[AznHisoka]

“I can possibly not find anything deep enough about any topic by searching on Google anymore. It's just surface-level knowledge that I get from competing websites who just want to make money off pageviews.”

Is it possible that there is no site providing non fluffy content on your query? For a lot of niche subjects, there really are very few if any substantial content on that topic.

[Swizec]

> Is it possible that there is no site providing non fluffy content on your query? For a lot of niche subjects, there really are very few if any substantial content on that topic.

“Very few if any substantial”

The problem is that google won’t even show me the very few anymore. It’s just fluff upon fluff and depth (or real insight at least) is buried in twitter threads and reddit/hn comments, and github issue discussion.

I fear the seo problem has not only killed knowledge propagation, but also thoroughly disincentivized smart people from even trying. And that makes me sad.

[CriticalCathed]

I mirror your sentiment. It used to be that you could use your google fu and you'd be able to find a dozen relevant forum posts or mail chains in plain text. It's much, much, harder to get the same standard of results. "Pasting stack traces and error messages. Needle in a haystack phrases from an article or book. None of it works anymore."

Yeah, if I know where I'm looking (the sites) then google is useful since I can narrow it to that domain. But if I don't know where to look then I'm SOL.

The serendipity of good results on Google.com is no longer there. And given the talent at google you have to wonder why.

[Swizec]

The devil is in this detail: Regular users don’t want those “weird looking” results. Normies prefer the fluff.

And guess what: most users are normal. Us here on HN are weird:

[Enginerrrd]

So this point is such an interesting and common anti-pattern on the internet though:

1. Something is or provides access to good quality content.

2. Because of this quality, it gets more and more popular.

3. As popularity grows, and commercialization takes over, the incentive becomes to make things "more accessible" or "appealing" to the "average" user. More users is always better right!?

4. This works, and quality plummets.

5. The thing begins to lose popularity. Sometimes it collapses into total unprofitability. Sometimes it remains but the core users that built the quality content move somewhere else, and then that new thing starts to offer tremendous value in comparison to the now low quality thing.