[HN Gopher] A steep rise of Hackernews in Google rankings
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A steep rise of Hackernews in Google rankings
Author : jcmp
Score : 70 points
Date : 2024-02-18 22:06 UTC (54 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (jonathanpagel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jonathanpagel.com)
| kgbcia wrote:
| We need more sites like hackernews. X /twitter used to be that ,
| but it's now overwhelmed with bots and SEO. The more boring you
| make a site (no colors, no images, no links) the better the
| defense against spammers.
| abraae wrote:
| Downvoted but true.
|
| HN's pedestrian design makes for a much better experience.
|
| - no flair for usernames - means people concentrate on the
| message not the messenger
|
| - no visible karma for anyone but the top few - means people
| don't spend (as much) time karma whoring
|
| - limited formatting, no images or video - increases the value
| and import of the written word
|
| - no sharing, or @user referencing - means posts live and die
| more by their merit rather than brigading or other shenanigans
| mikestew wrote:
| _no visible karma for anyone but the top few_
|
| It took one click to see that user _abraae_ has 6671, as of
| this writing. Or did I miss the point in dramatic fashion?
| abraae wrote:
| Oops. I was really meaning no badges, karma etc. showing
| next to people's posts but forgot you can see it by
| clicking in.
| foolswisdom wrote:
| I wonder the same, I can definitely see the karma of users
| who have only double digit (and I think I have seen single
| digit) karma.
| radley wrote:
| You did. His score has little to do with anything on the
| site. That's the point.
| justech wrote:
| I think it's a lot less obvious here than on Reddit you
| could hover over a username and see it.
| lnauta wrote:
| On top of that no sharing/@ing: no notifications for
| responses (there's probably an addon for that if you want
| it).
|
| At first I thought I wouldn't like it, because I tend to post
| on subjects I'm knowledgeable and want to do my best there.
| But now I'm so glad to not get the anxiety and rush of the
| back and forth in heated discussions.
|
| Peace and quiet.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Optimized for thoughtful discussion over engagement.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| bots and SEO have really destroyed the internet. and now that
| we have AI to further streamline the production of BS, I feel
| like the Internet is just going to become even more of a
| quality content wasteland.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Goodharth's Law destroyed the internet. The constant game of
| chess between Google and SEO marketers has the turned the
| whole search product to crap.
|
| It won't improve since when Google makes a change, SEO
| marketers adapt. The websites that actually provide value and
| don't really care about SEO suffer as well as the users
| looking for that exact information.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I'm just waiting for some kind of real person yet anonymous
| protocol that gets introduced in the next era of forums.
| Devasta wrote:
| I fully believe that, especially with the rise of AI models,
| the future of the internet is going to be small enclaves of a
| few thousand people on invite only message boards. Anything
| else is just going to be far and away too much effort for
| anyone to maintain, especially when advertisers twig that
| their ads are mostly being shown to bots.
|
| I just don't see how anything else could be sustainable.
| quickslowdown wrote:
| So just like that past? Bring it on, that was the better
| internet
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| so the theory is that now there will be a lot of bots taking over
| HN and posting stuff that they want to rank up, destroying the
| value of the site? What's the defense there?
| jcmp wrote:
| Bit afraid about that. Honestly it is suprising how spam free
| HN is, so maybe they have some good anti spam system in place.
| Also i think it would make sense to set all outside links to
| "nofollow" so google ingores them and therefore it is less
| interesting for SEO.
| MrBlueIncognito wrote:
| That would also eliminate any positive effect that HN has on
| Google search results.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I wonder if nofollow actually does anything nowadays. I feel
| like the rules that used to be enforced have been replaced
| with hacky 'AI' that have been hacked together by thousands
| of SWEs trying to improve some metric for their promotion
| packet.
| jcmp wrote:
| the "google way" would be to use instead of "nofollow"
| "ugc" which stands for user generated content.[1] In the
| same document they state "We'll generally treat them as we
| did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking
| purposes". However they lied often about their ranking
| signals ;) https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/0
| 9/evolving-n...
| spacebacon wrote:
| It gets its fair share of spam but the platform is very
| effective at moderation. Show dead and scroll new for
| examples.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Wouldn't the defense be to delist and starve/block the google
| crawlers? Gaming google rankings is a waste of time if it's not
| there.
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| The new way to build communities: SE-anti-O. Trying to rank
| as low as possible. Things will flip and sites will try to be
| uncrawlable to Google. I guess it's already happened with
| Discord.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Over the past few weeks I've seen more crypto scam posts than
| ever. While they quickly become dead, I'm not sure if they are
| coming in a faster rate than in the past or what.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Maybe it's because HN is well moderated and open to automated
| scraping, unlike other systems that are being locked down
| (reddit, Twitter) so the user generated content is now
| significantly more valuable to search engines.
| m2mdas2 wrote:
| Eternal september more accelerated.
| tcldr wrote:
| Dear Google, we were only adding 'site:reddit.com' or
| 'site:news.ycombinator.com' to search queries so we could get to
| opinions that weren't being manipulated by SEO fiddlers. What's
| our alternative now?
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Spammers have been heavily targeting reddit for years and
| site:reddit.com is still useful.
|
| Why Google have not bought reddit, I don't know (beyond
| moderation issues, but AMZN made it work with twitch).
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I've become really skeptical of Reddit comments around
| products for this reason. Searching "best X site:reddit.com"
| and going off the top comment recommendation seems really
| sketchy when that top comment is only 5-10 points.
|
| Maybe I'm just really paranoid these days, but I would bet
| looking at searches with Reddit in them and creating threads
| or commenting on old ones and paying for up votes is probably
| lucrative.
| arccy wrote:
| why would they buy a cesspool of bots and memes? google is
| for finding content, not hosting content (unless you want it
| shut down)
| tmpz22 wrote:
| I don't think Reddit has ever been a clean acquisition -
| either because they've raised at high valuations many times
| or because of an undesirable content/moderation problem.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| HN deserves to be at or near the top of search results because
| the quality of discourse is so high here, and on a very wide
| range of topics.
|
| I have noticed an increase in errors here in the past few months
| though, I wonder if this is the cause.
| chipweinberger wrote:
| I think the only defense for increased spam is accounts will need
| to be tied to real people through some other identification.
|
| Sucks, but is there an alternative?
|
| I recently switched to more actively using my account that has my
| name as the username, anticipating the growing problem of spam
| detection, and trying to make it more clear this account is not
| spam.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Which identification is that?
|
| Also, identification is not something that is revocable. If
| someone steals and abuses your identity (though no fault of
| your own?), are you now banned from the internet?
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| What's worrying here also is Google's willingness to use a random
| comment as the source for its snippets.
|
| I understand that the average HN commenter puts more effort into
| their comments, and their veracity, than the average internet
| user elsewhere, but still.
|
| (For me, the top "result" for _Monaco in italian_ is the Google
| Translator widget with Collins Dictionary, Wikipedia and Quora
| the top 3 links. HN is 4 or 5 links below.)
|
| Oh, and yes, let's hope spammers don't overwhelm dang!
| tayo42 wrote:
| What happens when hn outgrows it's current self? Even now, the
| front page is pretty fast paced. Things get burried pretty quick.
| Sometimes I see an interesting post and comments and think to my
| self I want to come back later when I have more time but it'll be
| a few pages off the front by then.
| pknerd wrote:
| Is it not called "Parasite SEO"[1]?
|
| [1] https://www.kiwop.com/en/blog/parasite-seo-what-is-it-and-
| ho....
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(page generated 2024-02-18 23:00 UTC)