Ask HN: SEO gems?

[rwebb]

i'm collecting a list of the most ingenious sites that are fueled entirely by search. my personal favorites are http://www.retailmenot.com and http://www.whocallsme.com . retailmenot definitely makes more money but whocallsme is hilarious and very useful.

[JacobAldridge]

Yahoo Answers?

Surely nobody actually goes there intentionally, creating a website dedicated to giving the incorrect answer (but with an awesome page rank and truly unique rants) to your every Google Search, and twice-weekly providing the Fail Blog with material.

[rwebb → JacobAldridge]

ha ha yes yahoo answers kills it. on the other hand i f-ing hate experts exchange

[nreece]

StackOverflow.com

[functional-tree]

SEO?

[rwebb → functional-tree]

yeah sorry of that's ambiguous - i clarified the initial post above. by SEO gems i mean sites which have growth/user acquisition fueled entirely by users searching for stuff.

[slyn → functional-tree]

Search Engine Optimization

[rwebb]

crackberry.com is another great one

[onreact-com]

To be honest it's not advisable to rely only on search traffic. I say that as a SEO. Returning visitors and often even type in or direct visitors are much better.

Many spammy sites rely solely on Google/search traffic.

http://hubpages.com/ for instance.