Now why would anyone publish for free? Publish or die is dead.
Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
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Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#12I recently replaced a power supply to upgrade a GPU. I bought the power supply on Cragslist, so it had a jumble of cables and no manual. In the past I would have read an article that I would have found on one of those sites. This time I conversed entirely with Gemini, sending pictures of the cables and of the components and the motherboard. I'll not soon forget when I plugged in a cable incorrectly and sent an image…
I see a future just like the seo issue of today, where the well is poisoned and llm information is garbage.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#13I recently replaced a power supply to upgrade a GPU. I bought the power supply on Cragslist, so it had a jumble of cables and no manual. In the past I would have read an article that I would have found on one of those sites. This time I conversed entirely with Gemini, sending pictures of the cables and of the components and the motherboard. I'll not soon forget when I plugged in a cable incorrectly and sent an image…
If the hardware changes significantly and those sites don't exist in the future wouldn't that mean gemeni would degrade in quality because it has nothing to pull from?
We've all tried to ask the LLM about something outside of its training data by now.
In that situation, they give the (wrong) answer that sounds the most plausible.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#14I recently replaced a power supply to upgrade a GPU. I bought the power supply on Cragslist, so it had a jumble of cables and no manual. In the past I would have read an article that I would have found on one of those sites. This time I conversed entirely with Gemini, sending pictures of the cables and of the components and the motherboard. I'll not soon forget when I plugged in a cable incorrectly and sent an image…
If the hardware changes significantly and those sites don't exist in the future wouldn't that mean gemeni would degrade in quality because it has nothing to pull from?
Right, that success story is only because there was "organic" (for lack of a better term) information from an original source. What happens when all information is nth generation AI feedback with all links to the original source lost?
Edit: A question from AI/LLM ignorance- Can the source database for an LLM be one-way, in that it does not contain output from itself, or other LLMs? I can imagine a quarantined database used for specific applications that remains curated, but this seems impossible on the open internet.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#15Many of these websites, I only ever interacted with when doing research either on tech or tech products. I did not appreciate their surface-level reviews and explanations, so in my head I've categorized most of these websites as "noise to wade through whenever I need to look up something". I can't say I'll miss these sites. I would be googling (ddg-ing) way more still if the internet wasn't full of low-effort SEO bait articles that dominate every search result.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#16I recently replaced a power supply to upgrade a GPU. I bought the power supply on Cragslist, so it had a jumble of cables and no manual. In the past I would have read an article that I would have found on one of those sites. This time I conversed entirely with Gemini, sending pictures of the cables and of the components and the motherboard. I'll not soon forget when I plugged in a cable incorrectly and sent an image…
If the hardware changes significantly and those sites don't exist in the future wouldn't that mean gemeni would degrade in quality because it has nothing to pull from?
Presumably companies will still provide manuals.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#17Quality content stopped being profitable well before ChatGPT. Quantity beat quality as a content strategy flooding the search page with high-level obvious “how-tos” and “best vacuum cleaner” slop. This destroyed the consumer search experience. Current models have plenty of rich historical data and are good at synthesizing quality responses with the right queries. Now the risk is that AI will be starved of recent quality information to pull from. Hopefully the pendulum swings back around to make quality information profitable again…
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#18Yes a lot of these publications produce low quality content. But some of it can be quite useful. If they disappear who is going to document at a consumer level the latest hardware doodad or whatnot? Manufacturers are going to have to invest in online resources that the AI bots can scrape. Perhaps good documentation will become a driver of profit.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the hardware changes significantly and those sites don't exist in the future wouldn't that mean gemeni would degrade in quality because it has nothing to pull from?
We've all tried to ask the LLM about something outside of its training data by now. In that situation, they give the (wrong) answer that sounds the most plausible.
That's definitely been my experience. I work with a lot of weird code bases that have never been public facing and AI has horrible responses for that stuff.
As soon as I tried to make a todomvc it started working great but I wonder how much value that really brings to the table.
It's great for me though. I can finally make a todomvc tailored to my specific needs.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#20Now why would anyone publish for free? Publish or die is dead.
You can shape the AI responses for some niche topics relatively easily even on accident. I recently saw 2 people arguing on a forum on a very niche industry topic and one of them started to use Gemini as a source to argue and Gemini was already referencing their thread as a source. I'm imagining people could start doing that on purpose with their own astroturfed blogs and public social media accounts.