I’m kind of conflicted about this. On one hand it’s dangerous that the public’s access to information is so tightly coupled to a single organizations decisions, and I can see the danger in Google making a change like this.
On the other hand, clickbait and SEO gaming has gone on so long that using a site like Google has become significantly less useful to actually finding information, and if a site like Kotakus traffic is down by 60% as a result—is that due to Google being dangerous, or Kotaku having a pile of garbage content meant to game the system and bring in traffic?
For what it’s worth I’m using Kotaku as an example because the article used Kotaku as an example—I have no actual opinion or evidence around the actual content on that particular site.
It’s an example of why monopolies are harmful. They create distorted economies that don’t serve consumers. Like ecosystems overcome by a monoculture, monopolies are inherently less resilient, less functional and prone to sudden disruption.
How exactly would it be any different without Google / SEO. Parsing of website content to determine topics would be a shit show historically, or ridiculously computation heavy now that LLMs could conceivably do a decent job at classifying content. So Google created a way for sites to tag the kind of content they have. Pretty much any search engine would need the same kind of mechanism.
And content providers are always going to be incentivized to be the top search result, which means targeting search algorithms. That’s just the nature of the beast.
If there were multiple SEO implementations, that just means more work to target multiple algorithms. And the content owners with more resources, hundreds of developers, would ultimately win because they can target every algorithm.
I really don’t see how Google as a “monopoly” changes these basic fundamentals.
If there were multiple sources of traffic, the pressure to optimize to one source would be lower, and the disruption caused by algorithm changes would be muted. Which would mean more interesting content less driven by a narrow set of metrics
When a handful of monopolies decide that no factchecking will be seen by anybody, anymore,
and only profitable-to-their-dictatorship disinformation will be seen,
then humanity will not have any means of countering that:
it will be too late.
We are “the frog dropped into the slowly-heating pot of water”.
People pretend that monopoly is “maybe” harmful, economically, but it is an existential-threat to countries, and with globalization, now to civil-rights as a valid-category.
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Google search has enshittified far faster than I ever thought possible. It used to work like magic. Too bad capitalism dictates that usefulness has a ceiling.
I’ve switched to Kagi recently and honestly it’s better than Google ever was. You can assign weights to sites to see more or less of them in your results, it automatically cuts the listicle crap out, it has various built in filters for specific things like forums or scientific studies.
Downside: it’s $10/mo. But I’m at the “I’d rather pay with money than data” stage of my life. Especially if it actually makes the experience fucking usable again.
I’m at that point as well I think. Thank you for the suggestion!
This sort of thing is why Google’s monopoly on the internet is so dangerous.
Who wrote this? I’m supposed to be upset that a bunch of big websites are lower on Google results? Why should anyone besides their shareholders care?
Edit: Oh, he co-founded the website hosting this article. So he does indeed have a vested personal interest.
Good. Websites are spammy garbage now. I can’t fucking believe how shitty the experience is when I’m not using a browser with uBlock origin.
If this is a way to punish that, punish away.
That big list of sites looks suspiciously like the big list of shit I have to scroll past in order to find actually relevant results.
I welcome this change.
I don’t see pinterest on this list.
Does anyone know the best lemmy community to ask about SEO and web/finance tech in relation to a small business? I have a small business that is doing very well, but SEO and word of mouth is a direct contributor to its success, and I think I’m getting screwed over in cost by the company I’ve been paying to run my site building, hosting and, SEO.
Considering the general types that actually use lemmy, you’re on the wrong platform for that kind of community. No offense
You can dm me if you want. I ran an agency that did SEO for a several years before I sold it in 2021. I’m can’t provide you with much in the ways of strategy anymore but I can give you an idea if your current provider is doing reputable work or not
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What the heck is Dexerto?
