This was an entirely predictable outcome, first with summaries/snippets, and now with the AI summaries.
It was clear that eventually someone would decide to stop these parasites like google from accessing their content.
Good for them.
Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
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Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#12the era of wide spread 'global' web is over. llm crawlers - all they do is take. they craw your content. then give it to users in distilled form in the form of 'A.I overview' or summarized content. incentives to contribute are gone genuine original content are gone. soon enough majority of the content will be llm generated, it not already. the original content will either be in closed communities e.g discord, mailing…
Even before the onset of AI, publishers steal copyrighted work from writers and reporters and then turn it into human-generated slop and charge you money for the privilege of being misinformed.
Closed communities are not a viable alternative as their content has an even lower signal-to-noise ratio than AI-generated summaries. I have spent hours trying to piece together a reasonable set of answers from shitty searches on various forums and mailing lists. I'll take AI summaries any day over the crap that you can get from forums.
Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#13Very brave of publishers to hold their own content hostage against Google search. That's certainly one noble way to die.
It's either that or let Google strangle them.
Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#14One step closer to Google deprecating search and just becoming an AI chatbot. By the way, most smaller publishers have already effectively left Google, they don't try to improve their SEO at all, and just promote their content on social media.
Do you have evidence for this?
Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#15Yes, publishers should opt out of Google. Everyone has a right to be forgotten.
Okay, apart from that snarky retort, what discovery mechanism are they going to use to drive people to their human-generated slop?
Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not Google login, it's the Google authenticator being the only practical 2-factor option to login to government services (still annoying, but less so than trying to get one of those calculators that cost 30 euros and haven't been in stock since COVID)
There's lots of apps that do TOTP, if that's what you're using it for.
Absolutely. Even Apple Passwords does it now (but also a LOT of other apps, including free and open-source ones). google is definitely NOT a dependency here.
Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#17Yes, publishers should opt out of Google. Everyone has a right to be forgotten. Okay, apart from that snarky retort, what discovery mechanism are they going to use to drive people to their human-generated slop?
Google is not discovery mechanism for them anymore. They amount to free labor for Google. Basically, there are two futures: a.) they do free labor for google without being discoverable through them b.) they are not discoverable on google without providing free data to google.
Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#18Yes, publishers should opt out of Google. Everyone has a right to be forgotten. Okay, apart from that snarky retort, what discovery mechanism are they going to use to drive people to their human-generated slop?
Google is not discovery mechanism for them anymore. They amount to free labor for Google. Basically, there are two futures: a.) they do free labor for google without being discoverable through them b.) they are not discoverable on google without providing free data to google.
Good points. On item B. In the natural experiment of AI getting between the information consumer and the information provider, it appears that even providing free data to Google, they're still not discoverable. What is the alternative mechanism for discovery? Do they flood the world with even more advertising as a way of forcing discovery onto consumers?
Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#19We're long beyond the era of Google Search as a means for "discover new stuff" or to surface the best information on a given topic. Before the 2020s LLMs, spammers were getting the upper hand.
These days, if you have an Android phone and/or are part of the Google ecosystem, Google services overall are very useful for things like "find restaurant near me", etc or finding places to buy stuff, etc. But for intellectual pursuits or the idea "the portal to the open web", Google Search has been dead a long time.
It's been very rare for many years now that I enter anything into Google search that isn't generic information that I can find by searching Wikipedia or even using ChatGPT and I'll typically use those directly instead.
So it's rational and expected for publishers to do this. Google Search provides fewer and fewer benefits over time.
Re: Publishers consider opting out of Google as search traffic declines
#20[dead]