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Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

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Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#51

Post by [deleted] »

bruce511 wrote: post #40
carl_sandland wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't we use some sort of metadata tagging system instead? Isn't this what the person is indirectly trying to do: declare some simple tags, such as "US politics", but indirectly via a bunch of garbage fed into an auto-tagger?

We tried that. It just lead to sites adding a million meta words to gather as much advertising as possible. But, as a thought exercise. Let's say you were selling ads directly to the business paying. Which businesses do you suppose might be interested on a congressional apportionment calculator?

[deleted]

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#52

Post by zeroCalories »

Have you thought about alternative monetization methods like Buy Me A Coffee? A good "this work is done for free pleading emoji" message can get you some decent cash. Maybe selling your site to someone that can monetize it is your best bet. Yeah your site isn't what Google Ads wants, that's a shame, but then that's on you to come up with an alternative.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#53

Post by AlienRobot »

Yep, that sounds about right.

The craziest thing to me is that if you let Google manage the ads, it will create exactly the ad-infested website the article mentions, and that OP's website turned into, with vignettes and sliding ads from the bottom of the screen, and ads half the size of the screen above the fold. That isn't the result of the website's owner's hand. It's actually Google's autoads feature.

It's entirely possible that we have tons of people making websites that don't really know a lot technically, they just use Wordpress or something like that, and they add adsense and let Google manage it, and Google just does THIS every time. And if Google didn't have this autoads features, the entire web would have a lot less ads, because it's just more ads than a human being can manually place in a webpage every time.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#54

Post by icehawk »

bruce511 wrote: post #29

Of course Google didn't make the web site bad, you did. In a purely practical sense you changed the site, not them. Which leads us to the "why" of it. Which is you wanted to monetize the site (if only to cover its costs.) Since advertising seems to be the business model of the internet that's your first port of call. But here's a site that performs a task. Quite who uses this site is unclear. Sure lots of people migh…

Google has been sending me emails about how things are preventing them from indexing my websites,and recently I've stopped caring.

My website and it's content is what it is, and its not my job to make Google more valuable. They're a multi billion dollar company, if it's really a problem, they can figure it out.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#55

Post by Repulsion9513 »

bruce511 wrote: post #29

Of course Google didn't make the web site bad, you did. In a purely practical sense you changed the site, not them. Which leads us to the "why" of it. Which is you wanted to monetize the site (if only to cover its costs.) Since advertising seems to be the business model of the internet that's your first port of call. But here's a site that performs a task. Quite who uses this site is unclear. Sure lots of people migh…

> Ok,I'm simplifying here, but what ads do you think -should- be shown to your visitors? Ads derived from their browsing history of sites that do intuit user context?

Political ads? Ads targeted towards Americans (think cereal or whatever else why might see on national TV)? Crappy low-paying ads that aren't significantly targeted? Literally anything?

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#56

Post by magicalist »

icehawk wrote: post #54
bruce511 wrote: post #29

Of course Google didn't make the web site bad, you did. In a purely practical sense you changed the site, not them. Which leads us to the "why" of it. Which is you wanted to monetize the site (if only to cover its costs.) Since advertising seems to be the business model of the internet that's your first port of call. But here's a site that performs a task. Quite who uses this site is unclear. Sure lots of people migh…

Google has been sending me emails about how things are preventing them from indexing my websites,and recently I've stopped caring. My website and it's content is what it is, and its not my job to make Google more valuable. They're a multi billion dollar company, if it's really a problem, they can figure it out.

You literally have to sign up and do extra work to confirm ownership to get those emails in the first place.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#57

Post by Repulsion9513 »

zeroCalories wrote: post #52

Have you thought about alternative monetization methods like Buy Me A Coffee? A good "this work is done for free pleading emoji " message can get you some decent cash. Maybe selling your site to someone that can monetize it is your best bet. Yeah your site isn't what Google Ads wants, that's a shame, but then that's on you to come up with an alternative.

Why does it have to be on them to come up with an alternative instead of... like... acknowledging that monopolies and businesses approaching them are harmful to both consumers and businesses?

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#58

Post by AlienRobot »

zeroCalories wrote: post #52

Have you thought about alternative monetization methods like Buy Me A Coffee? A good "this work is done for free pleading emoji " message can get you some decent cash. Maybe selling your site to someone that can monetize it is your best bet. Yeah your site isn't what Google Ads wants, that's a shame, but then that's on you to come up with an alternative.

>A good "this work is done for free pleading emoji" message can get you some decent cash

Source?

As far as I know you will need to put banners so users know you accept donations (as OP accepts donations in their support page and you literally missed that), and most people don't donate, so what tends to happen is you replace banners that everyone hates but that pays money with banners that everyone hates that don't pay money.

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#59

Post by shagie »

dylan604 wrote: post #45

"Hey there, fellow political enthusiasts and furry friend lovers! We're Alex and Taylor, and we're on a mission..." This really made me smile. It's one of the stupid phrases used in all of these types of sites that bothers me to no end. Iliza Shlesinger has a bit about two sisters doing a pitch to Shark Tank, and I read that whole "post" in the voice she uses. I always thought it was just me and my curmudgeon ways, b…

> "Hey there, fellow political enthusiasts and furry friend lovers! ...

This reminds me when I was driving around the pacific coast one year when a particular movie came out...

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/oct/03/spin-control-i...

The other side (as you were leaving town) of the sign read (if I recall correctly) "Fangs for coming, be bite back."

Re: Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)

#60

Post by tonyarkles »

oakashes wrote: post #46

It's a fair point about how awful recipe sites look without ad blockers, but this part is just plain incorrect: > You can tell just by looking at the URLs that those sites are going to be worthelss blogspam. At least two of the three results in the screenshot are from legitimate baking sites (Cookie and Kate, Sally's Baking Addiction) which are generally trusted sources online. I don't know anything about the third.…

I just looked up Cookie and Kate. On my iPad I had to flick 7 times to get past the exposition on Crispy Roasted Chickpeas and find the actual ingredients. When I found the ingredients, they occupied a small squeezed sliver of the page. As I was counting the number of simultaneous ads surrounding the ingredient list (4 separate ads), a pop up covered them all and suggested I sign up for her newsletter.

The recipe looks good (chickpeas, olive oil, salt, spices, oh shit I stole her blog post). I also think the site counts as "worthless blogspam".

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