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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)

#131

Post by bruce511 »

kuschku wrote: post #97
bruce511 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool, so sell to any one of those directly. I mean, the revenue from the site now must be terrible anyway.

So if there us the value you suggest, it should be an easy sell. Probably less work than he went to to tweak the site.

Then again, are people investigating vote targets undecided voters? And good luck getting media to advertise....

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

#132

Post by renewiltord »

lupire wrote: post #34
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…

What's wrong with telling Google or whoever what you think your demographic is, and letting them place ads against it and optimize based on metrics. Why are words so important?

Because these ads are less effective than targeted programmatic advertising so you'll get bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.

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

#133

Post by bruce511 »

Repulsion9513 wrote: post #55
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?

Do you think this site gets enough traffic to make that sort of advertising appealing to any actual advertisers?

Plus, the auction value for spots on that site must be beyond tiny.

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

#134

Post by bruce511 »

sundvor wrote: post #103
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…

Point here though is that author shouldn't have had to add the extra stuff. There was ONE actual core piece of functionality they wanted to monetize, so why not? By adding random crap, author was able to get it approved. This just proves how everything is turning into the Internet Of Shit - or Enshitification. I loved how the article exposes this in context of the ad networks --- on which Google has an effective mono…

He got it -approved- did it actually make any revenue?

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

#135

Post by justinclift »

mitemte wrote: post #92
tonyarkles wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmmm. First one I clicked from their home page:

https://www.taste.com.au/baking/galleries/autumn-cakes/p6d5x...

> When the weather starts to finally cool down and the evenings ...

Just No.

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

#136

Post by antihipocrat »

bruce511 wrote: post #119
keepamovin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> of course that's not what this is about. It's about Google providing the incentive, for ruining perfectly good websites. Wait,what? The author wants to monetize the site. He understands the actual users won't pay. So looking for an alternate option he turns to advertising. Google says "hey, unfortunately your site isn't appealing to advertisers." That's not Google's fault, they're just telling the truth as they se…

Are you suggesting the author's site is now better for advertisers?

My takeaway from the author's example is that Google has set up a system that is incentivising actions leading to worse outcomes for both users (frustrating search experience) and advertisers (whose ad spend is not being well spent).

Google has no incentive to improve the situation - because google has an effective monopoly.

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

#137

Post by diffeomorphism »

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.

Google is selling surveillance not ads. Getting a static ad just like a magazine would be the natural fit for such a website.

Bonus question: ads with tracking cost X, ads without cost Y. In actual numbers tell me how much more X is worth. 2Y, 10Y, 100Y? (There are studies on this)

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

#138

Post by utensil4778 »

dwallin wrote: post #130
bogwog wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to pull out the ol' ungoogled chromium browser for this and for a moment I thought it was still a joke because of how absurd some of the ads were. One of them was a picture of an empty toilet paper roll holding up a toilet seat with the title "Put a Toilet Paper Roll Under the Toilet Seat at Night, Here's Why", and clicking it took me to a site[1] with a bunch of nonsense life hacks probably written by some AI.…

Ironically, by linking to it you’ve probably vastly boosted it’s rank on Google.

Huh. I wonder how much effort it would take to have a noticeable effect on the AdSense algorithm by sharing select ad links like this?

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

throwup238 wrote: post #129
tonyarkles wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that Google started weighing time spent on page very heavily in their ranking algorithm - I don't remember at what point this happened but it must be about a decade ago by now. Every time a user clicks a Google result without using "Open in New Tab" and clicks the back button, Google gets a signal about how long they spent on the page. The longer a user spends on the site, the stronger the signal. Once…

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by avx56 »

dwallin wrote: post #130
bogwog wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to pull out the ol' ungoogled chromium browser for this and for a moment I thought it was still a joke because of how absurd some of the ads were. One of them was a picture of an empty toilet paper roll holding up a toilet seat with the title "Put a Toilet Paper Roll Under the Toilet Seat at Night, Here's Why", and clicking it took me to a site[1] with a bunch of nonsense life hacks probably written by some AI.…

Ironically, by linking to it you’ve probably vastly boosted it’s rank on Google.

HN uses rel="nofollow" for links in comments, for this exact reason.
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