SEO ruined the Internet because it made SEO essential to be seen in relevant search results above other less relevant search results. In other words, less relevant search results can often be seen on the first page along with more relevant search results, or even sometimes instead of relevant search results on the first 2 pages of any reputable search engine.
Also, Internet Reputation companies have proven that SEO and fake content can be used as a weapon to push relevant search results so far down nobody sees them anymore.
Finally, how many times have you searched for something just to come across some random webpage with just a bunch of word salad that happens to somehow be relevant. An easy example of this are phone numbers. You search for a phone number that called you and chances are you won't see much relevant data. Just a mix of "robocaller" reporting websites -- usually with no information and random websites with just a bunch of phone numbers in sequential order with no relevant data whatsoever. Even if it's a business' actual phone number.
burliman@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Neat. So some of them are nice. Doesn’t make the practice of “optimizing” search a noble practice because some of them think themselves on some high tower. In the end you are trying to push your site above others based on your ability to game the system, rather than relevance of your content. When you do this, I don’t think it’s relevant if you’re a nice person with feelings…
EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 1 year ago
I don’t really blame the recipe site that includes how Daniel grew up with their parents searching the river banks of rural New York State for the best wild blueberries, because that’s the only way they show up in a world sorted by shitty algorithms. There’s still a recipe at the bottom of the page, for free.
But I do blame, every single day, the people who make mindless content just to serve ads.
The other day I shit you not I googled how to set a specific Chron schedule, and there was a webpage for it. They had a page for every chron schedule permutation. If you google chron schedule for X hours Y days, Z, you’ll find them. Of course there were ads on the page and it has almost useless, but they exploded their content for views.
But now imagine that Google indexes that, and it becomes costlier for Google to provide a better experience to the user because there’s so much garbage content to index and rank. They also serve ads, so Google actually makes more money showing this trash, thus incentivizing them not to look too closely at the gift horses mouth.
SEO sites can go suck a fuck.
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 1 year ago
Try googling hardware-id XX for linux. You can bet there’s a page “XX driver for linux” in the first results.