Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#61

Post by r3bl » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

allknowingfrog wrote: post #22

rahuldottech wrote: post #7

> As fewer results of such not-for-profit websites show up in Google Search, competition will be reintroduced to the search market. I don't think it will. While I personally hate AMP, and disagree with many of Google's practices, this is not the solution. Google is everywhere . It is the default search engine on almost every browser, as well as on most devices. How often do you hear someone say "look it up" as oppose…

I'm not saying it proves anything, but Kleenex is synonymous with facial tissue and Velcro is synonymous with hook and loop fasteners. I "google" things on DuckDuckGo. :)

Yeah, I've been using DDG for years, but I just can't get "Google it" out of my dictionary. I try to replace it with "Duck it", which feels stupid as fuck to say, but "Google it" doesn't feel any better.

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#62

Post by jacobush » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

Twisell wrote: post #36

LyndsySimon wrote: post #8

> Google needs to stick to being a solid search engine instead of trying to be gate keepers While I agree with the sentiment, I feel like this ship sailed years ago - it's like saying "Amazon should stick to being an ecommerce platform". What's more, Google was never in the business of "being a solid search engine". Google is and always has been in the business of selling access to users' eyeballs. AMP - as much as I…

The ship have sailed is never an acceptable argument it’s just a lazy way to justify status quo. As a French I’m pretty glad in retrospect that my ancestors under Napoleon reign and the Bourbon restoration didn’t go like “I really think democracy would have been a nice feature but I feel like this ship sailed”

Mmm yea but it would take similar turmoil to call that ship to port again.

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#63

Post by the_duke » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

rahuldottech wrote: post #7

> As fewer results of such not-for-profit websites show up in Google Search, competition will be reintroduced to the search market. I don't think it will. While I personally hate AMP, and disagree with many of Google's practices, this is not the solution. Google is everywhere . It is the default search engine on almost every browser, as well as on most devices. How often do you hear someone say "look it up" as oppose…

> especially when it comes to specific ... results

Specific results for niche search queries have been getting way worse over the last few years though. To the point where you have to actively try to trick the engine into giving you anything remotely meaningful.

Almost every time I try, I find pages and pages of generic, SEO optimized crap.

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#64

Post by heyyyouu » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

LyndsySimon wrote: post #13

jgmmo wrote: post #3

yeah but then how do you get organic traffic?

On a related note, what does organic search traffic look like these days? I was once personally invested in running several small content sites and at the time organic traffic was pretty much entirely from Google. There were other inbound sources - Bing, Yahoo!, etc. - but they were so negligible that it would have been reasonable to ignore them completely for the purposes of optimization. I've been using DDG as my p…

It's still 90-95 percent Google, surprisingly. You'd think it would be less with mobile but no. We are seeing more duck duck go, but bing and yahoo have stayed steady for years. Social is a rise, and that's a lot of mobile. Also then just pickups (links from sites like this). But yeah, still very much google dominated.

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#65

Post by speeder » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

elbasti wrote: post #49

speeder wrote: post #32

I am currently struggling with Google and been even considering just straight up creating a Brazilian "Yandex/Baidu" clone or something somehow. My current business is heavily Google reliant, and Google been proving to be a very poor business partner: * Keeps punishing my site both in organic rank and AdWords rank (thus price) for not being mobile, despite my site being intended to be viewed by engineers with big scr…

Out of curiosity (and I really do mean, out of pure curiosity), why do you care about fraudulent clicks? Unless the fraudulent click volume is "lumpy" or unpredictable, the only thing that matters is cost per lead/cost per purchase. Fraudulent clicks make clicks worth less, so presumably the price already takes this into consideration?

After I decied to just drop mobile entirely, where 99% of the clicks were fraudulent (and indeed cheap, something like 1 or 2 cents was common), the campaigns in question had huge drops in total cost per month, one of them was sadly, literally 100%, meaning every single click on some months was fraudulent (that campaign is still active, it gets like 2, 3 clicks per month)

Mind you, the campaigns with most fraudulent clicks, were the ones setup by google employees, they regularly insist in calling me to "help", explain new features and whatnot, every single time I setup a campaign following step by step their employee, the result was ridiculous amounts of fraud.

The campaigns that bring me most of my real world income are the ones where I ignore what google wants for most part and do it my way.

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#66

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

rangeofmotion wrote: post #39

I really wonder about the people who work at Google. Surely they have people whose ideals are higher than this? It seems obvious that Google is a real threat to the freedom the internet originally made possible. But engineers still sign up in droves to work there? What kind of engineers are these? Do all of Google's employees simply disagree that Google is a threat? Do they not care? Are they just financially scared…

You can make an argument that Google is a threat, but it's certainly not obvious. It requires a complex analysis to explain why Google leaning on AMP is different than Oracle and IBM leaning on ANSI SQL.

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#67

Post by buboard » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #54

buboard wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that that their "upgrade" of their adwords/adsense interface is an unmitigated failure of constantly spinning progress bars and cards cards cards everywhere making it really infuriating to use. And charges and payments have become suspiciously opaque. Things like CPM swings (for adsense) in the exact same audiences. As for adwords, luckily i can afford to forgo all mobile traffic. I don't know what shit google…

It only works right on chrome, and you have to sometimes pay attention to memory leaks on all their sites. I built myself a workstation with 32GB of overclocked ram... A few times I left it on overnight with a google site open (adwords or gmail), the machine became unresponsive, using all 32GB of RAM and then freezing after running out of swap... I only found out what was happening on a day I was particularly patient…

I AM using chrome! Let me try again: Opening adsense: 6 seconds to load a useless dashboards with 3 extra boxes "we thought you might find this card interesting"

I want a sites report

Clicking on "reports"... after 5 seconds the left menu loads, while the report on the right still loads... I click "sites" on the menu... The report on the right loads, but it is the default report, not the sites report. I have to click the sites report again and wait.

This happens every day , every time. By the time i get there, i forgot what i was looking for. This is just a sad state

Oh, they say my website has mobile access issues? But it is a bootstrap website optimized for mobile. Clicking on fix issue .... checking live version ... your site is mobile ready... yet it still says i have to fix 3 errors. I pressed validate fix 4 days ago and it's still there. Hmmm i guess i don't get their level of AI.

And dont get me started on adwords campaigns. Can't set up a simple campaign without going through some extremely difficult to parse terminology. Wanted to limit my ads to desktop - turns out they removed that simple option - you have to do tricks with bidding. I just don't get why

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#68

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #58

whatshisface wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly don't know why so many governments with strong antimonopoly laws tolerate Google shenanigans. To build an anti-monopoly case you would have to do more than show that Google was the only good ad vendor. Are they the only ones that can give you clicks because they are smarter and better at their jobs than every other ad vendor, or are they the only ones that can give you clicks because of underhanded marke…

Yes but there's a network effect here. If Google owns all the billboards in town, then you can't really find a better advertisement platform, no matter how skilled they are.

Sure, but Google doesn't own all the billboards in town. I regularly see pages with Taboola panels on the bottom.

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#69

Post by speeder » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

bryan_w wrote: post #48

speeder wrote: post #32

I am currently struggling with Google and been even considering just straight up creating a Brazilian "Yandex/Baidu" clone or something somehow. My current business is heavily Google reliant, and Google been proving to be a very poor business partner: * Keeps punishing my site both in organic rank and AdWords rank (thus price) for not being mobile, despite my site being intended to be viewed by engineers with big scr…

Have you tried FB ads?

Those would be pointless.

Most of my income comes from search, both organic and ads, my business sell industrial parts that are hard to find, people tend to contact us after they put on some search engine the code for the part (example: DIN 912, the code for the popular Allen screw), and find us there.

I doubt someone would look for that on Facebook.

There was a cool magazine here that was basically just ads, before internet it was just a bunch of ads printed in magazine form, intended for my target market, but even them switched to use google now (also they are the reason I got pissed with the mobile display campaign issues, I want to put my ads on that magazine, but I can't do so anymore without turning on ads on mobile apps, and those easily eat up all the budget with fraudulent clicks)

Re: Dear Google, I'm Blocking You from My Website

#70

Post by sverige » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

rangeofmotion wrote: post #39

I really wonder about the people who work at Google. Surely they have people whose ideals are higher than this? It seems obvious that Google is a real threat to the freedom the internet originally made possible. But engineers still sign up in droves to work there? What kind of engineers are these? Do all of Google's employees simply disagree that Google is a threat? Do they not care? Are they just financially scared…

You might be amazed how easy it is to rationalize such concerns away for $250k (or more) per year. The first sentence of the internal response of a Googler will be, "You don't understand."