What Google used to do is a lot of manual effort to keep SEO stuff at a minimum. You can’t make it go away entirely, but it was a give-and-take that basically worked.
We’re stuck now because Google decided they didn’t want to spend the money on it anymore, so the SEO people won.
However, if the search method were to ignore SEO entirely and focus purely on the content of the page
As another poster mentions, SEO is about gaming the content so search engines pick them up. If you change your algorithm, they’ll just change their methods. Google’s old method may be the only way to clamp down on it.
Admittedly I am much behind on the technicals, but here is an example: if an answer to a technical problem appears on StackOverflow, Reddit, and pleaseclickmePuLEASEpleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.xxx, then why allow the latter ones to rise to the top and the former two don’t show up until like page 3? Regardless of content on the page, the former two sites have a reputable “reputation” - is this what you mean by manual efforts, to designate them as more trustworthy sites?
Ironically the Reddit upvote/downvote style would work for search results, helping guide others to find similar content after a few people blaze the trail. However, voting has its own issues… as we see even in irl elections, as people game that system too with alt accounts. Anywhere profits are involved, it becomes a cat-and-mouse game where you have to fight off the vested interests.:-(
But for something important, it becomes worthwhile to invest some effort into it?
It’s only important in so far as Google can make a profit on it.
Yes, they could favor specific servers, and that used to be the case. That takes specific effort to pick those sites out, though. They don’t want to do that anymore.
What Google used to do is a lot of manual effort to keep SEO stuff at a minimum. You can’t make it go away entirely, but it was a give-and-take that basically worked.
We’re stuck now because Google decided they didn’t want to spend the money on it anymore, so the SEO people won.
As another poster mentions, SEO is about gaming the content so search engines pick them up. If you change your algorithm, they’ll just change their methods. Google’s old method may be the only way to clamp down on it.
Admittedly I am much behind on the technicals, but here is an example: if an answer to a technical problem appears on StackOverflow, Reddit, and pleaseclickmePuLEASEpleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.xxx, then why allow the latter ones to rise to the top and the former two don’t show up until like page 3? Regardless of content on the page, the former two sites have a reputable “reputation” - is this what you mean by manual efforts, to designate them as more trustworthy sites?
Ironically the Reddit upvote/downvote style would work for search results, helping guide others to find similar content after a few people blaze the trail. However, voting has its own issues… as we see even in irl elections, as people game that system too with alt accounts. Anywhere profits are involved, it becomes a cat-and-mouse game where you have to fight off the vested interests.:-(
But for something important, it becomes worthwhile to invest some effort into it?
It’s only important in so far as Google can make a profit on it.
Yes, they could favor specific servers, and that used to be the case. That takes specific effort to pick those sites out, though. They don’t want to do that anymore.