Here’s another thing that pisses me off: Search Engine Optimized content. Specifically informational posts. I don’t know when this started, but at some point it seems to have become the norm that a post about a topic should no longer be just about that topic, but also about a whole bunch of other garbage that nobody actually cares about. This has happened to me multipel times, but it just did again so I had to write it down. For example I at some point was looking into configuring a VPN via Wireguard. You don’t have to know what that is or why anyone would need it, but the gist is that configuring it can be boiled down to as little as a few short commands and config files. But that wouldn’t make an article with good SEO, now would it? So what do you find instead when looking for something like this? An article explaining what Wireguard ist, when it was made, who made it why it was made, what the alternatives are, why OpenVPN is inferior and what even is a VPN? Why would you want one, is a self-hosted VPN with Wireguard even good? Why not try our sponsor ShittyVPN?
You get the idea. The article gets artificially inflated in size to contain as much useless and only marginally related information to please the search engine gods. This way it increases the chance of the article appearing high up in the search results on Google and other search engines. I can’t find any other explanation, because it sure as hell doesn’t make it easier to read. If I came here for what amounts to roughly 5% of the article and to find it I have to sift through 95% of bullshit bingo I am a lot more inclined to just leave. They could just split the article into different parts, but I assume Google’s optimization does not like that.