Note that even in the failure case (success rate of AirBNB hosts in Las Vegas), you still learned something—that it’s not a simple enough question for easy answers.
SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully. This is the only reason I can think that your main point (you’ll learn something valuable in a very short time on almost any topic, so use this technique early and often) would not apply to most of us.
Note that even in the failure case (success rate of AirBNB hosts in Las Vegas), you still learned something—that it’s not a simple enough question for easy answers.
True! A noteworthy consolation prize.
SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully. This is the only reason I can think that your main point (you’ll learn something valuable in a very short time on almost any topic, so use this technique early and often) would not apply to most of us.
SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully.
Interesting. I thought it was because Google progressively dumbed down their search and optimized it for finding things that most people wanted to find, but not what I wanted to find. But I suppose there’s no reason it can’t be both causes.
it’s not a simple enough question for easy answers.
It’s also plausible to me that it requires enough intersections (owns a house; rents the house out on AirBnB; in a single metro area; measures success in a reasonable way; writes about it on the internet) gets small enough that there are no results.
Looking for general advice (how to succeed as an AirBNB host) might give a model that’s easy to fill in, like “you will succeed if the location is X appealing and there are f(X) listings or fewer.”
That still seems like a pretty easy answer to me, but it could only be found with slightly better Google Fu.
I think that leads to a need for heuristics on how hard to try rephrasing things or when to give up quickly rather than getting sucked down a two day wiki walk rabbit hole.
SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully.
So true and breaks my heart. I can feel the increased Googling difficulty, in my bones, over the last 18 months or so. Tragedy of the commons strikes again.
When the Internet was young, I would go straight to cnet.com for device reviews. When Google got good, I would go to Google. Now, I go straight to cnet.com for device reviews.
Interesting to hear. I’ve always had a vague sense that search results aren’t that great in general but haven’t noticed a change over time. Could easily just be me though.
It could be me, too. I used to have to think about SEO when I was in charge of a previous employer’s minimal online marketing/blogging, so plenty of this sensation could be confirmation bias (tendency to blame bad Google results on SEO rather than Google, whose product it is). But I think I can spot a page that was generated primarily through SEO—probably with a better accuracy rate than me differentiating between GPT-3 and Wittgenstein.
It’s worth noting that Google isn’t the only search engine around. There are times when Google seems to have editoral decisions to show certain results and Yandex as an independent search engine gives you better results.
Note that even in the failure case (success rate of AirBNB hosts in Las Vegas), you still learned something—that it’s not a simple enough question for easy answers.
SEO has gotten to the point that it actually takes some skill to google things usefully. This is the only reason I can think that your main point (you’ll learn something valuable in a very short time on almost any topic, so use this technique early and often) would not apply to most of us.
True! A noteworthy consolation prize.
Yeah, that does sound plausible and it hadn’t occurred to me. Makes me think back to The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think.
Interesting. I thought it was because Google progressively dumbed down their search and optimized it for finding things that most people wanted to find, but not what I wanted to find. But I suppose there’s no reason it can’t be both causes.
It’s also plausible to me that it requires enough intersections (owns a house; rents the house out on AirBnB; in a single metro area; measures success in a reasonable way; writes about it on the internet) gets small enough that there are no results.
Looking for general advice (how to succeed as an AirBNB host) might give a model that’s easy to fill in, like “you will succeed if the location is X appealing and there are f(X) listings or fewer.”
That still seems like a pretty easy answer to me, but it could only be found with slightly better Google Fu.
I think that leads to a need for heuristics on how hard to try rephrasing things or when to give up quickly rather than getting sucked down a two day wiki walk rabbit hole.
So true and breaks my heart. I can feel the increased Googling difficulty, in my bones, over the last 18 months or so. Tragedy of the commons strikes again.
When the Internet was young, I would go straight to cnet.com for device reviews. When Google got good, I would go to Google. Now, I go straight to cnet.com for device reviews.
Interesting to hear. I’ve always had a vague sense that search results aren’t that great in general but haven’t noticed a change over time. Could easily just be me though.
It could be me, too. I used to have to think about SEO when I was in charge of a previous employer’s minimal online marketing/blogging, so plenty of this sensation could be confirmation bias (tendency to blame bad Google results on SEO rather than Google, whose product it is). But I think I can spot a page that was generated primarily through SEO—probably with a better accuracy rate than me differentiating between GPT-3 and Wittgenstein.
It’s worth noting that Google isn’t the only search engine around. There are times when Google seems to have editoral decisions to show certain results and Yandex as an independent search engine gives you better results.