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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)

#91

Post by [deleted] »

keepamovin wrote: post #82
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…

Interesting take on the backstory. Also, > Of course Google didn't make the web site bad, you did. That's right. Whenever anybody says "X made me do Y", sometimes I get flashes of the 1980/s1990s action movie villain, in the industrial backdrop, for the violence climax scene, with the hero on the ropes, screaming hysterically "You made me do this!" Nobody makes you do anything. That's true from a strict personal resp…

[deleted]

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

#92

Post by mitemte »

tonyarkles wrote: post #60
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 loo…

I generally use https://www.taste.com.au. No bullshit prologue about how a distant relative used to make the recipe in question. Just and overview, photo ingredients and steps. Everything else is secondary and usually worthless.

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

#93

Post by zeroCalories »

AlienRobot wrote: post #58
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 pa…

I know from work I've done with voluntary contributions that you can get near the amount that ad sense will give you, but that's on the high end, and will depend on the type of content and how you push it. But it would have at least been worth trying, given the public service nature of the content. Certainly enough to cover the costs of the domain name and hosting.

Also, people are far more receptive to a message asking for a contribution than an ad.

Also, the OP DOES NOT have a support page linked on the original, or meme page of apportionmentcalculator.com. Don't know why you're giving me snark when it seems you yourself didn't even look at their site.

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

#94

Post by blargey »

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…

> Quite who uses this site is unclear.

Isn't that what all the tracking and analytics is supposed to determine? I thought ads were supposed to be tailored to the viewer as much (if not more than) the site.

> Conversely Adsense sells ads based on "targeted users". Which means your original site is pretty useless to Adsense.

It might have been a fair point, but AI-generated word salad was enough to make this site palatable to AdSense - but I don't see how any of it would help the AI and/or mechanical turk supposedly assigning target-demographic labels to this site.

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

#95

Post by zeroCalories »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #89
zeroCalories wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if there are alternatives, then it isn't a monopoly. Even if we're restricting ourselves to ads, there are other ad networks, and you can find your own sponsors. The OP is a self-admitted lazy commie and just wants to say "Google bad".

> Because if there are alternatives, then it isn't a monopoly. The definition of monopoly is not 100% market share.

Yeah, it's also not having a high market share.

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

#96

Post by wpm »

zulban wrote: post #26
rustcleaner wrote: post #16

Maybe it's time for a market cap maximum. If your market cap exceeds the median GDP of all African countries, you get broken up. No more borg controlling the internet. This should help prevent vertical consolidation. Truly corporate death penalty any children of breakups who collude (full loss to equity, half loss to creditors, assets auction to public). Google shouldn't exist at its scale, nor should Apple, Microsof…

When you set an arbitrary cap like "GDP of all African countries" lots of people will argue it's too high, or too low, and you won't have any argument to make because it's arbitrary. Your solution sounds great but in practice it's simplistic.

Wow, I can’t be believe an off hand HN comment might not actually be comprehensive political policy, gee whiz!

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

#97

Post by kuschku »

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?

> Which businesses do you suppose might be interested on a congressional apportionment calculator?

Political ads? Campaign ads?

Newspapers advertising that they've got the fastest election news?

People looking for an apportionment calculator are likely interested in a past or future election and interested in political topics. That's a lot of potential ads you could show.

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

#98

Post by Dylan16807 »

zeroCalories wrote: post #95
Dylan16807 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because if there are alternatives, then it isn't a monopoly. The definition of monopoly is not 100% market share.

Yeah, it's also not having a high market share.

It seems to me that google has an overpowering presence in the ad market.

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

#99

Post by Dylan16807 »

drstewart wrote: post #85
worewood wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is heresy in a capitalist world. It absolutely is the root of all problems, but people, consciously or not, will deny it and try to justify how it is necessary or how accumulated capital is not the issue. Beware of that while reading the responses.

"I'm right and you're wrong and anyone who tries to say otherwise proves that I'm right" is some kind of take. Beware that you're a hypocrite and don't realize it so you will argue that you aren't, but it's proof that you are.

> "anyone who tries to say otherwise proves that I'm right"

It's super obnoxious when someone says that.

But the comment you're replying to does not say that.

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

#100

Post by zeroCalories »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #88
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.

> that's on you to come up with an alternative Ads should be viable here. "The ad ecosystem is broken" is not something individuals should have to fix. And asking for an entire coffee for a quick tool is not really in line and unlikely to get many takers. And there's no good way to ask for microdonations.

Fair, ads should be viable, but OP really didn't try very hard on that front. There are plenty of ad networks that could be a substitute, but I understand that they're not as good as Google ads, and OP is lazy.

Buy Me a Coffee is not literal, it's a service to collect contributions.

I like the idea of microdonations, and I think it would be healthy for the ecosystem if sites could implement one-click 50 cent paywalls, but that's pretty far off.

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