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Regarding the future of search engine optimisation in web3

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Dani AI

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Brief primer that ties together the thread: several posters here raised two core themes — distrust of opportunistic projects () and the technical promise of identity and storage changes (, ). The most actionable view is to treat "Web3 SEO" as a change in how content is located, identified, and trusted, not simply a new set of keywords. Emerging specs for decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials formalize identity and provenance, and content-addressed storage changes how items are referenced and cached (W3C DID Core, W3C Verifiable Credentials).

Concrete technical shifts to watch:

  • Content will be referenced by cryptographic hashes (IPFS/Arweave style) rather than only by HTTP URLs; discoverability will depend on indexers and name services that resolve those hashes (IPFS docs).
  • Names and ownership will lean on decentralized naming and identifiers (ENS, DIDs), so author/site identity moves from WHOIS/hosting accounts to cryptographic credentials.
  • Indexing will increasingly rely on specialized indexers and subgraphs that surface on-chain and off-chain content; expect schemes similar to existing projects that index blockchain data (see The Graph).

Practical preparation steps:

  • Maintain canonical, crawlable web copies while experimenting with content-addressed mirrors (pin content on IPFS or Arweave) so existing search engines keep your presence.
  • Publish machine-readable provenance: JSON-LD schema plus a link to a content hash and a DID for the content owner/author.
  • Claim a decentralized name or DID and publish verifiable credentials for authoritativeness you control.
  • Plan to feed or run indexers (or work with indexing providers) so decentralized content surfaces in search layers.

Caveats: echoing , scams exist — prefer audited projects and open standards. Track W3C specs and active indexing projects (e.g., The Graph) and treat current Web3 tooling as evolving; implement hybrid Web2/Web3 workflows to preserve discoverability while adopting decentralization.

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

Be sure to look up some web site such as "Web 3.0 is Going Great" to find the cesspool of scams and ripoffs.

No one I know that is legit is buying into this.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

Web3 is Going Just Great
...and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet.

  • Molly White

Today's story is "$8.9 million stolen from SafeMoon" which was due to "a code upgrade introduced a bug. The attacker was able to take advantage of the bug to artificially inflate the price of the SafeMoon token, then sell it to steal the erroneous "profit"."

Web3 stories like this are almost daily so for me, Web3 is mostly about the grift.

Member Avatar for Dani

What stories are you referring to? I don't think a truly decentralized Internet is here yet (although we do have things like Mastodon that run on independent servers). For now, I am not able to make any specific SEO-related suggestions other than to say that SEO is constantly evolving to keep up with the web.

Edited by Dani
Member Avatar for Dani

Be sure to look up some web site such as "Web 3.0 is Going Great" to find the cesspool of scams and ripoffs.

That looks like a pretty crappy "news" site? Why are you bring it up? What does it have to do with Web3 or SEO?

commented: This is all about Web 3.0 and how it enables scams and more. +17
Member Avatar for artsemlaz

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that data is stored, verified, and shared online, which could have significant implications for SEO. For example, blockchain-based identity verification could make it easier for search engines to authenticate content and eliminate spam and other low-quality content from search results.

I also do think that optimization is going to be more on-demand for small businesses more than ever before.

commented: After years of Web 3 scams, maybe it's time for Web 4.0 +17
Member Avatar for Dani

What web 3 scams are you talking about? Isn't web 3 just a codeword for a decentralized Internet?

Member Avatar for bijutoha

According to Forbes, Web3 is transforming the future of business and is expected to exhibit a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 41.6% from 2022 to 2028. Web3 is envisioned as a “decentralized web ecosystem” where users can retain data ownership. Its blockchain-based infrastructure would usher in the era of the “token economy.”

According to Web3 Academy, the future of SEO in the Web3 world will look much different than today. The big difference is there will be much more reliance on algorithms that categorize media, communities, people, and resources and have a better understanding of intent and much stronger abilities to anticipate what the user will want.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

Dani, if you wish me to give a daily post about Web 3.0 scams, exploits and thefts, I can do that. Is that required here?

Member Avatar for Dani

I have no clue what you’re referring to. Web 3 does not exist yet.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3 agrees there is no Web 3.0. As such why did anyone consider the topic question to have any validity?

However, what Web 3.0 is being marketed as, continues to be a venue or idea that shows more promise for scams and thefts than any real step forward for the web.

For dwellfox, there is no Web 3.0 so there is no future for SEO as of today.

commented: There's nothing invalid about a question posed to start a discussion hypothesizing about how things will be different in the future -8
Member Avatar for Dani

Web 3 is the next generation of the Internet. I certainly don’t think it will be any more prone to scams and thefts than the current Internet.

He has a very valid question. It’s always important to know what is coming next in the industry so that, as a business owner, you can prepare for it. As of now, we don’t know yet how SEO will change once web 3 exists, but for sure it will. Googlebot will most likely not be able to exist in its current form, for example. However, it’s still a bit too early to predict.

Member Avatar for Dani

For dwellfox, there is no Web 3.0 so there is no future for SEO as of today.

It's true that there is currently no Web 3 so there is no known way to SEO for it today. However, that's why dwellfox asked about the future of SEO once Web 3 is here (and it's coming!) It's definitely a valid question, albeit one that there unfortunately is not a lot of information out there about right now. However, that's the point of discussion forums, after all! There's nothing wrong with discussions revolving around hypothesizing about what the future will be like, right?

Per my previous post, since what we do know about Web 3 is that it will be heading towards the direction of a decentralized Internet, that means that the way that Googlebot, and other search engines of the future, discover and crawl websites will most likely look different.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

Given there is no Web 3.0, then any answer will be like Schrödinger's cat. Both dead and alive, right and wrong.

In the meantime, the scams and grifts continue by those claiming their sites are Web 3.0.

Member Avatar for Dani

In the meantime, the scams and grifts continue by those claiming their sites are Web 3.0.

I have no clue what you're talking about. Are you saying that scammy sites are currently saying "I'm a Web 3.0 website"? If so, yeah, there are lots of scammy sites on the web claiming everything and anything.

However, the real Web 3 isn't here yet and has nothing at all to do with being scammy.

Given there is no Web 3.0, then any answer will be like Schrödinger's cat. Both dead and alive, right and wrong.

As of now, yeah, that's why the question asked about the future. We can always make educated predictions as to how things will be different five or ten years down the line, right, especially in industries we are intimately familiar with. For example, the industry has already experienced the hugeeeeee shift in the SEO industry and how SEO is done and from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. That next wave is probably less than a decade away, and is likely to shake things up just as much.

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