PJ Vogt
PJ Vogt is on Twitter here. If you'd like to subscribe to TLDR's short weekly podcast, please go here.
#27 - How Google is Killing the Best Site On the Internet
Monday, June 02, 2014 - 02:18 PM
A couple weeks ago, Matt Haughey, the founder of TLDR's favorite website, Metafilter, announced that his website is dying. And he says it's because Google algorithmically stopped directing traffic to the site over a year ago. Alex tries to figure out what you do when Google's algorithm decides it no longer likes you.
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Alex Goldman
Alex Goldman is a producer for On the Media and the co-host/creator of TLDR. He is on twitter here. Subscribe to the TLDR podcast here.
TLDR is a short podcast and blog about the internet by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman. You can subscribe to our podcast here. You can follow our blog here. We’re also on Twitter, and we play Team Fortress 2 more or less constantly, so find us there if you like to communicate via computer games from six years ago.
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Comments [10]
At least part of the problem, I think, is that garbage sites like ifixit do use SEO to game the Google algorithm. It doesn't take too many of these jokers to push you down to page 2 or page 3, especially when, like ifixit, they manage to suck up 3 or 4 of the page 1 hits. Google has been unforgivably (and suspiciously) slow about getting the crap off of page 1, and they also (again, suspiciously) don't allow you to block ifixit from your own search results. Google also gives YouTube (which they own) a free pass to page 1, further pushing Metafilter into obscurity.
Much as he hates SEO, I think Matt's going to have to fight fire with fire.
If people haven't experienced Metafilter they really don't know how well general purpose web community can be on the Internet.
Google will not tell you what the rules are but still expects you to follow them.
Can be a bit infuriating at times as I tried to updated the design on one of my websites and all the traffic went away overnight. Had to change back to the old design.
I have been asked to take stuff down off my own website and attempting to do so made it rank higher in Google. I had to use the webmaster tools to remove the listing.
One important question was never asked nor answered: is Mr Haughey paying Google for advertising? Google derives most of its revenue from advertising. If Mr Haughey is not paying, his complaint seems to be that in the past he was getting advertising on page 1 for free, and now he's only getting advertising on page 3 for free.
The game with chaff was X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter and it was EPIC.
Imagine that: a guy who makes his living running a SEO blog shilling the importance of SEO. If this was any other outlet OTM would be all over this weekly-sourced PR posing as journalism.
"Chaff" probably does come from "Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff" or removing the grains of wheat from the useless husks, but after the development radar it also became a term for countermeasures, usually tinfoil strips that reflect radar and create multiple false targets on the rader "chaff" that has to be separated from the real tartget
Metafilter looks interesting.
I find your podcasts always intriguing and interesting. Thanks!
Weird, I had no idea metafilter existed.
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