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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

> It had fairly steady growth until 2012, before petering out throughout the 2010s and 2020s in lieu of more centralized sites like StackExchange, and by 2025, only a small community was left

This timeline tracks with my own blogging. Google slowly stopped ranking traditional forum posts and blogs as well around that time, regardless of quality, unless it was a “major”.

> But, unlike so many other fora from back in the early days, it went from 2003 to 2025 without ever changing its URLs, erasing its old posts, or going down altogether.

I can also confirm if you have a bookmark to my blog from 2008, that link will still work!

The CMS is no longer, it's all static now... which too few orgs take the short amount of time to bother with when "refreshing" their web presence :(

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> Google slowly stopped ranking traditional forum posts and blogs as well around that time

IMO the true inflection point was 2014 when Google first hid (from the UI) and then fully removed (no longer accessible by magic URL) the “Blogs” and especially the “Discussions” filters. Some contemporary discussions on “Discussions”:

- https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/23/googles-search-filters-now...

- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/03/bring-back-forum-se... (details the briefly-working magic URLs)

- https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/23/search-discussions-blogs-p...

- https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-filters-gone-1799...

- https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4687960.htm

- https://www.thecoli.com/threads/i-cant-google-search-by-disc...

- https://www.neogaf.com/threads/anyone-else-annoyed-google-re...

- https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/57249/has-the-op...

- https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/how-to-do-google-discuss...

- https://browsermedia.agency/blog/alternatives-discussion-sea...

I recently noticed that there is now a not-visible-by-default “Forums” option in Google Search. It is selected by specifying the query parameter udm=18:

https://www.google.com/search?q=hp+50g&udm=18

This is interesting. I wonder why it's not visible by default.

Maybe it is/was an A/B test, to see if it hurts ad revenue (it probably does).

The option appeared randomly for me on a search, and I took immediately note of the udm number. :)

Ran through the lower numbers that hit something interesting:

8 = jobs (but doesn't return any results) 15 = attractions (but doesn't return any results)

In addition to the others mentioned on the sibling comment (I cannot reply to it?), udm=28 is shopping, 36 is books, 37 is "products", 44 is "visual matches", 48 is "exact matches", 50 is "AI Mode" but no tab appears, 51 is homework and I stopped at 80 because the page kept removing that part of the url all the way up to that point.

For some reason the reply button won’t pop up right away but you can click on the post’s timestamp and reply there

I remember several traditional programming forums I frequented in the 00s getting hit hard by the Google Panda update around 2013. It ruined their SEO and they started to go into decline. Forums and blogs had a culture that isn't replicated by reddit, social media, etc. It's a shame to lose it.

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