Have you ever noticed that it can be a challenge to find even your own older posts on Hive powered sites, including Peakd, Leofinance and most others? I highlighted this same problem back in 2016 on Steem and somehow it still persists. Even worse, if I search in Google for my own posts they almost never show up - but my old posts DO consistently show up for Steem powered sites.. This needs fixing!
Hive (and most hive powered sites) are repositories of information primarily, they store text and multimedia that contain a wealth of knowledge, thoughts and experiences from the human world. We have gone to great lengths to create clever ways to make sure that our information is uncensored and not lost - yet it IS being lost, not through censorship but through poor discovery and search tools!
There are several problems here - search tools on hive sites are typically not very effective (LeoFinance doesn't even seem to have a search tool at present), native post discovery is not well evolved on the blockchain level, there are a huge number of posts to search through and finally, frustratingly, search engines like Google tend to incorrectly index Hive sites (or don't index them at all).
Improving post discovery will require a multi dimensional approach and it will be interesting to see how the major marketing company 'Ingite' that are currently being paid from the Hive proposal system address these issues. As we can see from the recent update from @lordbutterly, they definitely already have their hands full with other issues.
Google Indexing
Having run my own social network for many years before Hive and Steem existed, I am well aware that Google will blacklist such sites that share 'controversial' information. Google already lost a Billion Euro court case for exactly this behaviour, but sadly I wasn't aware of it at the time so didn't participate as a claimant.
I mention this because if you search in Google for, for example, my 'whistleblower series' using the prefix of 'site:peakd.com' to restrict the search only to Hive via PeakD, you will currently only see one post come back in the search results that is from that series. However, if you do the same for steemit.com, you will see most of my posts (before I left steem) from that series, correctly indexed. CLEARLY, Google is favouring Steem over Hive - not just in terms of ranking but in terms of actual inclusion of pages in results. Why is that?
Determining the internal workings of Google's algorithm is not easy at all, but in this case we know that hive and steem are very similar, so such a huge difference in the way they are treated is extremely suspicious to me. Could it be that Steem was taken over by Chinese interests to stifle free speech and Google is just playing their part by enabling Steem and stifling Hive? I can't say for sure, but it's something to think about given the documents leaked from Google which openly state they intend to censor the internet because we can't be 'trusted' with fredom!
Taking Action
While decyphering Google's activity might be extremely difficult and finding remedy outside of court cases might be impossible - we can still take action to help hive powered sites and users to not get lost down the internet memory hole.
All Hive powered sites need to make internal search functionality a high priority. Fixing issues and being imaginative in the process. So many sites have great search tools, a bit of research goes a long way.
SEO audits need to be regularly performed on Hive powered sites regularly to make sure that page desgins and overall site structure aren't resulting in the sites being penalised by google and other search engines. Each Dapp creator can do this but it would be very powerful to have a team or group tasked with monitoring this and advising Dapp teams directly. Building Dapps is quite a different skill to keeping up with SEO requirements, which is why there are SEO specialists working full time on getting websites to perform in search engines. I did point out in my reply to @lordbutterfly that @crucialweb will be happy to help out in this.
When creating posts we can take SEO into consideration. Don't use headlines that are too long and use any feature in the DApp editor you use that enable editing of the blog post's URL. URLs, titles and internal post headers should ideally contain keywords and phrases that the world is interested in. This will grab search engine attention.
Let's get Hive where it deserves to be!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Hey bro u good? I have an idea about an Instagram viral marketing campaign for HIVe. U think I should post it in Leo finance? Cheers dude I hope you're good
Aloha! I am ok thanks, currently in Australia - land of the covid free and home of the still kind of not brave. lol
Sure, go ahead and post it - it will go through to the main hive chain anyway.
How are things with you? :)
Nice, you made the right choice. When did u leave UK?
We are in France now, next to the Spanish Border. We're doing great thank you ❤️, are you coming back any time soon? Haha you're entering Autumn isn't it?
Alrighty then, I will post it in Leofinance cheers!
I left a few months ago. Home was getting a bit nuts but life is mostly normal here in Australia.
Oh, how is France during COVID? I haven't heard too much from there - they seem to be mostly rioting about other things from what I have seen. lol
Yes, it's the start of Autumn, but still pretty warm - like summer in Britain!
They wanna put in place the vaccine passport. My other channel on Youtube has finally been removed after the last strike hahaha. It was bound to happen, with all the shit that has been stirred. I would suggest you check yours, as there has been a massive removal lately of channels likes Corbett and others...
I see, ok - I think there are pressures for vaccine passports in many parts of the world and also people fighting against it. We shall see how that shitshow plays out!
I just checked and my Youtube channel is still online, but I have deliberately been a bit passive during the covid nonsense since I know that there's a good chance I'll get it deleted. I have no problem leaving youtube, I've never made a penny on there and I am obviously being hugely reach restricted.. That said, I prefer to keep the account in case things somehow change and I can build on the 1k+ subs I have.
Even better would be the crypto class action lawsuit paying out and Google losing a bunch of cash that goes into my pocket :)
Grab your pop corn ahaha. 😁
They got me on some old stuffs about the pizza stuffs (I don't wanna say the words), it was mirrored videos I forgot. Oh well, I kind of feel relieved at the same time, as it was lots of pressure, for something not really rewarding.
My wife always said, "is it worth it?".
Down the line, they could very well use our channels as proof of "conspiracy", I really wouldn't be surprised if a thought police is being put in place in a near future.
Anyway here I am rambling again, take care my friend and I hope to see you soon!
We need something like Yoast on the front ends, which guides users through improving SEO. Most people have no idea what SEO is or why they should care.
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