<story><title>Search engines and SEO spam</title><url>https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1477760548787920901</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Veen</author><text>&amp;gt; Why not try writing a search engine specifically for some category dominated by SEO spam?&lt;p&gt;Back in the olden days, there were lots of organizations that collated high quality content from the best writers. They nurtured expert writers and paid them well. They fact-checked the content and employed diligent editors and proofreaders so it was accurate and well-written. Over the years, they&amp;#x27;d build a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness that kept people coming back for more. If you wanted to learn about fitness, or cars, or cooking, or science, you&amp;#x27;d find a reputable author and publisher and buy their magazines or books.&lt;p&gt;But then, in the early 2000s, the geniuses from SV &amp;quot;disrupted&amp;quot; the publishing industry and its financial model. They brought us a much better way to find content, the search engine. Because they were so much better than the old-fashioned publishers, search engines gobbled up the advertising money and became the dominant gateway to content. Publishers had to abandon expensive high-quality writing because rankings and eyeballs now mattered more than quality and trustworthiness. Instead of investing in writers, they invested in marketers and SEO specialists.&lt;p&gt;The result: worthless content, writers banging out garbage for peanuts, and useless search engines.&lt;p&gt;Two decades later, looking at the barren wasteland they had created, the SV geniuses thought: I know what we need, more search engines, but smaller ones that collate high-quality content from the best writers. There must be money in that, right?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>salt-thrower</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s been really sad to grow up and watch the cool techie optimism of the 2000&amp;#x27;s internet get sucked dry by profit motives and left to rot. The change has occurred pretty much entirely within my adult lifetime (I&amp;#x27;m only 27 and I still remember when Google was the cool new thing on the internet).&lt;p&gt;It went from &amp;quot;search engines and the web will usher in a new era of wisdom and democracy&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;useful content is dying at the hands of monetization schemes, and also the internet will be the death of liberal democracy, woe unto us all&amp;quot; in about 15 years.</text></comment>
<story><title>Search engines and SEO spam</title><url>https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1477760548787920901</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Veen</author><text>&amp;gt; Why not try writing a search engine specifically for some category dominated by SEO spam?&lt;p&gt;Back in the olden days, there were lots of organizations that collated high quality content from the best writers. They nurtured expert writers and paid them well. They fact-checked the content and employed diligent editors and proofreaders so it was accurate and well-written. Over the years, they&amp;#x27;d build a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness that kept people coming back for more. If you wanted to learn about fitness, or cars, or cooking, or science, you&amp;#x27;d find a reputable author and publisher and buy their magazines or books.&lt;p&gt;But then, in the early 2000s, the geniuses from SV &amp;quot;disrupted&amp;quot; the publishing industry and its financial model. They brought us a much better way to find content, the search engine. Because they were so much better than the old-fashioned publishers, search engines gobbled up the advertising money and became the dominant gateway to content. Publishers had to abandon expensive high-quality writing because rankings and eyeballs now mattered more than quality and trustworthiness. Instead of investing in writers, they invested in marketers and SEO specialists.&lt;p&gt;The result: worthless content, writers banging out garbage for peanuts, and useless search engines.&lt;p&gt;Two decades later, looking at the barren wasteland they had created, the SV geniuses thought: I know what we need, more search engines, but smaller ones that collate high-quality content from the best writers. There must be money in that, right?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GarlicToum</author><text>I tried creating a search engine for recipes. It works well and people like it, but the struggle is no one remembers that it exists and Google is just their default for search.&lt;p&gt;So from an individual developer perspective, it&amp;#x27;s very hard to get people to change their habits. And Google&amp;#x2F;duck&amp;#x2F;Bing is the one stop shop.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s still out there, but I haven&amp;#x27;t worked on it much lately. I always think that if I had some good advertisers, a better UI, and a salary coming in, maybe it could take over some of Google&amp;#x27;s usage!</text></comment>