
Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter? - michaelhoffman
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/05/metafilter_layoffs_why_has_google_forsaken_the_legendary_internet_forum.single.html
======
nikatwork
And this is why I got out of organic SEO. You have essentially one client, and
that is El Goog. A site can see product sales revenue drop 50% _overnight_
after a bad Google dance, and it can take weeks to work out how you've
offended it. I only used whitehat techniques mind.

Most people bleat "just write good conteeeeent" and have no idea how Google
ranking actually works. I guess what was most galling was seeing certain
retail sites getting away with blatant spam while your own sites got
mysteriously slammed.

I don't blame Google though - it's a direct result of having a single player
market. So go, duckduck, go :)

~~~
whoismua
Especially now that Google is a "content provider," sites like Metafilter have
to battle Youtube, Google+ etc for ranking. Guess who's winning? Traffic is
going away from other sites to Google's own properties and there's isn't a
damn thing metafilter et al can do: Google handles ranking, display and ads.

Commercial sites now have to deal with a full page of ads before the real
results so their fate is sealed another way. In other words, we need 4-5
search engines, not one giant monopoly that seeks to increase ad clicks by
underhanded methods each quarter.

~~~
nikatwork
I sifted through _a lot_ of traffic data, and it must be noted that I saw zero
evidence of El Goog manually weighting any results. Everything was 100% above
board - they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual.

I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a _real_ SEO expert,
ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos and not just the usual
voodoo bullcrap. The site is probably just tripping a few red flags, it could
be something as stupid as an accidental link loop in their dynamic content.

I'll give it to Google, once you find your sin and fix it, your traffic _will_
come back, maybe not 100% but a significant recovery. (Unless you have done
something really dumb/blackhat like paid links.)

~~~
hueving
> they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual.

This is not always the case. Look at the Rapgenius event. That was triggered
by manual intervention.

>I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie
someone who understands the underlying ranking algos

There isn't anyone on the outside that truly understands them because they
constantly adjust them to deal with abuse. It is possible that one of these
adjustments killed MeFi and it wasn't a recent mistake on MeFi's part.

~~~
nikatwork
You are correct that manual penalties can be applied, I worded my previous
comment badly. What I mean is they don't appear to "manually" tamper with the
result weightings eg by using a whitelist of upweighted domains.

While they can slap a manual -50 penalty on your domain, from memory you are
notified of such penalties in Google Analytics so it's not a silent and
nefarious manipulation. MeFi should know if they have such a penalty. I also
admit that the "get out of jail" process is even more annoying than dealing
with an Apple app store rejection.

~~~
mattmanser
Webmaster tools, not analytics, and it's buried in a sub menu and has the most
confusing text and only gives one example link.

------
joostdevries
"Searching for “most amazing woman ever” on Bing will give you MetaFilter’s
helpful “Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived” as the third result.
(Answers, by the way, included British spy and French Resistance leader Nancy
Wake, world’s first programmer Ada Lovelace, slave rescuer and activist
Harriet Tubman, and Chinese pirate Ching Shih.) Google puts it at the bottom
of the second page of results, in 19th place. Google’s top result? A list of
“the 100 most beautiful women ever.” "

That made me wonder whether Google has shifted its products from being the
kind of thing that their own employee corps would enjoy to things for the
general public. I personally f.i. enjoyed the from: to: keywords in Google
Maps search. That feature disappeared and probably the majority of users
wouldn't use those anyway. Personally I scorn at a search result of the '100
most beautiful women'. But in the large population it will probably lead to a
much higher click through. So I wonder if Google Search was oriented towards
the smart crowd niche and that they changed focus towards the common and the
populous. To put it differently: a shift from an emphasis in information as
high value search result towards including entertainment, gossip etc. High
brow to low brow.

~~~
gabemart
> I personally f.i. enjoyed the from: to: keywords in Google Maps search. That
> feature disappeared and probably the majority of users wouldn't use those
> anyway.

I still use that feature every day. I have a smart keyword setup so that I
just type:

    
    
      maps from LAX to San Francisco
    

into the URL bar and get taken straight to a Google Maps page showing me that
route [1]. Forgive me if I've misunderstood you and you're talking about
something else, but this feature still exists. AFAIK I'm using the latest
version of Google maps.

[1]
[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview?q=from+lax+to+san+fran...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview?q=from+lax+to+san+francisco)

~~~
michaelt
In classic Google Maps you could find a multi-leg route by searching with the
syntax "from:san francisco to:los angeles to:new york" [1] whereas in new
Google Maps the same query just shows you San Francisco [2].

The new Google Maps will do multi-point routes [3], but by default when you
enter San Francisco to Los Angeles it chooses flights, and hides the option to
enter a multi-point route. You have to switch to car directions to get the
option to enter more than one point, and enter them one at a time not use the
nice from-to-to syntax.

Pretty crap for power users - but I guess ad-supported products make their
money by being mass market, and catering to power users isn't very important.

[1]
[https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=from:san+francisco+to:los+a...](https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=from:san+francisco+to:los+angeles+to:new+york)
[2]
[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/from:san+francisco+to:l...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/from:san+francisco+to:los+angeles+to:new+york/@37.7063155,-122.3906075,12z/data=!3m1!4b1)
[3]
[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA,+USA/Los...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+CA,+USA/Los+Angeles,+CA,+USA/New+York,+NY,+USA/@37.0798614,-107.0308321,5z)

~~~
gabemart
Thanks for the clarification.

It also bugs me that there's no way to enter the mode of transportation as
part of the URL query string. I'd love to be able to use smart keyword syntax
like:

    
    
      from London to Cambridge by bike
      
      from Glasgow to Manchester by bus

------
pja
I see Matt Cutts has been talking to Mathowie about Metafilter's problems:
[https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/469235750932725761](https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/469235750932725761)

I can't help feeling that there's something wrong when the only way to find
out why Google has downgraded your site is to attract the attention of one of
the core search developers. I get that Google wants to keep it's ranking
algorithms secret for fear of black hat SEO poisoning the well even more than
it does already. Given Google's dominant position in the search market at the
same time it seems wrong to downgrade sites in this fashion with no clarity or
visibility over the process whatsoever.

~~~
mattmanser
Matt Cutts got absolutely slammed here on Sunday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763923)

It felt like they'd been some sort of tipping point reached and people were
just furious with Google for being so opaque.

I've never seen people be so antagonistic with him.

Then again the w/e HN crowd seems to be pretty vicious compared to the week
one. (and I honestly feel less intelligent).

~~~
pja
Wow: That really was a pile on wasn't it? Looks like mcutts is catching some
of the backdraft from Google's infamous lack of customer service (to paying
advertisers, content providers and everyone else) here to a certain extent.

~~~
gress
Well Matt is a relentless explainer of Google's position. That earns him a lot
of credibility and support when the position makes sense, but if what they are
doing ultimately is considered harmful, then he's going to look like an
apologist.

------
unreal37
I think Metafilter needs to spend more time exploring SEO and perhaps a site
redesign. It may be a great site (people say it is), but if it has a poor
backlink profile, stale content, and a high bounce rate, it's not going to
rank as well even for better content.

Craigslist is a great site too, and you don't see it highly ranked in Google
for many queries.

~~~
hnriot
absolutely, the website looks very 90s, none of the links look like links and
its too myspace in appearance (old myspace) - I would bounce if results landed
me on that site without even reading the content.

~~~
rhizome
Are you saying that Google ranks sites based on appearance?

~~~
ENGNR
They take immediate bounces into account, so if people bounce based on
appearance then yes.

~~~
rhizome
That's a big 'if.'

~~~
iopq
I try to avoid it because it looks like garbage. Even though the content is
good, I feel the site is not authoritative because it looks like some guy's
geocities page.

~~~
julian_t
I agree that the design is a bit old-fashioned, but to me sites are about the
content, so as long as I can get the information I want without getting a
migraine, I'll ignore it. Authoritative comes from content, not looks.

In fact, to me MeFi and HN are about the same, design-wise...

~~~
iopq
Hacker news has a sane color scheme. Ask Metafilter has barf yellow on swamp
green.

------
mariehaynes
I feel like a few people are missing the point as to why MetaFilter dropped in
their rankings. It was likely not a manual penalty but rather a change in
regards to the Panda algorithm. According to this article
([https://medium.com/technology-
musings/941d15ec96f0](https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0)) the
drop happened in November of 2012. It doesn't say which date, but November 5
and November 21 were both days that Google refreshed the Panda algorithm.

Panda was created to filter down poor content and filter up good content.
Sometimes it gets it wrong, but generally if a site is being filtered down
it's because there are too many pages of the site in the index that are
apparently not helpful to users.

I do think that the design has a lot to do with MetaFilter's demise. I have
landed on this site, and, not knowing what I know now after reading articles
about the quality information that is on MetaFilter, I have immediately
clicked away because it looked like a spammy page. If enough users do this
then this shows Google that users don't want to engage with this site.

I haven't had a deep look into the technical structure of the site but there's
a good possibility that with a redesign and a review of their architecture,
the site could see a return to normal levels with the next Panda refresh.

~~~
odiv
Looks like it was November 17th according to this:
[http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized-
google-1921...](http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized-
google-192168)

Any additional insight based on that date?

Full disclosure: MetaFilter member reading about this stuff everywhere with
interest who joined here to comment. HN seems right up my alley with the
simple design though I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be a threaded comments
kind of guy.

------
credo
>>One last one: Searching for “most amazing woman ever” on Bing will give you
MetaFilter’s helpful “Who is the most amazing woman who ever lived” as the
third result. >>Google puts it at the bottom of the second page of results, in
19th place. Google’s top result? A list of “the 100 most beautiful women
ever.”

Unfortunately, American culture (and many cultures around the world) objectify
women and value them based on their looks. So Google's search results may just
be a true reflection of what people are interested in looking at. Perhaps
Bing's algorithms aren't as good as Google's algorithms in estimating what
people might be more interested in.

To be clear, I didn't intend my statement as a feminist critique of society
(though personally I would agree with this feminist critique). I just used
this example as a roundabout way of defending Google's algorithm and saying
that Google gives us the search results we deserve (and ask for) and not the
search results that (from Auerback's perspective and mine) we _should_
probably be more interested in.

~~~
rhizome
That's the crux of the argument, though: Google search results are ranked
according to a value system. What does that system prioritize? Not Metafilter;
not Harriet Tubman. "Beautiful Women." This is neither right nor wrong, it
just is, but Google has to live with what that says about them, and that's
entirely fair.

------
joshwa
mathowie goes into detail: [https://medium.com/technology-
musings/941d15ec96f0](https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0)

------
kristofferR
I'll be honest - I've been avoiding MetaFilter for years due to the horrific
UI/design.

I actually didn't know that the content MetaFilter has supposedly is good
because the design is so off-putting that I've never been able to read much of
it.

MetaFilter should really do a redesign to a more readable and friendly
interface, that is likely to increase usage/reduce bounce rates (and maybe
increase the Google rankings).

~~~
mbrock
What's so bad about it?

~~~
kristofferR
I'm far from a designer, but I still like to think I appreciate good design.

1\. The color combinations are really bad. Dirty-yellow on blue/dirty-yellow
on green is close to what a designer would chose if they were planning to make
something deliberately look ugly.

2\. The titles are in grey while the content text is in white. Why tone down
the most important thing on the page?

3\. The spacing between all the objects is weird. The space between the
comments is huge - it was likely made that large since they would otherwise
flow into each other. They should have separated the comments using other
methods in addition to just making the space between them huge.

4\. For long comments with multiple paragraphs and links it can be hard to see
where the next comment begin, since the links (in the comment) and the links
to the user profile/permalink to post look almost the same.

~~~
simoncion
I am not a designer, but I know that I do appreciate good design.

Even back in the early 2000's, Metafilter's simple, clean, relatively
information-dense design was a welcome change from most news aggregators out
there. Metafilter is supposed to be a place for thoughtful medium-to-long-form
discussion. I feel that its clean, consistent, text-focused design serves that
purpose well.

Honestly, remove comment nesting, move the comment credit line under the
comment, and change the color scheme to white and gold on blue, and HN's
comment page looks pretty much exactly the same as Metafilter's.

~~~
kristofferR
Your last paragraph basically says "remove the biggest flaws with Metafilter's
design compared to HN's - and then they are pretty much the same". ;)

I won't go into the color scheme since I guess that is a matter of taste, but
at the same time I don't think it's an accident that you don't see the same
color combinations used anywhere else ;)

The comment nesting and placement of the comment credit line(s) is actually
really important. It is vital to make the different comments easy to visually
separate from each other. HN has one line above and one line below each
comment, effectively boxing them in. That, plus the comment nesting, makes
HN's comment threads easy to read and skim over.

Metafilter on the other hand has just one line below each comment. Unlike on
HN, where the line has a lower contrast/eye focus than the comment text, the
line on MF is using the same colors as the links in comments. That is
completely counter-productive, and objectively bad design.

Since MF doesn't have comment nesting it should do something else to visually
separate the comments. Most other sites subtly change the background color,
but there are also other ways to do it.

High contrast/big size should be used for things that should be focused on,
and small contrast/small size for things that shouldn't be focused on. On HN
the contrast between the color and size of the objects mostly make sense
(although self posts should have darker text), but on MF it is all over the
place.

------
hayksaakian
The author admits that his survey was anecdotal.

I'd be interested in seeing a more rigorous data set.

Keyword Phrase, bing ranking, google ranking

~~~
franze
google webmaster tools

------
chasing
Metafilter's founder mathowie takes a much more measured tone about Google's
role: "A year and a half ago, we woke up one day to see a 40% decrease in
revenue and traffic to Ask MetaFilter, likely the result of ongoing Google
index updates." ([http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-
MetaFilter](http://metatalk.metafilter.com/23245/State-of-MetaFilter))

Google changes. The web itself changes. As seminal as Metafilter has been, it
doesn't "deserve" the top slots any more than any other content.

So I find it a little irritating that David Auerbach at Slate has attempted to
overdramatize this into something it's really not.

~~~
Lagged2Death
_...it doesn 't "deserve" the top slots any more than any other content._

I thought the whole deal with inventing Page Rank and all these smart indexing
algorithms - the whole _raison d 'être_ for Google - was _exactly_ because
some content was more deserving than other content.

When I do the search for "maybe there is a god," MeFi doesn't show up until
page 8 now. The first two pages of results are virtually all videos and lyrics
related to a single 12-year-old Christian pop song.

Which is available for sale on Google Play. Hmm.

~~~
Lagged2Death
One thing I wanted to mention earlier, didn't have time:

The pop song that comprises the first two pages of results for the "maybe
there is a god" search is actually called "Mabye There's A Loving God." That's
_close_ to the search text, but it's not an exact match.

The MeFi page mentioned in the article contains _the exact phrase_ "maybe
there is a god" _in the title_. And it shows up on page _eight_ of my search
results. That is ridiculous.

You can argue that MeFi wasn't singled out on purpose, that algorithms change
and there are bigger benefits elsewhere that I'm not seeing in this case and
blah blah blah, and I don't know about any of that. No opinion.

But I think you're going to have a hard time arguing that these search results
are in any way more accurate, more relevant, or better than the older results
were.

And that is very much of a piece with recent, more general criticism of
Google's search: That it's simply not as good, not as useful, as it used to
be.

------
chris_wot
Hmmm... so Google is becoming less relevant to me. When I search for content,
I expect to see more MetaFilter than "100 most beautiful women in the world".

Duck Duck Go... perhaps it's time to switch my search engine?

------
franze
sorry to spoil the fun, but metafilter's SEO / search performance was broken
way before the 40% drop.

[http://replycam.com/i/MetaFilter_layoffs__Why_has_Google_for...](http://replycam.com/i/MetaFilter_layoffs__Why_has_Google_forsaken_the_legendary_Internet_forum%3F-20140522-093436.png)

where is the growth, man? and i don't mean the dropoff. the dropoff is just,
you know, change. google changes, all the time, user behaviour changes, user
expectation changes, the way google treats sites changes, the internet
changes. so yes, 40% less traffic via google organic search happens. you don't
have any "right" to google traffic, there are a lot of sites out there.

but the thing that seems to be really broken is the "lack of growth" before
the dropoff and after it.

SEO overall has these business cases

    
    
      * a) if we add x% more landingpages to our site, we gain y% more trafﬁc.
      * b) if we add x% more content to y% of our landingpages, we gain z% more trafﬁc.
      * c) if other sites point x% more links to our landingpages, we gain y% more trafﬁc.
      * d) if we make the user experience of our site better, our traffic gets more sustainable.
    

as metafilter is a quite popular site with an active community, they should at
least do a) and b) quite well, probably doesn't have an issue with c)

as there is and was not growth, then there is probably something rotten going
on on the platform level.

some issues from a 5 min check i have outlined here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770414)

additionally they seem to completely disregard mobile
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fask.metafilter.com%2Ftags%2Fapartment&tab=mobile)
and missing out on the probably most important market like ever.

so basically before firing their staff they should have listen to a decent SEO
(and implemented some changes) and / or mobile guy.

tl;dr: if your have a popular site with lots and lots of content, but you
don't see (organic search) growth then your site is broken, even before google
turns of some of your traffic because you know, google.

p.s.: i would love a look into meta-filters google webmaster tools

------
programminggeek
You know what, Google forsakes many sites fairly frequently, even sites that a
lot of people like. Why would MetaFilter be spared? Because it's popular with
techies and Google can do no evil in their eyes?

~~~
dredmorbius
Disruptions, unpredictability, and random swings in support are all harmful to
the ecosystem. _Google 's actions have consequences._

Alternatives are to make yourself far less dependent on Google (all the more
reason to support search alternatives, including DDG). But so long as your
business is eyeball aggregation, you're going to be at the whim of the
aggregators (and that _is_ a control point).

~~~
adventured
I don't disagree with what you said, but it's constantly pointed out that
start-ups (etc) should avoid being dependent on x y z for traffic.

There isn't a single business on earth that is not dependent on a 'platform'
of one sort or another. Even Google is dependent on other platforms. You
merely pick your poison, if you're so lucky, when you run a business. There
are always gatekeepers and always will be; and they can cripple you if they
choose to, the only variable is how much of an incentive they have to do so,
and the damage they'll take by doing so.

Make yourself less dependent on Google? Ok, which means you're going to make
yourself more dependent on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or DuckDuckGo,
or radio ads, or television ads, or newspaper ads, or billboards, or etc. None
of those are benevolent lords just looking out for your own well being. DDG
can still chop you up with an algorithm change just as easily as Google can,
and at Google's scale every little change would impact businesses just as
Google's present changes do, and there would be just as many claims of unfair
treatment. DDG can be as transparent and open as they like, that wouldn't
change the sour grapes that would be derived from algorithm changes.

~~~
massysett
"Ok, which means you're going to make yourself more dependent on Facebook, or
Twitter, or LinkedIn, or DuckDuckGo, or radio ads, or television ads, or
newspaper ads, or billboards, or etc."

Being dependent on Google + Facebook + Twitter + LinkedIn is better than being
dependent on Google alone.

MetaFilter is just now learning that it did not have a sustainable business
model.

