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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)

#191

Post by lostlogin »

raincole wrote: post #35
zulban wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Legal age of drinking is arbitrary and people accept it. Hell, even legal age of consent is arbitrary (please don't argue this -- if it's not it won't vary across developed countries). The absolute majority of legal lines we drew are arbitrary.

> Legal age of drinking is arbitrary and people accept it.

Do they? I thought it was ignored everywhere.

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

#192

Post by debesyla »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #12

Wow, roughly 50% content, 50% ads. Who controls this ratio? Is it configurable? I.e. could OP choose minimal ads and reduced monetization? Or does everyone always get the firehose?

It's what you choose. I assume OP chose maximum option with all the "I want these ads" toggles checked.

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

#193

Post by Tommix11 »

petepete wrote: post #117
codetrotter wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a word for things that are both hilarious and tragic? Yes, tragicomic. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tragicomic

I've never heard that word, perhaps it's more of an American expression? In the UK we'd probably say bittersweet.

Tragicomic is used often in Swedish (Tragikomiskt). There is a nuance difference between tragicomic and bittersweet. Bittersweet is when you daughter moves out to her own place,it's sad that your kid grew up but also great, it's bittersweet but not tragicomic. Tragicomic is when something is so screwed up that the only thing you can do is laugh at it.

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

#194

Post by michaelmrose »

olddustytrail wrote: post #153
justinclift wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not a recipe, it's a short intro to a list of recipes. Just Learn To Read.

"Just Learn To Read" adds nothing to the sentence that precedes it. The point was already made correctly and well. You should avoid when possible starting a comment you want to actually be read with an insult or ending it with a snap. It degrades the quality of the conversation.

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

#195

Post by Tommix11 »

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.

Perhaps there's a way to do advertising the old school way. Contact a company directly and make the ad yourself. No need for a warped AI middleman.

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

#197

Post by wickedsight »

Last year a friend and I made a website about the Nurburgring. It provided basic info for first time visitors that we were missing on our first visit. My friend spent a lot of time creating a UI with a custom map for displaying locations and routes. I wrote a bunch of content that was thoroughly researched.

At a certain point we ended up being invited by one of the largest rental companies to see whether we could work together. They invited us because the content was incredibly useful for their visitors and they preferred our calendar over the official one for ease of use.

So clearly, our site was adding value for the target audience we had in mind. We were also consistently getting visitors through different search engines that were looking for the info we provided. The number of visitors was growing consistently and pretty much all the feedback we got was positive.

In March, Google rolled out a new algo which all but completely removed us from search results. Out visitors dropped about 80% and growth has disappeared. What was a fun project that we spent many hours on is now a waste of computing resources.

I hate that Google gatekeeps the internet.

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

#198

Post by beretguy »

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.

Why when i try to click that link it links me to tags.news.com.ua ? My dns filters are blocking it.

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

#199

Post by chillfox »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #164
madcoderme wrote: post #157

> I looked into a half-dozen or so alternatives, but all the other companies were either simply Google ads re-sellers, which is an ecosystem I don't quite understand, or were extremely sketchy, and had reviews complaining about how they trick people into downloading malware and such. This is so true. I have tried to monetize my tools with ads quite a few times before, and the only way was to use Adsense. It's actuall…

Funnily enough some Google resellers are paying more than Google. I have no clue how, they must be burning investors' money

They provide curation to the ad buyers. Basically the marketplace is broken for both sides.
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