Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by p3rls on Sunday October 15, 2023 @07:37AM (#37888913)

I dreamed of building a website like the type I grew up on in the late 90s and early 2000s. The gamefaqs, mrfixitonlines and casterrealms-type websites for me were at the forefront of making this internet medium to be better than books, voice or anything else for that matter for the transmission of information.

Fast forward 20 years later. I think I've spent close to 300k on the website and team to help with it. I don't even want to think about my own labor costs. These days the google results for my niche are entirely dominated by an ugly purple wordpress blog ran by non-native English speakers that gets hacked every few months with a redirect to porn or russian sites. Their information is frequently wrong. It doesn't hurt their rankings at all. Yoast through it bro. Keep up the great work Google.

The entire story was posted on twitter last year by some shocked SEO researcher last year https://twitter.com/paulk139/status/1550532282288508929

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by rwmj on Sunday October 15, 2023 @07:53AM (#37888990)

I don't get it. kprofiles sounds like it provides a service. It might not be a great one or one I'm interested in, but collating all that information about K-Pop bands and publishing one or two articles a day is non-trivial.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by yterdy on Sunday October 15, 2023 @08:04AM (#37889053)

>ran by non-native English speakers that gets hacked every few months with a redirect to porn or russian sites.

I imagine that this would be a problem.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by p3rls on Sunday October 15, 2023 @11:42AM (#37890672)

https://twitter.com/KProfiles_com/with_replies

What's amusing is they think it's "rival websites" hacking them with redirects to russian purse sites

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by p3rls on Sunday October 15, 2023 @08:00AM (#37889024)

I would argue that the word trivial is exactly what would describe their entire operation.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by aktenlage on Sunday October 15, 2023 @07:58AM (#37889019)

Is there a way to read it without an ex-twitter account? I just see the first tweet

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by Scandiravian on Sunday October 15, 2023 @08:03AM (#37889048)

Here you go https://nitter.net/paulk139/status/1550532282288508929

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by lovemenot on Sunday October 15, 2023 @08:03AM (#37889049)

I see your point and mostly sympathise. It's relevant to the topic and provides a personal perspective.

>> ran by non-native English speakers

I feel this clause doesn't help promote your grievance. A big promise of the Web was that it was World-Wide. If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality, all the better. I get that your specific competitors didn't excel - except in ranking. But, in principle, good wishes to global competition.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by l33t7332273 on Sunday October 15, 2023 @09:54AM (#37889741)

> If a site in say Thailand could exceed say a USA site's quality

For many users, a foundational element of the quality of a website is that is in English; it’s all they speak.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by zztop44 on Sunday October 15, 2023 @10:13AM (#37889892)

The site is in English. So it’s just like are you going to judge them for not being native speakers of English and perhaps sometimes making mistakes?

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by allarm on Monday October 16, 2023 @02:39AM (#37896516)

How’s that a non-native speakers problem?

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by p3rls on Sunday October 15, 2023 @10:47AM (#37890221)

Listen I watched the movie Hackers as a kid and want to throw my fist up and say yeah too but in reality that's not how it works. These sites in 'Thailand' are very seldom competing on quality in my experience.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by gardenhedge on Sunday October 15, 2023 @09:52AM (#37889722)

So kprofiles provides a service - providing information to those looking for it - be it fans or journalists. I don't get why it shouldn't be ranked high since it's been a valuable resource since 2016?

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by p3rls on Sunday October 15, 2023 @12:05PM (#37890902)

It's not a question of "ranked high" - it's that they're far and away #1 in our niche when they are quite obviously just another garbage SEO website.

If you can't understand that I'm afraid I don't see a point in continuing.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by narag on Sunday October 15, 2023 @02:58PM (#37892367)

Can't you do the same they do? Obviously not about the contents, I believe you when you say yours is so much better, but about the SEO. Isn't it possible to imitate their tactics to a certain extent, without getting equally trashy?

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by p3rls on Sunday October 15, 2023 @03:56PM (#37892867)

I mean, yeah we try to score the free SEO wins already (see page titles: UPDATED 2023) but at this point we make enough to pay our small staff and I'm fine working for free on it. I think SEO and quality are basically inversely correlated and if you try to chase SEO you will only create dogshit and have to get lucky with stupid journalists.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by narag on Sunday October 15, 2023 @04:46PM (#37893257)

That's really unfortunate. Best of luck!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by gardenhedge on Sunday October 15, 2023 @04:35PM (#37893175)

I visited the site. It has pages of facts about bands and artists.. you might even call them profiles...

It also has a forum with a community. I really this as you being frustrated by the competition rather than them doing something nefarious.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by p3rls on Sunday October 15, 2023 @05:11PM (#37893418)

Who said anything about nefarious? Struggling with reading comprehension? It's about quality.

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by gardenhedge on Monday October 16, 2023 @04:50PM (#37906415)

Every reply you make makes you look worse. No one cares (i.e. google, kprofiles, journalists, kpop fans) about what you think is "quality" or not.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by hombre_fatal on Sunday October 15, 2023 @10:04AM (#37889817)

Here's how that Twitter link describes you and your competitors vs. Kprofiles:

> A few other people have noticed the quiet success of Kprofiles and have already attempted to copy them.

> Some have better content, site structure, and formatting than Kprofiles.

> But they just compete with Kprofile's massive backlink profile.

So did Kprofiles (a somewhat purple website) come before you (Kpopping) or are you talking about competing for second place with Hallyu Idol (a very purple website)?

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Re:Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims... by p3rls on Sunday October 15, 2023 @10:37AM (#37890120)

I was referring to the former. The waybackmachine confirms they launched around the summer of 2017

https://web.archive.org/web/20170530121529/http://www.kprofi...

We were running a beta for that period and launched publicly in July of 2017

https://web.archive.org/web/20170722070519/https://kpopping....

Personally I think hallyuidol is even worse but that's another matter.

Right now I have YouTube's API team giving me an audit that is compounding my already overextension on our development. They're telling me I can't do rankings or aggregate data. It's a giant mess and I have another fulltime job so it's not getting the attention it deserves -- still it's miles ahead of its competitors and I don't see how that's even debatable.

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