RE: The Current State of the Internet | SEO Destroying Content
A very interesting rant and obviously one that's getting my attention 🙂
Whilst the view is that most of what is written is crap, Google's algorithm also takes into account how long people spend on a particular page after clicking through from their search results (i.e. if the bounce rate is high, the algorithm ranks the page lower). So in theory, the "weightage of votes" is done (in a way that I believe Steemit should do it) by the page view time - admittedly only as one of it's many inputs. So Google serves up the content that people are reading - that people want to read for a particular search term. A bit like the TV news when there's a disaster - everybody complains about the constant coverage (and the lack of new information), but it's only there because everybody's still watching it. Google's the same.
For some reason, people are attracted to bad news so any search for cryptocurrency will likely see the bad news before the good because it's what people read. If your friends are finding these articles and choosing this information to share / debate with you, it suggests that they've also found it because it supports their already held beliefs that crypto is bad.
I think that part of the problem is a phrase you'll know as a programmer - "Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO)". Choosing the correct search term - identifying the "long tail" that you're interested in will get you much better results that the generic shitty search terms that most people use. Searching for "Cryptocurrency" is unlikely to give you a balanced opinion versus "the pros and cons of investing in cryptocurrency".
Websites that Google returns are akin to Authors on Steemit. There are good and there are bad. Bad websites / authors write bad articles. Good websites / authors sometimes write bad articles too.
And this is not to mention our own biases - we decide that an article is full of crap when it might be somebody else's truth.
I don't know much about ghost-writers though. They probably research a topic using search engines themselves, proliferating the "GIGO" analogy.
I wonder if a search engine like Yandex or Baidu will give you a better frame to view the world through?
Bing. This seems to be one of the least moderated search engines out there. So, never use it! I repeat! Never use it!.
The search engine is as shit as the cartoon. Perhaps shitter. And much like the cartoon, I have no idea when I last saw it.
Yup. They already believe that the whole blockchain tech is a scam. I've literally lost count of the hours I've spent trying to explain this. Now, I guess it's not worth it anymore.
Crap content is kind of easy to spot It's the incorrect facts spit out by content writers with no experience that's worrisome. I know that it's really very hard or moreover impossible to vet everything that goes up on the internet. But the role I feel SEO is playing right now is hurting the whole internet.
That explains a lot. We'll often seek out opinions and views that support our already held beliefs.
So long as we know that what we're reading was written through a certain "lens", then we can interpret it as we wish. Unfortunately, many read and believe without further questioning the author's motives.
If there were no SEO, I don't know what we'd have...?
SEO is needed. But not the way it is right now. Currently, it feels like the big guys have gamed the system.
They always will. They’ll always have the resources to hire the people that ensure they appear at the top. Irrespective of the algorithm or system used or appropriateness of them being there.