Ok. So the previous two post... well by the time im done typing this it might be out of order. Use context clues you can figure out which ones im talking about. SEO. Its fucking everywhere and im tired of it. Seo isnt bad. I wana start with that. It stands for search engine optimization. You probably already know that so no biggie. Most people dont go to websites via url. If its not bookmarked they just search for it. Non-tech-savvy people take this to the extreme. They will search facebook rather then just append .com. Its wild haha. Old web browsers used to have 2 bars at the top, and some still do. One bar was for URL's. The other was a search bar. if you knew what you wanted you would use the url, if not you would use the search. Now we only have 1 bar. Might just be a ui improvement as you can make it context sensitive, might be because some people didnt know the difference between the two and wouldnt know why their GET to 'whats the weather like' isnt a valid request, might be because of user trends of search bar for everything. who knows. but now we are down to one because of trends regardless. Its part of a larger pattern. Search engines used to be link aggregators, catalogs if you will. There are many ways to make one. In-fact you can make your own if you really want. A little bot (or many) parse through dns records is a pretty common way to make it work. they then store that info and based on user input to filter out irrelevant links that dont contain certain bits of info. Simple. With the change of users and the oversimplification of everything technological the general populace now relies on search engines for everything as they dont remember any domains themself. It would shock you how many people think that all websites end in .com. The reason that you use a search engine is because you dont have a domain in mind and therefore need to find the content that you want by browsing a catalog of domains that provide content that addresses your search. So anyways, search engine optimization. To ASSIST users in finding relevant content search engines are able to filter the provided catalog to pull up the most relevant websites. SEO existed to make it easier for people to find what they were looking for. Its a great thing. Until corporations caught on. These companies are able to process large amounts of analytics and modify their code to adjust to the trending search queries. They have the personnel bandwidth to modify their seo weekly to adjust. They look at how search engines profile websites and how engines filter out results and determine how to get to the top of the rankings. They then change their website to manipulate the engine to perceive that their website is more relevant and helpful to the user therefore boosting its rating to the top of the users catalog of website options. for example if t-mobile sees that most users buy a phone plan after looking up unlimted data, they will change their seo to capture those searches and tailor their website to manipulate their index position in your catalog. One the other hand consumer cellular prefers their seo to entice old people looking for aarp discounts or flip phones. This has a few negative impacts. It can squeeze the smaller websites who cant compete with the analytic data they have or who dont have the bandwidth to constantly change the code to adjust to new conditions/trends. It makes searches more likely to provide you with content that is less helpful but rather monetized. And it can make non-tech-savvy people who are reliant on search engines for everything have to deal with more and more crap that they just cant get away from. Lets look at some examples. Feel free to do your own test. test 1: best _____. yea you know how this goes. fill in the blank with anything. Possibly replace best with top, highest reviewed, or cheapest. What you USED to get on your website catalog would be a collections of forums by people passionate about _____ who would share their gripes and suggestions about products,services, whatever. You could also find technical documentation about your searched item. You might even find some research articles that delve waaaay further into it then you wanted, but hey, it was all info that you were able to absorb and make a decision about. With SEO these smaller sites would populate your catalog because of keywords they used that were relevant. Or possibly because it was a popular place for people to ask questions and get everything broken down for them. Now though, with the magic of seo. you get tier list (with affiliate links), brands comparing themself to other brands, recommended products from online marketplaces. test 2: a legitimate question. I used, how to fix a flat tire. im using duck duck go but use whatever. The only useful link is a wikihow. let me list the results in order. walmart: tire sealant amazon: sealant aswell wikihow: yay youtube: chrisfix, affiliate links goodyear tires: how to replace a tire (and buy a new one) firestone-auto: mechanic shop + tire installer bridgestone tire: same as goodyear you will have different results then me. now lets pretend we are the user. I ran over a granny who was taking too long crossing the street and now i have a flat. I need some information on what to do. Im a clueless person so i utilize a search engine. all of the top results in order are trying to monetize my problem. Rather then letting SEO find me results like instruction manuals or get me in contact with someone who can walk me through what to do, it tries to commit "highway robbery". Highway robbery/ daylight robbery is not real robbery btw. Your not stealing anything. Lets say you ran outta gas in the middle of no-where. I come along with a gas can. Ill give you the gas can with 5 gallons in exchange for a blow job, all the cash you got on your person, and you gotta lick my boots. Ya gonna do it? if not your stranded in middle of no-where, who knows when the next person will come along with a gas can. I hope you like walking. test 3: misc info Lets say i want to recycle. I dont know a specific domain so i utilize a search engine. What i get coming up is a few non-profits that want me to donate, a local government agency that tells me where and what to recycle, and products tailor made for environmentally concerned people like a backpack made from trash kinda cool. Only the .gov provides me info regarding my next move. Back to search engines. They know that the clueless motorist searched for what to do when i got a flat/ how to fix a flat so they know that you are DESPERATE. By manipulating the search engine they can exploit you and make $$. They know that someone looking where to recycle is environmental conscious. They know that i am more inclined to donate or pick specific products over others. So backing out a bit we need to look at how SEO is actually used today. Is it used to help people find information that is useful to them? Is it used to provide the most relevant results from real people? It is intended to make navigating the web easier, or to make websites preform better for the user? No. SEO is what is making the web a more shitty place. here are some cool stats: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/website-statistics/ seo isnt about search engine optimization anymore. Its about search engine exploitation. And its getting worse thanks to AI generated content & ai seo. I will always be the first guy that would recommend improving your website to make the users enjoy it more. Provide content that people like and they will come back. I went to my favorite link aggregator and searched seo. I got a bunch of how to guides. proof smaller services > search engines now-a-days. But what i was really looking for was: https://herman.bearblog.dev/how-the-internet-became-shit/ This is the first one that i found but i could scroll more if i wasnt writing this post. It came back when looking for seo because it contained that keyword making it relevant. just like search engines used too. Give it a read. its basically in step with what im saying. Now how does this affect you? This is chat-to.dev. you already know all this. What i want to bring up is how we use SEO. Whether it is for a personal site or one for a client. Let us use seo to provide **search engine optimization** benefits not **search engine exploitation** benefits like all the big corps. There is no way that my little site will be able to compete with a mega corp site for all the above stated perks that having billions of dollars permits. So instead, lets inspire devs to make websites that are just better for the user allowing us to retain people and grow because of the quality and content relevance. Also im not bashing you if you use SEO. Its a good skill to learn how google and such work, but lets not be consumed with numbers and how we rank on 'searchers' website catalog.

Ok. So the previous two post… well by the time im done typing this it might be out of order. Use context clues you can figure out which ones im talking about. SEO. Its fucking everywhere and im tired of it. Seo isnt bad. I wana start with that. It stands for search engine optimization. You probably already know that so no biggie. Most people dont go to websites via url. If its not bookmarked they just search for it. Non-tech-savvy people take this to the extreme. They will search facebook rather then just append .com. Its wild haha. Old web browsers used to have 2 bars at the top, and some still do. One bar was for URL’s. The other was a search bar. if you knew what you wanted you would use the url, if not you would use the search. Now we only have 1 bar. Might just be a ui improvement as you can make it context sensitive, might be because some people didnt know the difference between the two and wouldnt know why their GET to ‘whats the weather like’ isnt a valid request, might be because of user trends of search bar for everything. who knows. but now we are down to one because of trends regardless. Its part of a larger pattern. Search engines used to be link aggregators, catalogs if you will. There are many ways to make one. In-fact you can make your own if you really want. A little bot (or many) parse through dns records is a pretty common way to make it work. they then store that info and based on user input to filter out irrelevant links that dont contain certain bits of info. Simple. With the change of users and the oversimplification of everything technological the general populace now relies on search engines for everything as they dont remember any domains themself. It would shock you how many people think that all websites end in .com. The reason that you use a search engine is because you dont have a domain in mind and therefore need to find the content that you want by browsing a catalog of domains that provide content that addresses your search. So anyways, search engine optimization. To ASSIST users in finding relevant content search engines are able to filter the provided catalog to pull up the most relevant websites. SEO existed to make it easier for people to find what they were looking for. Its a great thing. Until corporations caught on. These companies are able to process large amounts of analytics and modify their code to adjust to the trending search queries. They have the personnel bandwidth to modify their seo weekly to adjust. They look at how search engines profile websites and how engines filter out results and determine how to get to the top of the rankings. They then change their website to manipulate the engine to perceive that their website is more relevant and helpful to the user therefore boosting its rating to the top of the users catalog of website options. for example if t-mobile sees that most users buy a phone plan after looking up unlimted data, they will change their seo to capture those searches and tailor their website to manipulate their index position in your catalog. One the other hand consumer cellular prefers their seo to entice old people looking for aarp discounts or flip phones. This has a few negative impacts. It can squeeze the smaller websites who cant compete with the analytic data they have or who dont have the bandwidth to constantly change the code to adjust to new conditions/trends. It makes searches more likely to provide you with content that is less helpful but rather monetized. And it can make non-tech-savvy people who are reliant on search engines for everything have to deal with more and more crap that they just cant get away from. Lets look at some examples. Feel free to do your own test. test 1: best _____. yea you know how this goes. fill in the blank with anything. Possibly replace best with top, highest reviewed, or cheapest. What you USED to get on your website catalog would be a collections of forums by people passionate about _____ who would share their gripes and suggestions about products,services, whatever. You could also find technical documentation about your searched item. You might even find some research articles that delve waaaay further into it then you wanted, but hey, it was all info that you were able to absorb and make a decision about. With SEO these smaller sites would populate your catalog because of keywords they used that were relevant. Or possibly because it was a popular place for people to ask questions and get everything broken down for them. Now though, with the magic of seo. you get tier list (with affiliate links), brands comparing themself to other brands, recommended products from online marketplaces. test 2: a legitimate question. I used, how to fix a flat tire. im using duck duck go but use whatever. The only useful link is a wikihow. let me list the results in order. walmart: tire sealant amazon: sealant aswell wikihow: yay youtube: chrisfix, affiliate links goodyear tires: how to replace a tire (and buy a new one) firestone-auto: mechanic shop + tire installer bridgestone tire: same as goodyear you will have different results then me. now lets pretend we are the user. I ran over a granny who was taking too long crossing the street and now i have a flat. I need some information on what to do. Im a clueless person so i utilize a search engine. all of the top results in order are trying to monetize my problem. Rather then letting SEO find me results like instruction manuals or get me in contact with someone who can walk me through what to do, it tries to commit “highway robbery”. Highway robbery/ daylight robbery is not real robbery btw. Your not stealing anything. Lets say you ran outta gas in the middle of no-where. I come along with a gas can. Ill give you the gas can with 5 gallons in exchange for a blow job, all the cash you got on your person, and you gotta lick my boots. Ya gonna do it? if not your stranded in middle of no-where, who knows when the next person will come along with a gas can. I hope you like walking. test 3: misc info Lets say i want to recycle. I dont know a specific domain so i utilize a search engine. What i get coming up is a few non-profits that want me to donate, a local government agency that tells me where and what to recycle, and products tailor made for environmentally concerned people like a backpack made from trash kinda cool. Only the .gov provides me info regarding my next move. Back to search engines. They know that the clueless motorist searched for what to do when i got a flat/ how to fix a flat so they know that you are DESPERATE. By manipulating the search engine they can exploit you and make $$. They know that someone looking where to recycle is environmental conscious. They know that i am more inclined to donate or pick specific products over others. So backing out a bit we need to look at how SEO is actually used today. Is it used to help people find information that is useful to them? Is it used to provide the most relevant results from real people? It is intended to make navigating the web easier, or to make websites preform better for the user? No. SEO is what is making the web a more shitty place. here are some cool stats: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/website-statistics/ seo isnt about search engine optimization anymore. Its about search engine exploitation. And its getting worse thanks to AI generated content & ai seo. I will always be the first guy that would recommend improving your website to make the users enjoy it more. Provide content that people like and they will come back. I went to my favorite link aggregator and searched seo. I got a bunch of how to guides. proof smaller services > search engines now-a-days. But what i was really looking for was: https://herman.bearblog.dev/how-the-internet-became-shit/ This is the first one that i found but i could scroll more if i wasnt writing this post. It came back when looking for seo because it contained that keyword making it relevant. just like search engines used too. Give it a read. its basically in step with what im saying. Now how does this affect you? This is chat-to.dev. you already know all this. What i want to bring up is how we use SEO. Whether it is for a personal site or one for a client. Let us use seo to provide search engine optimization benefits not search engine exploitation benefits like all the big corps. There is no way that my little site will be able to compete with a mega corp site for all the above stated perks that having billions of dollars permits. So instead, lets inspire devs to make websites that are just better for the user allowing us to retain people and grow because of the quality and content relevance. Also im not bashing you if you use SEO. Its a good skill to learn how google and such work, but lets not be consumed with numbers and how we rank on ‘searchers’ website catalog.