Can we all stop the in-fighting for a minute and realise how awesome the platform we are on is?
We are forming communities on the realized image of the internet that we were told we would have back in the 80s and 90s.
You can make your own home on the web and have your own niche community, not owned by any corporation, while still being connected to the wider internet.
This feels like something out of a sci-fi movie.
I think you could really plot the decline in usability of Google search over the last 10 years. SEO and algorithms have really ruined the user experience.
You know what? I agree. Even over the last few months, I’ve seen it in action.
Before the blackout stuff began, I used to have to manually include the word “reddit” for reddit to even show up for most of my queries. Now, I can barely google anything without reddit showing up right near the top of the results.
Shenanigans, I tell ya.
Consider this- so many people were just adding reddits to their search queries that it became something that was more standard than queries without a specific website.
Seems pretty obvious to me…
Chill, it’s nothing to be serious about :)
I mean, it’s also possible that I have just been searching different criteria, but a casual observation is just a casual observation at the end of the day. An anecdote is just an anecdote. I didn’t realise that I should have also had to mention all other possible causes lol.
“Obviously”, other causes are also possible. Maybe my home network remembers frequent use of the website. Maybe it’s the large number of clicks that come from those google results.
SEO is a double edged source. There is the negative side where it’s just about promoting your website. But there’s the positive where it’s making the website easier for a search engine to navigate. Not only can that produce higher quality search results, but it can also mean that it is more accessible for people with disabilities.
Case in point: a website made with images without alt text to replace text was a not uncommon sight until fairly recently. Now that is usually achieved with CSS, or there is at least alt text. Having those is critical both for search engines and accessibility.