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How SEO optimization and Google algorithms destroyed the real Internet

Note from the translator: this text is a translation-compilation of two small English-language notes, which for some reason the author divided into two different texts. I am sure that they are logically connected and represent some retrospective value. First of all, they dispute the prevailing opinion that the Internet used to look like a boiling cauldron, the primary broth, but now it is slender, understandable, and it is getting better every year. Of course, in some places the author goes too far, but in many ways it is difficult to disagree with him. The text is quite emotional, which, of course, I tried to convey and adapt as much as possible during the translation. Enjoy reading.


How SEO Optimization Destroys the Internet


Between 1998 and 2003, a Google search was simply magical. I remember entering some kind of vague combination, such as “oil mother's milk,” and ended up on the Wired page with an interview with Thomas Gold , an astrophysicist who talked about how hydrocarbon deposits are replenished due to pressure inside the geological formations.

If today you are looking for something technical, specific, academic, or generally non-profit, then good luck. The world's best information retrieval system has evolved into something reminiscent of the 2006 Digg era : popularity indexes are controlled by a small number of financially motivated players. They call themselves "optimizers."

Specialists in technical search engine optimization received carte blanche: they make our Internet faster, safer, more accessible. There is Black Hat in this area - obvious villains who by any means increase their web rating, for example, hack sites to add their links to them. But in fact, all Black Hat in the SEO world is just petty dirty tricks. The real monsters of the SEO world are White Hat specialists and optimizers who are essentially wolves in sheep's clothing.

All of the world's web marketers have one simple strategy: to crush competitors using power and their own influence. They hide behind the banner of law and are complacent, like typical dictators, because they believe that the end always justifies the means. Here are some of their tactics.

Rewriting history


If you ever re-read the article that you saw earlier, and caught yourself feeling “there was a different headline and a set of links”, then it didn't seem to you. SEO specialists are constantly “optimizing” old articles in order to make them more relevant and, accordingly, attract visitors to consume “new”, more commercialized content. When I check my old articles created more than ten years ago, I notice that they have been updated and they have inserted parts that I never wrote.

Digging out of history


“Cleaning Content” is an effective SEO tactic for large, established sites. Instead of archiving old content that may have historical significance, many websites will get rid of it and return page 410. That's it . The goal of this is extremely simple: to optimize the content of the site and to focus the search engines on the content that is important right now . The result of such manipulations is the Internet without long-term memory or responsibility for what is written (only the web archive saves us, - approx. Per.).

Narrative narrative


Give me any modern news department and I will show you what a content strategist should be with whom the authors of the materials will voluntarily consult. But now journalists are in different conditions: under constant pressure, they have to write on topics that they don’t like, and at times it’s also necessary to “choose words” in order to comply with “best SEO practices”. And it is becoming more and more like some kind of sect. In general, this is very similar to the behavior of small cable channels, when a backstage mummy strategist edits the scripts of the broadcast and each time pushes the feed in the style of "Breaking News!"

Creating the illusion of choice


A handful of publishers own hundreds of media sites that annually receive billions of clickthroughs from search engines. Conditionally, look for the “best smartphone” and you will see links to TechRadar, Android Central, T3, Tom's Guide, Anandtech, iMore or Top Ten Reviews. And it doesn’t matter which of these sites you choose: they all belong, ultimately, to one company.

Wealth accumulation


Links are the currency of the Internet. Without links, search engines could not judge the relative value of a page to an audience. Unfortunately, many large websites accumulate links, at the same time refusing to link to external sources using the rel = "nofollow" attribute , that is, they tell search engines to ignore external links. This practice impoverishes the web.


At its core, SEO is a zero-sum game in which every “winner” ultimately loses. And we lose along with them when SEO promotes gaslogging , removes content and creates, thereby, empty links. This leads to monopoly and more and more like sabotage. I remember the times when on the Internet it was easy to build a logical chain of facts, find the source. But then someone optimized it.

How Google destroyed the Internet


In August 2018, I entered into Google Images the query “Henry Beard” (an American comedian, one of the founders of National Lampoon magazine and the author of several best-selling books, approx. Transl.) And got a whole page of photos of Henry Cavill with a beard . And this did not happen because Google is dumb. On the contrary, Google is smart enough to know that at that moment Henry Cavill's beard was a hotly debated topic on the net . And in the end, the QDF algorithm modified the search results to show me a popular , not an exact search result.

We enter “GM” in the search and get the Gmail homepage in the most prominent place. And here it seems that Google is pushing us to use our own products, but not in this case. In fact, here the search result was changed in favor of Gmail, not General Motors or any other meaning of the abbreviation “GM”, because people actually often look after “GM” immediately after “GM”. That is, Google in its actions relies on a “fat finger” error when the user did not fully enter a search query and press enter. That's just the search engine is now constantly trying to think for you.

Although this example is trivial, it shows the entire size of the problem.

Encouraging dullness and laziness leads to even greater dullness and laziness


Once on the Internet, a story about a Polish dentist, who pulled out all the teeth of her ex as revenge, once walked. So, this is complete garbage, 100% fake. And no one knows who wrote it .

However, this fake was picked up by Fox News, the Los Angeles Times and many other publications. It happened eight years ago, but when I’m looking for a “dentist tore out his ex-boyfriend’s teeth” I get a special fragment that fully quotes the retelling of this story by ABC News.

Who invented the fidget spinner? Ask the Google Assistant and he will tell you that Katherine Hettinger did it. The system made this conclusion on the basis of crookedly written stories in The Guarduan, The New York Times, and other major news resources. At the same time, Joshua Brasteyn from Bloomberg clearly showedthat Ms. Hettinger did not invent the popular low-friction toy. However, if you re-ask the Google Assistant “Who actually invented the fidget spinner?” and you get the same answer: Katherine Hettinger.

The individual is smart. People are dumb, alarmists and generally dangerous animals ...


In 1998, the speed of dissemination of information was low, and the cost of publishing even on the Internet was high. Google took advantage of this reality to create the best search engine in the world.

Today, information is free, plentiful, and spreads faster than forest fires. In a way, Google has become a catalog of goods and services that is constantly being reordered by an angry, misinformed crowd of internet users.

It was once assumed that the Internet would strongly dispute our personal opinion that the Internet doesn’t care about our views and misconceptions, that it will kick you like a stern personal trainer who doesn’t give a damn about how tired you are. But instead of this harsh unpleasant Internet, thanks to Google, we got a world where robots babysit pampered users, just like in the cartoon WALL-E. Robots give us what we want, neglecting what we really need.

But if in the cartoon bodies became jelly-like, then in reality our minds become jelly-like.

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