[RavlaAlvar]

Let say government nationalise google search or force to make it a non profit 15 years ago. How would that prevent SEO from happening? Isn’t SEO an inevitable outcome of website trying compete for attention? How would anyone prevent it from happening?

[bryanrasmussen]

>Isn’t SEO an inevitable outcome of website trying compete for attention?

different Search engines with different rules and so forth would lessen the benefit of the O part, because it seems unlikely you could efficiently optimize for every particular algorithm and ruleset.

Perhaps SEO is an inevitable outcome of one big dominant search engine and also made worse by that search engine not really giving a shit about making its search work that well for years and years but only about how many ads they could push at people and how much they could charge for those ads.

[RavlaAlvar]

I agree with your assessment that maybe this is an inevitable outcome of one big dominant search engine.

But I would argue one big search engine is unavoidable since no one would want to use the second best search engine.

Google search didn’t come the best because the other service like mail map and YouTube. So breaking up Google does nothing to stop google search from being the monopoly it is today.

[surgical_fire]

That's an interesting idea.

While I don't have the answer, what we might consider is the incentives that come with each model.

In the current model, the incentives are clear. Google's incentive was to rent-seek all usefulness out of web search, privileging advertisement and their own profitability over usefulness.

I am not sure if a search engine beholden to the government would be ideal. Governments do have their own sets of interests (legitimate or otherwise) that may at times go against users.

Web search is in the end a piece of public infrastructure, used by billions across the world, very much subject to the Tragedy of the Commons.

Perhaps it should be some sort of nonprofit, as other projects are (Linux Foundation comes to mind, being a successful one).

[RavlaAlvar]

I would guess just the incentive for any website to become top of the search results would likely create the outcome of today’s SEO landscape.

[lelanthran]

> Let say government nationalise google search or force to make it a non profit 15 years ago. How would that prevent SEO from happening? Isn’t SEO an inevitable outcome of website trying compete for attention? How would anyone prevent it from happening?

I've said this before (on HN) and I'll say it again: a search engine that refuses to index sites containing advertisements absolutely kills off SEO.

What's the point of getting to the top of the search results if you are unable to monetise it?

The only way forward is to refuse to index sites with advertisements. Google will obviously not do this (and, in fact, to me it looks like they do the reverse - downrank non-monetised content - because it's in their best interest to serve sites with ads).

[noiwillnot]

> What's the point of getting to the top of the search results if you are unable to monetise it?

Promoting your product/service, see brand astroturfing in Reddit.

[throwup238]

The same way people make adblockers happen. By making block lists of SEO garbage cruated by human beings.

Nextdns and the RPi alternative do it. Kagi has all the infrastructure in place to make it happen at the search level, it just requires more manual work right now.

[RavlaAlvar]

How would you define “SEO garbage”. Who has the power to decide what belongs in the list.