel is one of the
       | most aggressively SEO-spammed topics, along with pharma and
       | online casinos. It's extremely difficult to cut through the noise
       | and reach any sort of signal.
        
         | taftster wrote:
         | [Quoting your quote] - A time before aggressive SEO? No, just
         | that Google was able to defeat it with Page Rank (one of their
         | possibly few innovative ideas to the search arena).
         | Mathematically, Page Rank did very well to weed out the SEO'd
         | websites of the time.
         | 
         | Point is, I don't think SEO at the time was any more or less
         | "aggressive", per se. Just different. And clearly, the game has
         | since escalated altogether.
        
         | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
         | > Well, I built sort of exactly this:
         | https://search.marginalia.nu/
         | 
         | What's the elevator pitch? What do you actually do that is
         | special?
         | 
         | From the about section:
         | 
         | > This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-
         | commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps
         | weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably
         | already knew existed.
         | 
         | > The software for this search engine is all custom-built, and
         | all crawling and indexing is done in-house. The project is open
         | source. Feel free to poke about in the source code or
         | contribute to the development!
         | 
         | But that doesn't really give me much info.
        
           | marginalia_nu wrote:
           | The point is to surface human websites and discriminate
           | against content mills, click funnels and e-commerce.
           | 
           | For one I have a sort of budget for how much javascript I
           | will tolerate. Some is fine, like your standard wordpress
           | config probably will fly, but not much more. I also do a
           | personalized pagerank biased toward the blogosphere. The
           | likelihood your website shows up in the results is directly
           | determined by whether real humans link to the website.
           | 
           | It's not a Google replacement by any measure, it's meant as a
           | complement, but if you are looking for more in-depth content
           | on a topic than you can find elsewhere, it's often a good
           | starting point.
        
           | tigerlily wrote:
           | I know it's of low value to ask, but who really gives a shit?
        
         | varispeed wrote:
         | Social media existed way before 2006, it just wasn't so
         | popular.
         | 
         | But this was indeed a great time. Remember being on a social
         | network ca 1999 and people used it as a diary where others
         | could comment, give advice and meet others with similar
         | interests. There was a timeline and posts from people you
         | "followed". I think it didn't have likes or ratings though.
         | Most people were super friendly and we were doing meet ups, so
         | very much everyone knew each other. At peak time there was
         | about 20k people and at that point owners couldn't cope with
         | it. With that amount of people you'll find some nasty ones that
         | will ruin it for everyone else and that's what happened. Owners
         | couldn't afford to host it, so they were doing crowdfunding to
         | cover the server costs and maintenance. Some bitter people
         | didn't like that and started making unfounded accusations of
         | theft or that they will report everything to the tax man and
         | the police. So owners eventually closed it.
        
       | ArtofIndirect wrote:
        
       | shadowgovt wrote:
       | FTA:
       | 
       | > Why don't other search engines compete on search results? It
       | can't be hard to do better than Google for the long tail.
       | 
       | I think that's the "citation needed" that the author's missing.
       | It's not like Google is unaware of this problem, and a huge piece
       | of their research spend goes into improving search.
       | 
       | It's entirely possible nobody's doing better than Google because
       | nobody knows how. The entire paradigm Google's leading in might
       | be a saddle-point with significant activation energy needed to
       | escape it while still having something as usually-useful as
       | Google.
        
       | carabiner wrote:
       | Isn't this just getting older? You could just as well ask why is
       | _life_ so monotonous. There 's a finite number of experiences,
       | practically speaking, and as you go through each, subsequent
       | versions lack novelty. This is also why time seems to speed up as
       | we age.
        
       | kmprod wrote:
       | > My last point: websites are penalized for even linking to low-
       | ranking pages!
       | 
       | No they aren't.
        
       | RajT88 wrote:
       | Google is not the front page of _my_ internet.
       | 
       | I recently decided to create my own landing page, stored locally
       | on disk, with a funny gif and favicon.ico, and a shortlist of my
       | most used work and personal links (including this site!).
       | 
       | No ads, no tracking. Shockingly - I had to install browser
       | extensions to override the new tab page in both Edge and Chrome.
       | This used to be a built in setting! Shady guys. Very shady.
       | 
       | Although... Not as shady as the fact that Chrome by default sends
       | your entire browsing history to Google for analysis.
        
         | guntars wrote:
         | > Not as shady as the fact that Chrome by default sends your
         | entire browsing history to Google for analysis.
         | 
         | Citation needed. Are you saying that, as I click around the
         | site here, Google knows what comments threads I'm interested
         | in?
         | 
         | Edit: I think they're talking about the History sync, which
         | does indeed by default send Google every link you visit, but
         | only if you explicitly enable it. We should get access to this
         | data and leak porn preferences of every senator. That ought to
         | get the laws changed quickly.
        
           | RajT88 wrote:
           | Yes. And I can prove it to you.
           | 
           | Settings > Sync and Google Services > Other Google Services >
           | Make Searches and Browsing Better.
           | 
           | Underneath the setting it explains, "Send URLs of pages you
           | visit to Google".
        
             | cma wrote:
             | we need to expand wiretapping laws to this stuff, the
             | disclosure should be upfront and default off
        
         | dredmorbius wrote:
         | I'd like to set something like this up on an Android tablet.
         | 
         | I have Termux installed and there are a few options for running
         | a simple webserver (e.g., via Python). I've yet to look into
         | hosting my own homepage and directory there, though ... it
         | would be nice and useful to do this.
        
         | alar44 wrote:
         | Oh no my search history
        
       | redavni wrote:
       | I have resorted to using Russian (Yandex) and Chinese (Baidu)
       | search engines in the last few years. It is interesting that non
       | commercial sources have more of a voice on these search engines
       | than on Google today.
       | 
       | Google is good at many things, but their leadership is
       | questionable now, unlike in the past.
       | 
       | I would pay a subscription fee for a service that provided
       | partity with Google and customer service that answers the phone.
        
         | akudha wrote:
         | Have you tried this one? https://neeva.com/
         | 
         | No idea how good it is, I remember it was posted here a while
         | ago
        
         | outworlder wrote:
         | Aren't those heavily censored?
        
       | yazzku wrote:
       | I would also ask, why is HN so monotonous?
       | 
       | If you compare 'new' vs what goes on the wall, you'll see a non-
       | trivial amount of Big Tech bias and very good posts (often
       | criticisms) effectively getting censored. Is the paycheck that
       | good?
        
         | talkingtab wrote:
         | Exactly! The top "comment" right now is: "this is a clear
         | demonstration of the user's expectation of search having
         | exceeded what's possible today".
        
         | sebastianconcpt wrote:
         | Cancel culture fear => Peer pressure hypersensibility =>
         | Monotonicity
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | Because to avoid trolling and arguments HN filters out
         | controversy and most politics.
         | 
         | Yea, it's more monotonous, but it's far less hate filled than
         | most forums and keeps on target far more often.
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | > and very good posts (often criticisms) effectively getting
         | censored
         | 
         | I browse new occasionally and I encounter a lot of lowbrow
         | substack spam to be honest. Rants against big tech make you a
         | contrarian, problem is you have to be contrarian and right to
         | be interesting.
         | 
         | I don't think HN has a big tech bias, most criticism of big
         | tech is just plain awful. If anything in today's discourse
         | there is a stupendous anti big-anything bias (for context, I'm
         | not paid by big tech, I work for a small German company on the
         | other side of the pond and find much of SV culture annoying
         | personally)
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | It shouldn't be a surprise that most of the content posted to a
         | forum owned by a Silicon Valley startup incubator is related to
         | "Big Tech."
        
       | wnissen wrote:
       | Does this mean that pages with excessively complicated cookie
       | acceptance/rejection also get ranked higher because they have a
       | longer dwell time? Talk about a dark pattern.
        
       | lotw_dot_site wrote:
       | Among other things, _Linux on the Web_ can be used to usher in a
       | new paradigm for accessing online resources.
       | 
       | The current document-centric approach has an intensely graphical
       | (attention grabbing) aspect which very much encourages the least
       | common denominator types of results that the author abhors.
       | 
       | Those who want to be more thoughtful about these things need
       | better toolsets to allow them to focus the way that they go about
       | their online lives (including general search).
       | 
       | Google is in indeed more than search. They are also the machine
       | learning framework, Tensorflow. _Linux on the Web_ is in as good
       | a position as anything else to start putting the JavaScript
       | implementation (Tensorflow.js) to very good use.
       | 
       | We don't need new search _engines_ as much as we need new search
       | engine _interfaces_.
        
       | HeyItsMatt wrote:
        
         | stevesearer wrote:
         | I had a scenario today where I looked something up and the
         | search result page yielded zero results. However, there were
         | 3-4 ads above and below the text that said there were zero
         | results.
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | It could be a situation where Google doesn't mean to do it, but
         | also isn't incentivized to fix it. The people who make the most
         | money off Google have the most time and motivation to find ways
         | to manipulate it to protect and increase their profit. Anyone
         | at Google who wants to fix it is incentivized to come up with
         | new features for promotion rather than bugfix.
        
           | HeyItsMatt wrote:
        
         | stonemetal12 wrote:
         | > if your goal is to maximize the next few quarters results and
         | don't care if you crash the company.
         | 
         | Also makes sense if you are optimizing a metric and only
         | considering the data, not where it is leading you.
        
       | norwalkbear wrote:
       | I've personally thought it's a side effect of bringing the masses
       | to the internet.
        
       | i_have_an_idea wrote:
       | The author seems to only have a superfluous understanding of SEO.
       | Yes, keywords matter, as well as inbound and outbound links, but,
       | these days Google is also quite sophisticated about surfacing
       | results that meet the criteria for Good Page Experience and pass
       | the Core Web Vitals. That means responsive web sites, with highly
       | optimized images, font delivery, minimal on-load jitter that load
       | super fast, even on old mobile devices. All of that is good for
       | the end user.
        
       | drivebycomment wrote:
       | This is a clear demonstration of the user's expectation of search
       | having exceeded what's possible today.
       | 
       | From the article:
       | 
       | > Lets look at some examples. One of my favorite places in the
       | world is Koh Lanta, Thailand. When traveling, I'm always on the
       | lookout for places that give off the Koh Lanta vibe. What does
       | that mean? Hard to say, exactly, but having tourist amenities
       | without being touristy. Charming, slow, cheap. I don't know
       | exactly; if I did, it'd be easier to find. Anyway, forgetting
       | that Google is bad at long tails, I search for what is the koh
       | lanta of croatia? and get:
       | 
       | This is a near impossible query for human beings, let alone for
       | computer given the state of the AI at this point in time.
        
         | vector_spaces wrote:
         | I know that search engines are optimized to facilitate
         | commerce, and yes, depending on the extent to which you're
         | bought into their ecosystem, Google probably knows a lot about
         | you, like, for instance, whether or not you've been to Koh
         | Lanta before as a tourist, but good lord what a self-centered
         | way (for the author of this blog post, not the parent comment)
         | to think about this.
         | 
         | Like, Koh Lanta is surely not just a vacation destination, it's
         | also a place where people live their lives, go to work and
         | school, are homeless, deal with illness. The expectation that
         | Google will assume that by "koh lanta of croatia" you're really
         | asking "vacation destinations in Croatia that are similar to
         | Koh Lanta, Thailand" really rubs me the wrong way
        
           | HeyItsMatt wrote:
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | Eh, I dunno. I feel like if there _had_ been a human somewhere
         | blogging or writing on a forum  "I was thrilled to find this
         | village in Croatia which really reminded me of my trip to Koh
         | Lanta, one of my favorite places" -- then Google of 15 years
         | ago would have found it and put it on the first page. Even if
         | there are ten such things on the web today, I don't think it's
         | gonna wind up in my google search. But am I overly optimistic
         | about historical Google?
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | > But am I overly optimistic about historical Google?
           | 
           | Well, I was about to post a similar reply. It would have
           | taken some messing around with the search string, but I'm
           | confident I would be able to find something like this on
           | Google 18 years ago, and I'm certain that if it exists, I
           | can't find it now (unless it's on some big name site).
        
           | summerlight wrote:
           | > then Google of 15 years ago would have found it and put it
           | on the first page.
           | 
           | I don't think Google of 15 years ago will do a good job on
           | the current age of internet. The size of web has increased a
           | lot like 100x where most of the increment comes from
           | unstructured formats like video or image and its signal to
           | noise ratio deteriorated considerably. SEO has become much
           | more sophisticated ever. A large fraction of useful
           | information is now locked in the unindexed walled garden.
        
         | spitfire wrote:
         | I actually built this exact thing for myself when I was looking
         | for property to buy. I built a VAE DNN to identify sandy white
         | beaches, added in a bunch of data about economics and such,
         | built a custom McPain index (Inverse of the distance to the
         | nearest chain restaurant (McDonalds, Burger king, Starbucks,
         | etc)*1000000)[1].
         | 
         | Fed a bunch of countries coastline into it, and popped out
         | ranked beachfronts to investigate more.
         | 
         | 1. I once went to Ao Nang, Thailand a few years after the
         | tsunami and found a really cool chill cheap beach town and
         | loved it. Went back a few years later and right on the main
         | street there was a McDonalds. Across from that there was a
         | Burger king, ~100M up the road was another McDonalds. I will
         | never return.
        
           | ck_one wrote:
           | Sounds super useful!
           | 
           | Where did you get the data from? Do you still have the code
           | somewhere?
        
         | HeyItsMatt wrote:
        
           | krapp wrote:
           | >The correct result is to return pages containing "Croatia"
           | AND "Koh Lanta".
           | 
           | But that isn't the correct result. "Koh Lanta" is being used
           | by the OP to describe the vibe of a place "having tourist
           | amenities without being touristy." It isn't a common English
           | idiom, but one they made up based on their personal
           | experiences as a tourist in Thailand. Results which simply
           | contain the text "Croatia" and "Koh Lanta" aren't going to
           | reflect what they want.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | HeyItsMatt wrote:
        
         | tigerlily wrote:
         | That's easy, just ask DALL-E and do an image search
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | There's some mix of people in here who weren't around for or
         | forgot about when Google handled stuff like this brilliantly.
         | In fact, one of the best ways to get search traffic was to
         | write a quality article tackling questions like this. Google
         | was thirsty for answers to the ever-growing number of queries
         | it had never seen before and would shower traffic on anyone who
         | answered them even if it was a bad answer. A good answer had
         | staying power.
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | I was there for it.
           | 
           | It worked for a select group of toy problem domains and the
           | answer for most high-concept searches would be noise or
           | nothing.
           | 
           | The author never manages to convince me that the information
           | they're looking for is on the Internet for Google to index in
           | the first place. The author then asserts "don't just hit me
           | with garbage," which is a fine assertion, except what they're
           | interpreting as 'garbage' is the information other people
           | making the search could actually use. Google A/B tested the
           | _hell_ out of  "say nothing" vs. "guess something close to
           | what the requester might care about" and the latter won out
           | every time.
        
         | cfeduke wrote:
         | Maybe. If this were a couple of decades ago and this search
         | were performed, the searcher may simply see zero results. This
         | used to be an acceptable response from a search engine - unless
         | there's some website that specifically contains the search term
         | being sought, simply return zero results. Not thousands or tens
         | of thousands results.
         | 
         | What we get instead are incorrect results which are being
         | presented as reasonable answers to the search query in the name
         | of advertising revenue.
        
           | marcodiego wrote:
           | I remember, in the 90's, I typed "hexdit" in altavista and
           | spent the time visiting exactly 100 websites to find exactly
           | the hex editor I was searching for. I remember the number
           | exactly because it was in the last position (10) of the last
           | page and there were 10 pages.
        
         | trebbble wrote:
         | It did used to be possible to craft searches that'd find that
         | kind of thing, with Google. Not in natural language, but you
         | could guess enough unusual words that might show up on a page
         | that had that info to zero in on it.
         | 
         | Their apparently paying a lot less attention to certain things
         | (like link text--"what might someone use to describe a _link
         | to_ this resource, but which might not appear on the resource
         | itself? " used to be a very fruitful way to search), and freely
         | substituting words or dropping terms that are merely _not
         | common_ on hits (but not _totally absent from 100% of results_
         | ) has made this kind of thing impossible.
        
           | varispeed wrote:
           | Indeed. It was so much easier to find stuff you are looking
           | for a decade ago. Now it is mostly spam or (what really
           | grinds my gears) AI written posts that only after reading it
           | for a while you realise it is all bollocks.
           | 
           | That being said, I remember my cousin had a blog where he was
           | writing utter nonsense about trending topics and he was
           | actually able to pull enough money from Ad Sense to afford a
           | pub crawl once a month.
           | 
           | Now of course all of this is streamlined - one button website
           | generators with AI content and posts for given topic and self
           | optimising for engagement and advert clicks etc.
           | 
           | But I see Google has thrown in the towel and no longer cares
           | for search results.
        
         | halayli wrote:
         | OP is asking google to search their feelings, it's ridiculous
         | expectation for sure.
        
         | jxramos wrote:
         | So true. People see sci-fi representations of technology in
         | movies and TV shows and extrapolate that to the real world
         | never realizing that satisfying the prerequisites for any
         | technology to become a reality is easier said than done. It's
         | always handwavvy too: the computer will figure it out. Let the
         | computer do it.
        
         | chx wrote:
         | Yeah unless there's a blogger who have the same train of
         | thought of OP this is not going to be findable by "Koh Lanta
         | vibe". Quantifying it as charming slow and cheap does lead to
         | results: croatia off the beaten path slow cheap search result
         | #5 is
         | https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2021/jul/17/croatia-10-be...
         | which has this gem
         | 
         | > Places where things move at a less hurried pace, where
         | Croatian life can be savoured, where you get a flavour of what
         | the Dalmatians call fjaka - the art of doing nothing. These
         | islands and mainland destinations are what you want in a post-
         | lockdown escape: peace, beauty and the chance to discover why
         | Croatia is such an enticing country.
         | 
         | Now I know I want to search for fjaka -- if I want to search
         | further because this article might just be what OP wanted.
         | 
         | The success for search _always_ has been finding the keywords
         | to search for. You can see here it took me just a few minutes.
        
         | dakial1 wrote:
         | It is not only that. This search specifically is something that
         | it's impossible because if the search worked, those "places out
         | of the beaten path" the author is searching for, would
         | immediately become popular and they wouldn't be true results
         | anymore. They not being "indexed" by Google (or the internet in
         | general) is what makes them the way they are.
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | >having tourist amenities without being touristy. Charming,
         | slow, cheap.
         | 
         | Ugh, this reminds me of the people that move from high tax
         | places to low tax places but want all the benefits of high tax
         | places at low cost.
         | 
         | Now, back to the main point, if this was searchable it wouldn't
         | exist.
         | 
         | The number one complaint people have today is popular places
         | are too busy, too many tourists come and prices go up and it's
         | over ran. So what do you think is going to happen to some place
         | that 300+ million wealthy people around the world can search in
         | a few seconds and find out it's cheap an empty. The answer is
         | "become busy and expensive".
         | 
         | The only reason places like this still exist is Google can't
         | find them.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | devmunchies wrote:
       | I disagree that its google's fault. I think it went from a
       | diverse mainstreet to a walmart. Likely an inevitable progression
       | of any economy if not deliberately prevented. Was likely
       | quickened by Google though.
       | 
       | "They paved paradise to put up a parking lot"
        
       | haskell_melody wrote:
       | The About page of Read Something Interesting
       | (https://readsomethinginteresting.com/about) conveys this well.
        
       | RootKitBeerCat wrote:
       | Hey yeah! Imagine like two small guys in a garage could like make
       | a indexer for the web and call it a search engine and just make
       | it work the best, and gain market dominance and become a little
       | bit slower to innovate than authors "back in 2006" nostalgia...
        
       | seydor wrote:
       | > like it consists of ten big sites
       | 
       | Optimistic. Which are those?
        
       | sebastianconcpt wrote:
       | ...and purple? Huh? Why _everything_ is purple? Seriously
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | >websites are penalized for even linking to low-ranking pages!
       | 
       | So the top hundred sites link to each other and everything else
       | gets ignored.
       | 
       | This the equivalent of social media's echo chambers.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | I would like to see a source for that claim though. Seems odd
         | to me. Also most pages are low ranking. Even on say HN which is
         | probably high ranking, the page for this comment is likely to
         | be low ranking, because it is new and nothing is linking to it
         | (other than the one link from another leaf-like page).
        
         | codefreeordie wrote:
         | This gets even more effective once you layer in content-based
         | ranking adjustments -- where defined types of content or
         | viewpoints get automatically downranked. You downrank the
         | content directly, and then the rest of the web is highly
         | penalized from even linking to the "disapproved" content, and
         | so that content effectively disappears from the internet,
         | except in tiny dark corners that aren't found via search.
        
       | throwaway539324 wrote:
       | I was thinking about this recently, because at my business we're
       | working on improving our SEO.
       | 
       | The big problem is that Google is the major way people discover
       | goods and services. If you have a site that sells garden hoses,
       | the best way to get eyeballs is to write blog posts that a
       | potential user of garden hoses might search for. "How to install
       | a garden hose." "What is the best garden hose."
       | 
       | This kind of content marketing can drive huge traffic and thus
       | huge sales.
       | 
       | But only results on the first page of Google matter, and the
       | farther down the first page you are, the less traffic you get.
       | 
       | Now, the 15 companies that produce garden hoses are fighting
       | against each other to get the 10 slots in Google's first page for
       | any given keyword.
       | 
       | With AI-generated articles, it's become a race to the bottom.
       | Google rewards AI-generated, keyword-optimized blog spam. If you
       | want to be one of the 15 companies that makes it into those 10
       | slots, you better believe you need to write AI-generated blogspam
       | too. And when everyone has to do that in order to compete, all
       | that's left is the AI-generated blogspam that has infested the
       | modern web.
       | 
       | You almost have no choice as a business. Either write AI-
       | generated blogspam that Google loves, or your competition will,
       | and bury you in the search results.
        
       | will_walker wrote:
       | Be careful what you wish for. AI capable of writing weird garbage
       | nonsense content that looks truthful is coming down the pipeline,
       | with a reward function built in for user engagement. In a world
       | of effortless surreal content, authoritatively truthful answer
       | will become more valuable. We're going to need encyclopedias
       | again!
        
       | bluGill wrote:
       | I miss yahoo of 1996 when they were a table of contents.
       | Practically unmaintainable which is why they gave up, but it was
       | nice to follow a few links and find something interesting on
       | weird subjects. No search at all in those days, but it was better
       | for finding things.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | Like this: https://dmoz-odp.org/
        
           | HeyItsMatt wrote:
        
             | bluGill wrote:
             | Maybe i'm just lucky, but every link I tried was not only
             | live but updated reciently.
             | 
             | Though i'm still disappointed they are not updating.
        
           | bluGill wrote:
           | Wow, it actually lets me discover interesting things.
        
       | quickthrower2 wrote:
       | > As it happens, Google rewards websites which use keywords in
       | their url, title, headings, and first 100 words. Just by
       | eyeballing, we can see that this particular website is targeting
       | the keywords "water", "system", "irrigation", and "garden". Pages
       | like these hyper-optimized to come up for particular searches.
       | The stupid expository stuff exists only to pack "important
       | keywords" into the first 100 words.
       | 
       | Another explanation is that the type of company that buys
       | thousands of links is also the type that pays rock bottom for
       | their writers. I don't think you need to necessarily write trite
       | crap in order to do well in SEO.
        
       | sebastianconcpt wrote:
       | It's not technology. It's about culture (which is linked to the
       | social imaginary, a kind of group consciousness operative system,
       | hence a kind of immaterial technology itself).
       | 
       | Psychologically, at the core of the problem, this is what
       | happens:
       | 
       | Cancel culture fear => Peer pressure hypersensibility =>
       | Monotonicity
        
       | a9h74j wrote:
       | > Mass-appeal queries are, almost by definition, not particularly
       | hard to find. If I need a bus schedule, I know to talk to my
       | local transit authority. If I'm looking to keep up with the
       | Kardashians, I'm not going to have any problems (at least, no
       | search problems.)
       | 
       | In identifying a 95/5 reward for supporting "mass-appeal
       | queries", is much of the answer right there?
       | 
       | And will the average general-purpose alternative search engine
       | escape similar incentives?
        
       | abruzzi wrote:
       | this page makes a comment that I wish more site developers
       | understood-no results to my search is a much more meaningful
       | result than changing my search to provide results I didn't ask
       | for.
        
       | whateveracct wrote:
       | Sounds like a use-case for search but - should it ever re-
       | materialize [1]
       | 
       | A bazaar of boutique search indexes provided by People seems like
       | it would be nice to have. Better than Google constantly trying to
       | sell me shit.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://paste.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/048293268d4ed4254659c3cd6abe67...
        
       | alexalx666 wrote:
       | i dig your layout
        
       | warning26 wrote:
       | There's a lot of Google hate on HN, and much of it is deserved,
       | but I think this particular trend of blaming Google for the
       | prevalence of useless clickbait articles is a bit much.
       | 
       | The _real_ answer to this question is that walled-garden social
       | media took over everything. The much-pined-for  "Old Google"
       | worked because people used to actually create content on their
       | own sites, and not just post it on walled garden monolithic
       | social sites like Facebook or Twitter.
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | I disagree. The fact that Google has such a power over the
         | shape of web traffic, along with a few other websites,
         | absolutely re-shapes the Internet to fit whatever its standards
         | make a website rank well. It's in many ways almost exactly the
         | same process as natural selection. Whatever works gets traffic
         | and gets copied by other websites, whatever doesn't fades away.
        
           | alexalx666 wrote:
           | yes but we can build our own query tools, for ex. Im using `$
           | so graphql vs sql` and such terminal commands more and more
           | these days
        
             | marginalia_nu wrote:
             | Oh yeah, this is primarily a problem for Google. They're
             | sort of stuck being chased by the shadow they cast.
             | 
             | I've had very little problems cutting through the SEO spam
             | running an independent search engine, but then I don't
             | shape traffic like they do.
        
         | didip wrote:
         | I disagree because it's 100% within Google power to purge junk
         | websites, see Panda in 2011.
         | 
         | But they didn't want to do that anymore. Why? Because of ads
         | money.
         | 
         | To drive the point home, it is not that difficult for Google to
         | have a junk score and simply phase out the junkiest of junks.
         | But they didn't even want to do that.
        
           | marginalia_nu wrote:
           | Feels like they'd be much more liable to get in trouble for
           | anti-competitive behavior today than they were in 2011, given
           | that they are in a very different position now compared to
           | then.
        
           | summerlight wrote:
           | Have you heard about the concept antitrust regulation? This
           | is the real thing.
        
         | jrochkind1 wrote:
         | I do wonder how things would be different if facebook posts
         | (instagram, tiktok, etc) were exposed to Google... I'm not sure
         | they'd be better though.
        
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