this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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As much as I've come to loathe Google, I think even that is a bit unfair to them. Search engine optimization is a result of the existence of search engines, because being at the top of the results is always worth good money.
Back before Google was the top dog, there were numerous search engines, and I'm pretty sure people shared tips on how to get further up on the results even then, they just didn't use the term SEO yet.
Google became the dominant search engine because it gave better results than anyone else, because it wasn't so easy to manipulate your ranking on the results. But there were always sites that wanted to be on top even when they shouldn't be. Google stayed ahead of their game for some decades, but now it looks like they can't or won't keep it up anymore.
I wonder what it would like if they rolled out the OG circa 1998 page-rank algorithm on todays web. What would that algorithm find if we ran it now? Would it be garbage or would it undercut all the SEO and find good stuff?
I have a hunch that the current search is bad, not because they cannot do better, but because it is profitable for it to be this bad. The most powerful SEO tool is probably your checkbook.
There's definitely an arms race - if it's cheaper to pay an SEO to get your pages shown, then you pay the SEO; if it's cheaper to pay Google advertising, then you pay to play. I'm sure Google is constantly tweaking their algorithm to filter SEO techniques to get better, authentic results, but it seems like a losing battle at this point.