In the early days of my career, I worked as a content writer in a small Digital Marketing Company. Their majority work was to higher cheap clients from Freelancer platform. The company had...
In the early days of my career, I worked as a content writer in a small Digital Marketing Company. Their majority work was to higher cheap clients from Freelancer platform. The company had multiple Freelancer IDs running and delegated to sales reps. Their sole task was to post cheap bids, get responses and sell them cheap SEO services.
My work was to write articles (around 3000 words every day) that were high in keyword density and low in quality. To my surprise the articles ranked and Sales Rep were so proud to send weekly reports to the clients that their articles are ranking high on the Google Search Results. And to be honest majority of those cheap clients didn't even care. They were just giving away pennies for some shitty work that was offering them results.
After a year, my soul gave up and I left job. The reason I started this job was to learn a new skill, i.e. writing article for the internet. But all fluff no value was crushing my soul. I couldn't justify with that.
So yeah, I can related to this article pretty much. After six and half years the company I mentioned is still running and making huge profits. I mean, what the hell!
You have no idea how many companies in India are producing shitty work for pennies. It doesn't mean that India doesn't have talent. But the work culture is squeezing the life out of talented people.
Good article. Did it feel like it ended a little abruptly? I wanted to hear what Cade Lee had to say.....he seems like a reformed con about SEO: how does he see the new AI trend ? And is google in...
Good article.
Did it feel like it ended a little abruptly? I wanted to hear what Cade Lee had to say.....he seems like a reformed con about SEO: how does he see the new AI trend ?
And is google in fact worse now or better? Did the reporter speak to anyone who claims they have a solution for what to do after google becomes all AI garbage?
Does anyone on Tildes have comments on what to do post google?
Kagi is the one solution I heard of trying to combat this: https://kagi.com/ You can read the pitch to get a summary of what it offers. But it really comes down to: will people want to pay to...
Does anyone on Tildes have comments on what to do post google?
Kagi is the one solution I heard of trying to combat this: https://kagi.com/
You can read the pitch to get a summary of what it offers. But it really comes down to: will people want to pay to improve their search engine efficiency? I imagine the majority won't, or can't.
And is google in fact worse now or better?
depends on the person. IME Google is fine for casual searches that any mainstream site can make an article for. If you're looking for tribal knowledge in a certain domain it's absolutely useless (and that's probably what a lot of "I google and add site:reddit.com" sentiment comes from). Even if you know the exact title of a certain article it will not pop up in the search results due to how heavily SEO'd blogspam is.
And of course you need to be careful about ads, explicit or otherwise. You may find a product on Amazon as an early search, but the ratings may betray the quality of the product. I tend to cross reference a mix of professional, store, and social media reviews just to try and get a good feel for any product whose domain I'm not in touch with.
While kagi sounds interesting, I'm starting to get a little tired of being nickle and dimed on the internet. What would make it worthwhile (for me) would be the ability to use an API to do the...
While kagi sounds interesting, I'm starting to get a little tired of being nickle and dimed on the internet. What would make it worthwhile (for me) would be the ability to use an API to do the searches, along with having a google-cache like feature.
it's unfortunately inevitable. Search is a genuinely hard problem and snappy search requires a lot of server power at scale. Google makes that back in ways that lead to this article being made....
I'm starting to get a little tired of being nickle and dimed on the internet
it's unfortunately inevitable. Search is a genuinely hard problem and snappy search requires a lot of server power at scale. Google makes that back in ways that lead to this article being made. But if ads aren't an option (Which Kagi advertises), you don't have many other ethical ways other than asking for payment upfront, be it as a subscription or per rate. Very few want to spend thousands out of the kindness of their own hearts powering servers for others to use el gratis.
The only other way around this is to make it a government service which seems worse. Even if people perfectly trusted their government, search is a worldwide feature. Which government calls the shots? Or do we rely on the UN or something for this?
What would make it worthwhile (for me) would be the ability to use an API to do the searches, along with having a google-cache like feature.
as of this posting it is invite only. But it's a separate subscription for now if you did get in (apparently, $25 per 1000 searches. I don't know enough to know if that's reasonable. seems so for individual use). Maybe that can be bundled with a future subscription tier.
Less sure about caching, I imagine that falls under "even more server burden" so it's not as advertised if it's there. It can also take away from the privacy angle; Kagi claims to not store any personal data.
on a broader level: given the influx of all my previous favorite sites imploding, I'm starting to feel less opposed to paying for quality in places I truly use daily. So while I'm not subscribed to Kagi right now, I'm keeping a closer eye as I get more and more frustrated with google search. It may be a fool's ambition to hope that a premium site can curtail every single greedy decision (just look at streaming websites), but if nothing else it does feel like I make a difference when I unsub from a bad premium website, compared to how most people will simply keep visiting "free" sites even if the CEO decided to twirl a mustache and kick a puppy.
Might be a little nitpicky, but I would like to say that the issues described in this article are inevitable for any suitably popular search engine. Even if Google were state-run and made zero...
Google makes that back in ways that lead to this article being made.
Might be a little nitpicky, but I would like to say that the issues described in this article are inevitable for any suitably popular search engine. Even if Google were state-run and made zero money off people, it would still run into problems with SEO bc there would still be people sufficiently motivated to improve their rank in the search. Google's source of revenue causes plenty of problems with their services, but the stuff in this article mostly isn't the fault of that. A service like Kagi only avoids the same SEO problems because it's not popular enough for anyone to bother trying to game it yet.
of course, everything is gameable and we have plenty of government loopholes to look at for examples. It's more about accountability than having the perfect system. Google has negative...
of course, everything is gameable and we have plenty of government loopholes to look at for examples.
It's more about accountability than having the perfect system. Google has negative accountability for punishing blogspam because they also run a lot of the very ads that a consumer-focused search engine should punish. A theoretical state run search engine at least has a small chance of falling into a scandal and voting out the ones making search worse.
The "twirl a mustache and kick a puppy" benchmark is a small bar, but Google doesn't even clear that.
Why would you see that as reasonable? The services cost money no matter who operates them, so your ISP would increase your rates to cover the cost. At that point, the only trouble it saves you is...
Why would you see that as reasonable? The services cost money no matter who operates them, so your ISP would increase your rates to cover the cost. At that point, the only trouble it saves you is a distinctly separate charge for the service and having to input your credit card # an extra time. Except if you end up not liking the service they offer and decide to use something else, you're still paying for it even though you're not using it. Granted the charge would be less than what you would pay for a separate service, but this is only because the people who sign up with that ISP and don't use the service would be subsidizing the ones that do use it.
Seems like you're just picking someone you already pay money to and saying it'd be fine if they ran it, because then you don't have to think about paying someone else.
Not to downplay your feelings on the matter, I think a lot of people are overwhelmed by having too many various different payments and subscriptions. Ultimately I think there will be some business built on top of this to make a middle-man layer that makes it easier to manage all of these, but it has to reach like a critical stage where enough services are willing to sign on to make it useful to consumers, and then not being part of this payment platform will eventually be a detriment to services as consumers would choose not to pay for them if they aren't using it. In theory, banks/credit cards could offer services like this by recognizing companies you pay and giving you the ability to deny future charges (rather than having to issue chargebacks), so it's possible some out there might already offer a service like this, but it's not widely available and I don't know the limitations. I think it also just needs to be interwoven with daily user experience in some way, like browser extensions or such where if you are on a site, you can easily sign up, but you can also easily cancel.
You be the judge of that. Nothing new, just as it is happening already. For example, majority of the masses is using Google Chrome browser, Windows operating system. But those who are concerned...
And is google in fact worse now or better?
You be the judge of that.
Does anyone on Tildes have comments on what to do post google?
Nothing new, just as it is happening already.
For example, majority of the masses is using Google Chrome browser, Windows operating system. But those who are concerned about their privacy, are taking extra steps to install Linux on their systems and using secure FOSS.
Or, almost all are relying on the mainstream news channels for their daily information. Based on whatever they are being fed they are forming their opinions. On contrary, people who care about the correctness of the information they are consuming would be willing to climb some extra steps. Surely they will have to spend extra time to compare the information between multiple news sources.
Similarly, if we really care about the quality of the information in the age of AI, we need to turn it off for once and dig deeper into the abandoned pages of the internet lying dormant in the hope of enlightened ones.
Of course, people will call you freak or nerd. But everything comes at a price. Ask the Linux folks with 3% market share.
I’ve run Linux boxes and macs since the 90s. I had gmail when it was beta invite. From my perspective, Google being the thing they said “don’t be” was undeniable somewhere in the early 2010s, when...
I’ve run Linux boxes and macs since the 90s. I had gmail when it was beta invite. From my perspective, Google being the thing they said “don’t be” was undeniable somewhere in the early 2010s, when they discontinued Wave launched Chrome.
Apple’s core business is selling services and hardware to consumers. Google’s core business is collecting data and selling advertising.
The privacy branding for Apple is secondary to the “hardware, software, and services that just work and aren’t annoying” branding. And the privacy branding is necessary for the “just works” and “not annoying” branding.
Linux is awesome. But not everyone wants to use it or can use it. I don’t mind it on a headless server, it’s great for that. I’d rather have Mac for everything else, even if I’m still in vim half the day.
Agreed. I'm equally comfortable in Windows, OSX, and Linux. As much as I like Linux, it has a non-zero technical overhead. OSX is unix with all the rough edges taken care of. Windows gets run...
Agreed.
I'm equally comfortable in Windows, OSX, and Linux. As much as I like Linux, it has a non-zero technical overhead. OSX is unix with all the rough edges taken care of. Windows gets run because I play a game now and then.
I appreciate Apple's privacy branding. I would be more inclined to deal with managing a linux system if Apple abandoned their privacy hill.
It'll go the same way as Google, every corporation just want to squeeze money. Few interesting reads: https://proton.me/blog/apple-ad-company...
The privacy branding for Apple is secondary to the “hardware, software, and services that just work and aren’t annoying” branding. And the privacy branding is necessary for the “just works” and “not annoying” branding.
Possibly. And if the annoying and just work sides of the value proposition flip, Apple will get relegated. In the meantime, when I need consumer tech that just works I’ll keep using Apple...
Possibly. And if the annoying and just work sides of the value proposition flip, Apple will get relegated.
In the meantime, when I need consumer tech that just works I’ll keep using Apple products.
Jellyfin, mpd, smb, et al will keep spinning on Linux boxes. But everything else…well.
PS: I use arch btw. But Sid my boo too. I’m not an Apple fanboy or anti-FOSS, hell I remember when ikey was around in the before time of Linux Mint. I’m just a pragmatist and recognize how I value my time.
Updates: Danny replied to this article and found it misrepresented the conversation he had. Nilay posted a brief response to that reply. My personal opinion is that Danny and Nilay are coming at...
My personal opinion is that Danny and Nilay are coming at the same issue with very different outlooks, partly due to overloading of terminology, and partly due to personal bias.
Google (and Danny) have always made a distinction between black hat and white hat. They refer to white hat simply as "SEO", and they've created dozens of tools and written hundreds of guides to assist in that. Things like how to properly structure your content so it's discoverable, alt tags to improve accessibility for vision impaired users, canonical tags to indicate a source page, and so on. These things are meant to help search engines understand content, but they're also designed to align with good human experiences (fast, safe, accessible pages). The idea is that if you're putting in the work to appeal to the search engine, you're also creating a better experience for users, and thus improving the web.
Black hat SEO is what Google refers to as spam. Things like keyword stuffing, misleading information, or unnecessary fluff (aka: why every recipe has a story). This is the stuff that most people do notice. It was a large focus of Amanda's article, and remains an ongoing battle even today (see Google's Helpful Content algorithm update last month).
I think The Verge, and specifically Nilay in his comments, seem to putting both white hat and black hat in the same category of "SEO". He sees it as two sides of the same coin. And to be fair, that is largely the colloquial understanding.
So there's a major difference in definitions here, but also I think their own experiences colour their views as well. Nilay sees SEO as a necessary evil of running a media company, and one he'd probably rather not worry about at all. Danny sees all the internal efforts to create resources and guides to assist SEOs, yet get vilified in articles like this.
If you were to ask either side "Is structured and accessible content good?", they'd probably agree. And if you asked "Is keyword stuffing and fluffy content bad?", they'd probably also agree. Yet if you ask "Is SEO bad?", you'll get a very different answer. I find it interesting that even when people agree on the majority of points, they can still come down on completely different sides of an issue like this.
That does seem likely to be the case. The one thing that comes to mind for me, which you did touch on, is that The Verge/Nilay or really this could apply to most media probably, have a perspective...
I think The Verge, and specifically Nilay in his comments, seem to putting both white hat and black hat in the same category of "SEO". He sees it as two sides of the same coin. And to be fair, that is largely the colloquial understanding.
So there's a major difference in definitions here, but also I think their own experiences colour their views as well. Nilay sees SEO as a necessary evil of running a media company, and one he'd probably rather not worry about at all. Danny sees all the internal efforts to create resources and guides to assist SEOs, yet get vilified in articles like this.
If you were to ask either side "Is structured and accessible content good?", they'd probably agree. And if you asked "Is keyword stuffing and fluffy content bad?", they'd probably also agree. Yet if you ask "Is SEO bad?", you'll get a very different answer. I find it interesting that even when people agree on the majority of points, they can still come down on completely different sides of an issue like this.
That does seem likely to be the case. The one thing that comes to mind for me, which you did touch on, is that The Verge/Nilay or really this could apply to most media probably, have a perspective that might align more with the "colloquial understanding", in part because these people and organizations are communicating to those who make up the "colloquial", the general public. Google's search relations teams or other communications teams are more often communicating with those who are SEOs or nearby that and not often the general public. The general public isn't looking up Google's SEO resources or much of the things that Danny referred to in his response in terms of documentation Google creates surrounding this subject. So Google has to distinguish very specifically between the black hat and the white hat, but the Verge only does to an extent because the public does not distinguish. It's getting in the weeds for the reader if the Verge is trying to educate the reader the detailed difference between good SEO and bad SEO. I actually find a bit of irony to it really.
Danny calls out an email conversation we had a while ago about indexing quick posts in search while we were redesigning the site; the only thing I’ll say is that I found it very instructive that our ideas about how to make our site more useful ran headfirst into a discussion about what Google would want instead of what our audience would want. And ultimately Google’s guidance was so opaque that we excluded quick posts from the search index rather than accept the traffic risk. (We’re going to let them get indexed soon, though. Yolo.)
This response from Nilay I also find interesting, because it matters what questions they are asking, but at the same time, would show Google's predicament. For example, asking Google "What ranks higher?" or "How to improve ranking?" gets a response from Google of "Make content people want to read or look at" which is opaque but it looks bad on the person asking the question in a way because it shows a different priority and Google's response is to set them back on another priority towards the audience. However if they were to ask Google "What makes good content for the audience?" or "What does the audience want to look at?", it's basically asking the same thing as before, but now Google can't really provide an answer for it, but at the same time they sort of do have answers they aren't sharing because their search metrics are attempting to determine the answers to those very questions. Of course that's a moving target, they don't necessarily know what people want anymore than the Verge or anyone else does, yet they have to at any given time produce search results that best approximate an answer even if it's not always right.
Of course this is also assuming some good faith on Google that the search results are purely driven by what audiences want, and not anything to do with their own revenue and its entanglement with advertising.
There really isn’t a meaningful difference between “Good SEO” and “Evil SEO”. Either is an attempt to game the system to produce an advantage for yourself. One of the things that Google seems to...
There really isn’t a meaningful difference between “Good SEO” and “Evil SEO”. Either is an attempt to game the system to produce an advantage for yourself.
One of the things that Google seems to prioritize is up-to-date information. That’s fair; it’s something that users care about. But from an SEO perspective it means you have to always be making changes. Do people benefit from these constant changes? It’s not terribly uncommon for it to result in inaccurate wording being posted. The current nature of the internet and the incentive structures of search create an environment in which there are winners and losers, and in so game theory applies. Thus, SEO.
For a fun exercise you should ask ChatGPT if any given strategy to increase a page’s priority on Google works. It will almost universally say “we can’t know, but do it anyways”.
I understand the sentiment, but I disagree with it. White hat SEO isn't manipulation. If Google saw it as gaming the system, they wouldn't offer so many guides, tools, conferences, and other...
There really isn’t a meaningful difference between “Good SEO” and “Evil SEO”. Either is an attempt to game the system to produce an advantage for yourself.
I understand the sentiment, but I disagree with it. White hat SEO isn't manipulation. If Google saw it as gaming the system, they wouldn't offer so many guides, tools, conferences, and other resources to assist in SEO.
For an example, see their SEO starter guide. They lay out dozens of tips for how to effectively structure your website, write meta tags, set anchor text, as so on. Then read their page on spam policies to understand the behaviours they don't allow, like cloaked pages and invisible links. They make a clear distinction between the two.
The common theme is that pages should be easy to easily crawlable and indexable for the search engine, not misleading in any way, and still contain useful content for users. Their ranking factors are weighted towards these items, both so that they are able to better understand the web, and also to encourage better content.
For example, "easily crawlable and indexable" might seem self-serving, but it's also useful to humans. A page that is accessible to search robots is also accessible to screen readers. That means alt tags should be accurate, semantic HTML tags should be in use, and aria notations made where necessary. Google doesn't see this as manipulation; they see it as the goal. Web pages become better when these best practices are followed, and as a result they do better in search engines.
This is also why they have ranking factors for page speed, mobile responsiveness, technical correctness, and so on. Their results get better, and because developers want to rank, they improve their own websites to meet these goals as well.
I understand that this might seem overly-optimistic, especially when blackhat practices are so much more visible (as I mentioned above). But having worked in an adjacent industry, I get to see the good sides as well. Developers finally started caring about issues like accessibility because of search engines. They took notice of page speed once Google introduced Core Web Vitals. Mobile-responsive websites became a must-have once indexing moved to "mobile-first". All of these changes have benefitted users.
You said that SEOs are gaming the system by trying to rank better. In truth, I'd say they're the ones being gamed. They're forced to create websites that are fast, secure, and accessible if they want to rank well. The power in that relationship flipped long ago, and search is too important for a business to ignore now.
Of course, no algorithm is perfect. If there's a formula, then there exists a way to beat it. The goal however is to make "beating it" be the same thing as producing high-quality content.
If you think about it, "SEO" has always existed in some form. Before the internet, it was as simple as naming your business "AAA Plumbing" to show up first in the Yellow Pages. Then for a while it meant paying to be listed higher in a directory index. Nowadays it means following the best practices to rank well in search engines. It's still not a perfect system, but at least there's finally some alignment with users' interests.
It doesn't matter what Google says or does. SEO is SEO is SEO. I know this intimately because part of my job is building and maintaining websites, so I'm constantly having SEO concepts rammed down...
It doesn't matter what Google says or does. SEO is SEO is SEO. I know this intimately because part of my job is building and maintaining websites, so I'm constantly having SEO concepts rammed down my throat.
I think one of the important things to realize is that the things that Google and the like consider to be good and bad changes over time. A lot of the stuff you consider to be "black hat" was just the way things worked before the search engines decided they didn't like it anymore.
I'd write more but you already said most of the things I was going to bring up. What we have is a difference of perspective. Your perspective implies you have bought into the idea of a Google-controlled future, and that's something I do not agree with.
One of the problems that I have from a philosophical perspective is that the weights that they assign as important are all things that take a lot of money and effort. As a result, search results tend to be shiny commerical things that exist in an effort to make money off of you in one way or another. As things change it makes it harder to find information that is historical or niche in nature. Even benign changes like requiring HTTPS will effectively remove a percentage of pages from people's reach as publishers choose not to comply.
I'm not saying that Google's influence has been bad in and of itself, though. I think you already understand that one of my points is that if there is a game to be played, there will be players looking to exploit the rules to their benefits. If anything, it's good that Google has used their influence to improve the web.
I think it's more that "the rules to encourage good site design is good". of course, we all know that those rule are not applied equally. SEO is at the end of the day, made for visibility, and...
What we have is a difference of perspective. Your perspective implies you have bought into the idea of a Google-controlled future, and that's something I do not agree with.
I think it's more that "the rules to encourage good site design is good". of course, we all know that those rule are not applied equally.
SEO is at the end of the day, made for visibility, and visibility isn't bad in and of itself. So while I agree it's been abused to death I can't really get on the train of thought of "SEO is SEO is SEO (is bad)".
It is a good point and most of the SEO standards Google sets are good standards for webpages - like properly structured HTML, reasonable data sizes and HTTPS. The problem lies mostly with all its...
It is a good point and most of the SEO standards Google sets are good standards for webpages - like properly structured HTML, reasonable data sizes and HTTPS. The problem lies mostly with all its omissions and that we have practically one company defacto defining what a quality webpage looks like. Many of things is alligned with what is good for the users, but lacks for example a good deal of privacy. I don't believe Google looks much at the number of tracking cookies on a website in its ranking score. Quite the opposite, they want everyone to run Google Analytics scripts on their sites. I would guess that search results would be masisvely different if privacy was included in SEO values.
Props to the author for having the ability to bang out her damn essay without getting bogged down in every little rabbit hole. If she were prone to compulsively editing-instead-of-writing she...
Maybe an SEO professional would get attacked by a gigantic, prehistoric-looking reptile right there in front of me.
Props to the author for having the ability to bang out her damn essay without getting bogged down in every little rabbit hole. If she were prone to compulsively editing-instead-of-writing she probably would have found out that alligators are not just prehistoric-looking; they're prehistoric itself. They appeared "94 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous" (wiki) and in fact their clade, Crocodilia, is only surviving sibling clade of Dinosauria, and so crocodiles & alligators are the closest living relatives of birds.
In the early days of my career, I worked as a content writer in a small Digital Marketing Company. Their majority work was to higher cheap clients from Freelancer platform. The company had multiple Freelancer IDs running and delegated to sales reps. Their sole task was to post cheap bids, get responses and sell them cheap SEO services.
My work was to write articles (around 3000 words every day) that were high in keyword density and low in quality. To my surprise the articles ranked and Sales Rep were so proud to send weekly reports to the clients that their articles are ranking high on the Google Search Results. And to be honest majority of those cheap clients didn't even care. They were just giving away pennies for some shitty work that was offering them results.
After a year, my soul gave up and I left job. The reason I started this job was to learn a new skill, i.e. writing article for the internet. But all fluff no value was crushing my soul. I couldn't justify with that.
So yeah, I can related to this article pretty much. After six and half years the company I mentioned is still running and making huge profits. I mean, what the hell!
You have no idea how many companies in India are producing shitty work for pennies. It doesn't mean that India doesn't have talent. But the work culture is squeezing the life out of talented people.
Extremely high quality article. Worth the long read.
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38097938
Good article.
Did it feel like it ended a little abruptly? I wanted to hear what Cade Lee had to say.....he seems like a reformed con about SEO: how does he see the new AI trend ?
And is google in fact worse now or better? Did the reporter speak to anyone who claims they have a solution for what to do after google becomes all AI garbage?
Does anyone on Tildes have comments on what to do post google?
Kagi is the one solution I heard of trying to combat this: https://kagi.com/
You can read the pitch to get a summary of what it offers. But it really comes down to: will people want to pay to improve their search engine efficiency? I imagine the majority won't, or can't.
depends on the person. IME Google is fine for casual searches that any mainstream site can make an article for. If you're looking for tribal knowledge in a certain domain it's absolutely useless (and that's probably what a lot of "I google and add site:reddit.com" sentiment comes from). Even if you know the exact title of a certain article it will not pop up in the search results due to how heavily SEO'd blogspam is.
And of course you need to be careful about ads, explicit or otherwise. You may find a product on Amazon as an early search, but the ratings may betray the quality of the product. I tend to cross reference a mix of professional, store, and social media reviews just to try and get a good feel for any product whose domain I'm not in touch with.
While kagi sounds interesting, I'm starting to get a little tired of being nickle and dimed on the internet. What would make it worthwhile (for me) would be the ability to use an API to do the searches, along with having a google-cache like feature.
it's unfortunately inevitable. Search is a genuinely hard problem and snappy search requires a lot of server power at scale. Google makes that back in ways that lead to this article being made. But if ads aren't an option (Which Kagi advertises), you don't have many other ethical ways other than asking for payment upfront, be it as a subscription or per rate. Very few want to spend thousands out of the kindness of their own hearts powering servers for others to use el gratis.
The only other way around this is to make it a government service which seems worse. Even if people perfectly trusted their government, search is a worldwide feature. Which government calls the shots? Or do we rely on the UN or something for this?
APIs are a thing, but not publicly: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/api/search.html
as of this posting it is invite only. But it's a separate subscription for now if you did get in (apparently, $25 per 1000 searches. I don't know enough to know if that's reasonable. seems so for individual use). Maybe that can be bundled with a future subscription tier.
Less sure about caching, I imagine that falls under "even more server burden" so it's not as advertised if it's there. It can also take away from the privacy angle; Kagi claims to not store any personal data.
on a broader level: given the influx of all my previous favorite sites imploding, I'm starting to feel less opposed to paying for quality in places I truly use daily. So while I'm not subscribed to Kagi right now, I'm keeping a closer eye as I get more and more frustrated with google search. It may be a fool's ambition to hope that a premium site can curtail every single greedy decision (just look at streaming websites), but if nothing else it does feel like I make a difference when I unsub from a bad premium website, compared to how most people will simply keep visiting "free" sites even if the CEO decided to twirl a mustache and kick a puppy.
Might be a little nitpicky, but I would like to say that the issues described in this article are inevitable for any suitably popular search engine. Even if Google were state-run and made zero money off people, it would still run into problems with SEO bc there would still be people sufficiently motivated to improve their rank in the search. Google's source of revenue causes plenty of problems with their services, but the stuff in this article mostly isn't the fault of that. A service like Kagi only avoids the same SEO problems because it's not popular enough for anyone to bother trying to game it yet.
of course, everything is gameable and we have plenty of government loopholes to look at for examples.
It's more about accountability than having the perfect system. Google has negative accountability for punishing blogspam because they also run a lot of the very ads that a consumer-focused search engine should punish. A theoretical state run search engine at least has a small chance of falling into a scandal and voting out the ones making search worse.
The "twirl a mustache and kick a puppy" benchmark is a small bar, but Google doesn't even clear that.
If ISPs had many of these services (like hosting usenet newsgroups, even though that was a bit of a sewer), I'd see that as reasonable.
Why would you see that as reasonable? The services cost money no matter who operates them, so your ISP would increase your rates to cover the cost. At that point, the only trouble it saves you is a distinctly separate charge for the service and having to input your credit card # an extra time. Except if you end up not liking the service they offer and decide to use something else, you're still paying for it even though you're not using it. Granted the charge would be less than what you would pay for a separate service, but this is only because the people who sign up with that ISP and don't use the service would be subsidizing the ones that do use it.
Seems like you're just picking someone you already pay money to and saying it'd be fine if they ran it, because then you don't have to think about paying someone else.
Not to downplay your feelings on the matter, I think a lot of people are overwhelmed by having too many various different payments and subscriptions. Ultimately I think there will be some business built on top of this to make a middle-man layer that makes it easier to manage all of these, but it has to reach like a critical stage where enough services are willing to sign on to make it useful to consumers, and then not being part of this payment platform will eventually be a detriment to services as consumers would choose not to pay for them if they aren't using it. In theory, banks/credit cards could offer services like this by recognizing companies you pay and giving you the ability to deny future charges (rather than having to issue chargebacks), so it's possible some out there might already offer a service like this, but it's not widely available and I don't know the limitations. I think it also just needs to be interwoven with daily user experience in some way, like browser extensions or such where if you are on a site, you can easily sign up, but you can also easily cancel.
You be the judge of that.
Nothing new, just as it is happening already.
For example, majority of the masses is using Google Chrome browser, Windows operating system. But those who are concerned about their privacy, are taking extra steps to install Linux on their systems and using secure FOSS.
Or, almost all are relying on the mainstream news channels for their daily information. Based on whatever they are being fed they are forming their opinions. On contrary, people who care about the correctness of the information they are consuming would be willing to climb some extra steps. Surely they will have to spend extra time to compare the information between multiple news sources.
Similarly, if we really care about the quality of the information in the age of AI, we need to turn it off for once and dig deeper into the abandoned pages of the internet lying dormant in the hope of enlightened ones.
Of course, people will call you freak or nerd. But everything comes at a price. Ask the Linux folks with 3% market share.
macOS and Firefox till I die!
Not linux?
Not convinced apple is much better than google. They just surf on the privacy branding right now but cann't tell how long that will last.
I’ve run Linux boxes and macs since the 90s. I had gmail when it was beta invite. From my perspective, Google being the thing they said “don’t be” was undeniable somewhere in the early 2010s, when they
discontinued Wavelaunched Chrome.Apple’s core business is selling services and hardware to consumers. Google’s core business is collecting data and selling advertising.
The privacy branding for Apple is secondary to the “hardware, software, and services that just work and aren’t annoying” branding. And the privacy branding is necessary for the “just works” and “not annoying” branding.
Linux is awesome. But not everyone wants to use it or can use it. I don’t mind it on a headless server, it’s great for that. I’d rather have Mac for everything else, even if I’m still in vim half the day.
Agreed.
I'm equally comfortable in Windows, OSX, and Linux. As much as I like Linux, it has a non-zero technical overhead. OSX is unix with all the rough edges taken care of. Windows gets run because I play a game now and then.
I appreciate Apple's privacy branding. I would be more inclined to deal with managing a linux system if Apple abandoned their privacy hill.
It'll go the same way as Google, every corporation just want to squeeze money. Few interesting reads:
https://proton.me/blog/apple-ad-company
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/apple-hit-with-class-action-over-tracking-of-mobile-app-activity
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-is-an-ad-company-now
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue-worldwide/
Possibly. And if the annoying and just work sides of the value proposition flip, Apple will get relegated.
In the meantime, when I need consumer tech that just works I’ll keep using Apple products.
Jellyfin, mpd, smb, et al will keep spinning on Linux boxes. But everything else…well.
PS: I use arch btw. But Sid my boo too. I’m not an Apple fanboy or anti-FOSS, hell I remember when ikey was around in the before time of Linux Mint. I’m just a pragmatist and recognize how I value my time.
There are other promising search engines like Kagi. I still need to experiment with some other options myself. Google's usefulness is low nowadays.
Updates:
Danny replied to this article and found it misrepresented the conversation he had.
Nilay posted a brief response to that reply.
My personal opinion is that Danny and Nilay are coming at the same issue with very different outlooks, partly due to overloading of terminology, and partly due to personal bias.
Google (and Danny) have always made a distinction between black hat and white hat. They refer to white hat simply as "SEO", and they've created dozens of tools and written hundreds of guides to assist in that. Things like how to properly structure your content so it's discoverable, alt tags to improve accessibility for vision impaired users, canonical tags to indicate a source page, and so on. These things are meant to help search engines understand content, but they're also designed to align with good human experiences (fast, safe, accessible pages). The idea is that if you're putting in the work to appeal to the search engine, you're also creating a better experience for users, and thus improving the web.
Black hat SEO is what Google refers to as spam. Things like keyword stuffing, misleading information, or unnecessary fluff (aka: why every recipe has a story). This is the stuff that most people do notice. It was a large focus of Amanda's article, and remains an ongoing battle even today (see Google's Helpful Content algorithm update last month).
I think The Verge, and specifically Nilay in his comments, seem to putting both white hat and black hat in the same category of "SEO". He sees it as two sides of the same coin. And to be fair, that is largely the colloquial understanding.
So there's a major difference in definitions here, but also I think their own experiences colour their views as well. Nilay sees SEO as a necessary evil of running a media company, and one he'd probably rather not worry about at all. Danny sees all the internal efforts to create resources and guides to assist SEOs, yet get vilified in articles like this.
If you were to ask either side "Is structured and accessible content good?", they'd probably agree. And if you asked "Is keyword stuffing and fluffy content bad?", they'd probably also agree. Yet if you ask "Is SEO bad?", you'll get a very different answer. I find it interesting that even when people agree on the majority of points, they can still come down on completely different sides of an issue like this.
That does seem likely to be the case. The one thing that comes to mind for me, which you did touch on, is that The Verge/Nilay or really this could apply to most media probably, have a perspective that might align more with the "colloquial understanding", in part because these people and organizations are communicating to those who make up the "colloquial", the general public. Google's search relations teams or other communications teams are more often communicating with those who are SEOs or nearby that and not often the general public. The general public isn't looking up Google's SEO resources or much of the things that Danny referred to in his response in terms of documentation Google creates surrounding this subject. So Google has to distinguish very specifically between the black hat and the white hat, but the Verge only does to an extent because the public does not distinguish. It's getting in the weeds for the reader if the Verge is trying to educate the reader the detailed difference between good SEO and bad SEO. I actually find a bit of irony to it really.
This response from Nilay I also find interesting, because it matters what questions they are asking, but at the same time, would show Google's predicament. For example, asking Google "What ranks higher?" or "How to improve ranking?" gets a response from Google of "Make content people want to read or look at" which is opaque but it looks bad on the person asking the question in a way because it shows a different priority and Google's response is to set them back on another priority towards the audience. However if they were to ask Google "What makes good content for the audience?" or "What does the audience want to look at?", it's basically asking the same thing as before, but now Google can't really provide an answer for it, but at the same time they sort of do have answers they aren't sharing because their search metrics are attempting to determine the answers to those very questions. Of course that's a moving target, they don't necessarily know what people want anymore than the Verge or anyone else does, yet they have to at any given time produce search results that best approximate an answer even if it's not always right.
Of course this is also assuming some good faith on Google that the search results are purely driven by what audiences want, and not anything to do with their own revenue and its entanglement with advertising.
There really isn’t a meaningful difference between “Good SEO” and “Evil SEO”. Either is an attempt to game the system to produce an advantage for yourself.
One of the things that Google seems to prioritize is up-to-date information. That’s fair; it’s something that users care about. But from an SEO perspective it means you have to always be making changes. Do people benefit from these constant changes? It’s not terribly uncommon for it to result in inaccurate wording being posted. The current nature of the internet and the incentive structures of search create an environment in which there are winners and losers, and in so game theory applies. Thus, SEO.
For a fun exercise you should ask ChatGPT if any given strategy to increase a page’s priority on Google works. It will almost universally say “we can’t know, but do it anyways”.
I understand the sentiment, but I disagree with it. White hat SEO isn't manipulation. If Google saw it as gaming the system, they wouldn't offer so many guides, tools, conferences, and other resources to assist in SEO.
For an example, see their SEO starter guide. They lay out dozens of tips for how to effectively structure your website, write meta tags, set anchor text, as so on. Then read their page on spam policies to understand the behaviours they don't allow, like cloaked pages and invisible links. They make a clear distinction between the two.
Bing will tell you the same thing, as will Yandex.
The common theme is that pages should be easy to easily crawlable and indexable for the search engine, not misleading in any way, and still contain useful content for users. Their ranking factors are weighted towards these items, both so that they are able to better understand the web, and also to encourage better content.
For example, "easily crawlable and indexable" might seem self-serving, but it's also useful to humans. A page that is accessible to search robots is also accessible to screen readers. That means alt tags should be accurate, semantic HTML tags should be in use, and aria notations made where necessary. Google doesn't see this as manipulation; they see it as the goal. Web pages become better when these best practices are followed, and as a result they do better in search engines.
This is also why they have ranking factors for page speed, mobile responsiveness, technical correctness, and so on. Their results get better, and because developers want to rank, they improve their own websites to meet these goals as well.
I understand that this might seem overly-optimistic, especially when blackhat practices are so much more visible (as I mentioned above). But having worked in an adjacent industry, I get to see the good sides as well. Developers finally started caring about issues like accessibility because of search engines. They took notice of page speed once Google introduced Core Web Vitals. Mobile-responsive websites became a must-have once indexing moved to "mobile-first". All of these changes have benefitted users.
You said that SEOs are gaming the system by trying to rank better. In truth, I'd say they're the ones being gamed. They're forced to create websites that are fast, secure, and accessible if they want to rank well. The power in that relationship flipped long ago, and search is too important for a business to ignore now.
Of course, no algorithm is perfect. If there's a formula, then there exists a way to beat it. The goal however is to make "beating it" be the same thing as producing high-quality content.
If you think about it, "SEO" has always existed in some form. Before the internet, it was as simple as naming your business "AAA Plumbing" to show up first in the Yellow Pages. Then for a while it meant paying to be listed higher in a directory index. Nowadays it means following the best practices to rank well in search engines. It's still not a perfect system, but at least there's finally some alignment with users' interests.
It doesn't matter what Google says or does. SEO is SEO is SEO. I know this intimately because part of my job is building and maintaining websites, so I'm constantly having SEO concepts rammed down my throat.
I think one of the important things to realize is that the things that Google and the like consider to be good and bad changes over time. A lot of the stuff you consider to be "black hat" was just the way things worked before the search engines decided they didn't like it anymore.
I'd write more but you already said most of the things I was going to bring up. What we have is a difference of perspective. Your perspective implies you have bought into the idea of a Google-controlled future, and that's something I do not agree with.
One of the problems that I have from a philosophical perspective is that the weights that they assign as important are all things that take a lot of money and effort. As a result, search results tend to be shiny commerical things that exist in an effort to make money off of you in one way or another. As things change it makes it harder to find information that is historical or niche in nature. Even benign changes like requiring HTTPS will effectively remove a percentage of pages from people's reach as publishers choose not to comply.
I'm not saying that Google's influence has been bad in and of itself, though. I think you already understand that one of my points is that if there is a game to be played, there will be players looking to exploit the rules to their benefits. If anything, it's good that Google has used their influence to improve the web.
I think it's more that "the rules to encourage good site design is good". of course, we all know that those rule are not applied equally.
SEO is at the end of the day, made for visibility, and visibility isn't bad in and of itself. So while I agree it's been abused to death I can't really get on the train of thought of "SEO is SEO is SEO (is bad)".
It is a good point and most of the SEO standards Google sets are good standards for webpages - like properly structured HTML, reasonable data sizes and HTTPS. The problem lies mostly with all its omissions and that we have practically one company defacto defining what a quality webpage looks like. Many of things is alligned with what is good for the users, but lacks for example a good deal of privacy. I don't believe Google looks much at the number of tracking cookies on a website in its ranking score. Quite the opposite, they want everyone to run Google Analytics scripts on their sites. I would guess that search results would be masisvely different if privacy was included in SEO values.
Props to the author for having the ability to bang out her damn essay without getting bogged down in every little rabbit hole. If she were prone to compulsively editing-instead-of-writing she probably would have found out that alligators are not just prehistoric-looking; they're prehistoric itself. They appeared "94 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous" (wiki) and in fact their clade, Crocodilia, is only surviving sibling clade of Dinosauria, and so crocodiles & alligators are the closest living relatives of birds.
This video by acollierastro reminded me of this topic and might be interesting to others here.