ryanb

In the long-run it's nearly certain it will be impossible for Google to detect whether content was written by AI or not.

Thanks for the kind words!

Sorry about that - not sure what happened here. Sent you an e-mail so we can resolve this for you.

I agree 100%!

Hey folks, CEO/Founder of Contentedge here - you have it totally wrong. :)

It seems like you equate SEO with blogspam, which is just false!

We help businesses create more useful content and get it to the right people. Google is the gateway to the internet. I don’t view it as gaming the system; we’re trying to empower smaller businesses and writers to get found.

Give Contentedge a try and see if we're just building a spam machine like you contend! (no credit card required) https://secure.contentedge.com/users/signup/free

If any company poses a credible threat to Google's monopoly on search, it's surely Apple, IMO.

I think after the underwhelming launch of Apple Maps, a lot of people don't think Apple could make a truly great search product, but Apple Maps quietly has gotten pretty good and Apple has the resources and data to actually compete in search.

The tl;dr summary of this post is questioning whether or not it's even possible for TikTok to rank higher in Google than YouTube. People are searching for TikTok influencers on Google, including the branded term "tiktok" in the query and all the top search results are YouTube links. This is a real problem when people can search for your brand and Google can show their own properties ahead of you. That being said, TiKTok has still managed to make some impressive strides with SEO growth over the past 6 months that is worth calling out.

1. There needs to be guidelines for what Google can and can't do with search.

Ex: Only 25% of the screen real estate can go to Google-owned ad products for allowing it to continue as a monopoly.

2. YouTube should possibly be broken out as a separate company and it shouldn't get favorable placement and treatment in search results

3. Businesses need to have more control over how their businesses appear when users search for them directly

The minimum price to be on ChowNow is $99/mo on a 2 year plan. It's not free.

I think this is a reasonable take and I'm sure the government is taking into account.

Can you help explain why the Pin descriptions are so similar (or often exactly the same) as what's in the SERPs elsewhere?

This answer is super spot on, and this will be the story of our lives for a while.

Post author here.

Answer: Yes

At the end of the day, Google is a private company. They get to set the rules and police search results how they see fit. I don't think Pinterest is doing anything unethical. I do think it is spammy, though.

I think it crosses the line and I'm surprised Google hasn't issue them a warning, or maybe they have and we just haven't heard about it.

Organic search is still where 80% of the clicks are in search. (only 20% go to paid - though this is changing)

These are easy wins and are considered "white hat" and legitimate tactics:

* Title tag optimization with SEO A/B testing - increase CTR from Google by 10-40%

* Using NLP Content Optimization to increase content relevancy

* Optimize internal linking structure of your site so Google can easily understand your site hierarchy and spread value to important pages

* Build natural backlinks by creating interesting content that people want to engage with and link to (like this post!)

https://www.rankscience.com/coderwall-seo-split-test

Engagement on links clicked in Gmail is likely a ranking factor in Google search.

We've done studies with popular e-mail newsletters that showed URLs performing better in search on days when they've been sent out to hundreds of thousands of people.

Yep, this is called a "manual action" by Google, and they'll often tell you exactly what you're doing that they find offensive. Usually this involves buying spammy backlinks. You can resolve the issue and ask them to re-evaluate your site by submitting a Reconsideration request.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en

Super interesting. A lot of people feel the same way. Why do you think you weren't able to get any traction for this?

Hey folks, I'm the author here and CEO of RankScience (YC W17). AMA about this growth hack or SEO in general!

RankScience (YC W17) is hiring full-stack web developers. This is a remote position.

Experience with JavaScript, PHP, and Python preferred. Looking for talented folks with high EQ and an interest in user experience and building products end-to-end.

Please reach out to jobs@rankscience.com if interested and mention HN!

https://www.rankscience.com | jobs@rankscience.com

This seems like it could be incredibly valuable.

+1 their products and UX were top notch.

Crazy that Soundforge was built with such a small team.

Playing around with Soundforge as a teenager in 1998 and looping samples together was super inspiring for me. Anyone could make professional sounding music from their computer, and using it also piqued my interest in building software.

> Most SEOs I've met at serious companies are almost always very technical people.

Companies of a certain scale can afford to have engineering teams focused on SEO, and they should! Most companies can't afford this, though, and the vast majority of people in the SEO industry are not technical.

Also, who's better at solving ever-changing puzzles with many variables: humans or software? : )

Pagespeed is a ranking factor, but it's far from the most important one. I would think deeply about what might make humans engage with your competitor's site for longer than yours.

Just replied :)

We charge a monthly service fee based on web traffic. No free tier at the moment. Send me a note at ryan@rankscience.com if you'd like to learn more!

Here's a case study with a simple example of a test: https://www.rankscience.com/coderwall-seo-split-test

* CTR on titles/meta descriptions * Any HTML changes * Design changes * Time on site

No real minimum - it's all case by case.

We don't run experiments on a single page, but instead run them across groups of similar pages. The easiest way to think about this is running a test across a "product" template on an e-commerce site. A site could have thousands of product pages, but they're all on the same template. We would grab a set of a few thousand product pages, and split them into control and variant groups, execute the change on the variant group, and monitor how Google reacts to the groups in aggregate over a period of time.

Depending on how many pages you have, we can run many tests in parallel.