this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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Reddit, Quora, and other internet forums that have climbed up through the traditional set of Google links. Data analysis from Semrush, which predicts traffic based on search ranking, shows that traffic to Reddit has climbed at an impressive clip since August 2023. Semrush estimated that Reddit had over 132 million visitors in August 2023. At the time of publishing, it was projected to have over 346 million visitors in April 2024.

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Meanwhile established sites with professional content are being pushed aside.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Making it extremely hard to actually find professional content because Reddit tends to cater to the lowest common denominator and most professional subs tend to corrupt over time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

to be fair most of the "professional" sites are just spam now. thats when it isnt entirely written by ai.

[–] GreenSofaBed 28 points 4 months ago

I was googling gen ai transformers yesterday and most of the results were just heavily SEOd websites, where the first few paragraphs are just repeats of as many related keywords as possible to get high up in Google. Then the actual content I was looking for was usually garbage.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

The most professional content I've seen lately is things like a spaghetti recipe that explains the history of spaghetti, and my kids don't normally like spaghetti but they took seconds of this one because it's so good!

Now, let's talk about your choices in water here. You could go to a nearby spring and collect your own, but I find storebought water is just fine. You want to boil that water, which works best under high heat unless you want to wait forever!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Google has been killing those off for a while. Nowadays it's hard to find anything that isn't just the copy-pasted SEO bait non-articles covered in ads

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

How can I find those more professional sites? I'd need some, as it's sometimes hard to find info on OS API, as "it's bad practice to not use Johnny's Janky and Bloated Everything Library (JJBEL), that still handles XInput controllers through the DirectInput API, but it also has other extras". I've had issues with RawInput under Windows (with that, in theory, I can use Xbox One/Series controllers to their fullest potential), and all I get is either SEO-ridden advertisements for existing libraries (which wouldn't be a problem if they didn't have massive problems), or tutorials for said libraries. Since I'm working with D, I have to interface to C calls, which wouldn't be a problem if they were documented properly and in an accessible way.

My own D native and less bloated SDL replacement's (iota) development got halted for getting null for device pointers no matter what, and with no proper instructions on how to resolve it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Because there isn't any money in non-SEO optimized ads.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the AI training data deal that Google and reddit have. Google has every incentive to boost reddit rating to get more high quality training data.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (2 children)

What high-quality training data? more like people's garbage opinions and kinks on Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago

To be fair, it's less about quality and more about quantity when training LLM.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean, you just got me kinda excited that there might be a decently good AI sex chat in the near future. That thing will churn out interactive Literotica like it's no one's business.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Do you really want to chat about that with the distilled essence of a million redditors?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I’m surprised nobody mentioned the AI training data deal that Google and reddit have.

The linked article mentions it clearly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The timing of this Reddit bump has led to some conspiracy theories. In February, Google and Reddit announced a blockbuster deal that would let Google train its AI models on Reddit content.

Reddit should probably be prepared for an onslaught of bots and seo gaming which will further destroy it. Hopefully forum groups like Lemmy don't go get buried under a mountain of garbage as well. I don't see anything good about this, as long as advertisers are able to destroy public forums with ads with ad based revenue sites like Google directing them know who to target we will always be creating something great while constantly trying to keep advertisers from turning it into a pile of crap.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 4 months ago (2 children)

This is actually a good sign that Google is taking steps to fix their broken search engine. All it seems to deliver anymore as SEO-optimized crap "blogs" with affiliate links. Linking to Reddit without the user having to include "reddit" in the search is a sign they're actually trying to deliver good results again.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

You can use -

intext:"modlog" & "instances" & "docs" & "code" & "join lemmy"

Just pin it in clipboard. Use it after search to get results from across Lemmy

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

Really rolls of the tongue

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

You don't know bang! ? Oh, google doesn't have the feature.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I don't know I am getting really shit results on all major search egines lately. Very location specific when I want general information and when I want to have some me times getting decent results, with moderation turned off, is piss poor.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Just in time to not be able to see anything on Reddit without signing in. And I'm sure companies won't figure out how to astroturf even more.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

reddit.com/r/somesub/comments/123456/some_random_post?share=1

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm suggesting Reddit could implement a Quora style ?share=1 at the end of the URL as what comes up in Google results. This is why you can click a Quora google result and get an answer, but then clicking any other question/thread brings up an undismissable prompt for you to sign up for an account.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Could you then bypass the quora login prompt with a user script that appends ?share=1 to every page?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I haven't used it in a while but in the past you could.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 4 months ago (1 children)

These sites are great for finding answers but Lemmy solves the same problem as they do. I'm actually seeing Lemmy results quite often from google recently too (I'm using SearXNG btw, it displays what search engines individual results are from).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Is there anyway to search all Lemmy instances through Google or DuckDuckGo like site:reddit.com?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That would be great. Maybe SearXNG can add that by doing a site: for every lemmy instance from join-lemmy.org or something when you do site:lemmy

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Your suggestion would be great.

For the time being, I was using OR and shoving the top 8 instances from Lemmy Explorer.

site:alien.top OR site:lemmy.world OR site:lemmy.ml OR site:lemm.ee OR site:sh.itjust.works OR site:hexbear.net OR site:beehaw.org OR site:lemmy.dbzer0.com

DuckDuckGo Link

Google Link

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago

It makes sense. Adding Reddit to my online searches has been my "life hack" for years now. If only Reddit wasn't becoming annoying as fuck with things like their new UI, blocking third party apps, and finally blocking off VPN users.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I was wondering if the bump was universal or if Google just thought I always wanted to see Reddit results based on my browsing history.

Also, every time Quora comes up it amazes me that it overtook Yahoo Answers. It’s like Tik Tok vs Vine

[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I really don’t get how Quora gets ranked so highly in search results when it’s one of the worst sites I’ve ever seen. They somehow managed to fuck up the UI on a Q&A forum. And the answers are wrong like 30% of the time.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

But I'm definitely ordering that corn cleaner post haste.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Agree… you’d think Google would prioritize sites that are actually useful. Quora isn’t useful unless you want to jump through a bunch of hoops to sign in.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Quora was supposed to be the high-brow answer to Yahoo Answers, but then Yahoo Answers was killed off.

Eventually the muppets found their way to Quora. Probably by accident at first, but the Quora moderation didn't stop enough of the muppetry and now it's just Yahoo Answers pretending not to be.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Was it ever high brow? I never really noticed it until the past few years

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

That's what their marketing team decided to say.

Then they decided to pay people for activity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

SAME! I’m so glad someone else said this. I feel like I just repeat it to myself internally every time I notice it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How many of those new visitors were actually human though?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How dare you doubt I'm human? Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Darleks are more human than you think.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Symbiosis. Google drives traffic to reddit (the largest current organic source of natural English content), then harvests all of reddit's data for their AI.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

First thing I did after I got Kagi was to set lower priority for Reddit results. My search experience has been way better ever since.

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