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Google is dead. Where do we go now?

circusscientist.com

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Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#161

Post by JKCalhoun »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #152
beloch wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bang on. It's advertising, so literally looking at where people are getting their info from is the way to go. Google searches don't produce good results these days. The enshittification has become too extreme. Google openly admits as much (and further intensifies the enshittification) by placing a huge AI summary above those results. The answer is self evident. If, before, you were relying on clicks resulting from go…

> Google searches don't produce good results these days. The enshittification has become too extreme. Google openly admits as much (and further intensifies the enshittification) by placing a huge AI summary above those results. I haven't asked Google a question it has failed to provide a more than adequate answer to in ... months? years? And on all my devices, I run google search with &udm=14, so I am not talking abo…

I don't want a list of links that I have to then click through in a kind of Russian roulette—hoping I don't get some kind of SEO crap.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#162

Post by mcphage »

imiric wrote: post #110
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #61

I recently took someone to go and watch a hockey game. Been a little while but I personally played as a goalie myself. The person kept making the comment that she couldn't see/find the puck and it made it frustrating to watch. As a goalie, not being able to see the puck is pretty normal (especially with big bodies trying to screen you). What I told her was that what matters a lot more than where the puck is, is where…

"AI" is the next advertising frontier, no question. People are throwing themselves to feed you personal data. You no longer have to come up with sneaky ways to collect it, or build out their profile from inferred metadata. Less work for you, more accurate profiling, and less risk getting fined by pesky regulation. Ad campaigns can be much more personal and targeted. You can push them at just the right moment to optim…

> the world is not ready for what advertising geniuses are cooking up as we speak.

Advertising directed towards AI models, at the very least. If you can get into ChatGPT's weights that McDonalds is the cheapest and tastiest hamburger, how many millions of people would ChatGPT tell that to?

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#163

Post by Aurornis »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #43

I think the author intended the title to be, "Google Ads is dead, Where do I promote my business now?" When I hear "Google" I assume search, oof (sigh of relief). They mention running ads on tiktok or instagram but no mention of youtube ads... Also, In my own experience for my business ( also entertainment) I have found reddit ads to be useful. So my next steps would be, Reddit Ads Youtube Ads Instagram Ads Increase…

> Also, In my own experience for my business ( also entertainment) I have found reddit ads to be useful.

Reddit is very hit or miss depending on your target audience.

Depending on your Reddit target audience, a lot of people could have adblock installed. They might be loyal to communities that have approved vendor lists where everyone parrots the same vendor recommendations back and forth in every thread, so not being part of that game means you're left out. In some niches, the subreddit moderators have a financial relationship with vendors and they'll put their weight into swaying every conversation away from competitors.

For other niches, none of this applies and Reddit can be a good ad destination. It really depends

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#166

Post by supern0va »

echelon wrote: post #87
AznHisoka wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI SEO is where the attention is going, with ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Google AI Overviews replacing the need for people to visit websites

It's unnatural to search an LLM for a product. It's why Alexa never became a shopping portal. Best way to get the word out about a product now is through an influencer in the space. -- Edit: Show of hands for anyone using ChatGPT to shop. Be honest. People don't even use Google to shop. They try to find something either (1) by brand name, eg. "iphone" or (2) generically by category, eg. "best cold weather tent". In t…

LLMs are honestly rather amazing for product search and comparison.

Here's a use case for me last week: I'm re-organizing my bathroom sink/vanity, and I want a few counter top organizers to keep things neat and tidy. I have a low mirror, low medicine cabinets, and generally tight spaces to work with and want to maximize storage.

So, I have a 10" wide space and I can't have anything over 16". I want to find a drawer organizer as close to 16" tall without going over, and as close to 10" without going over. Given a choice between the two, I want to bias for more height.

Go to Google or Amazon and try finding that. You're going to be trying permutations of 10x16 and 9x16 and so on, and digging through pages looking for something approximate.

In theory maybe there's some filter options on Amazon that might work, but they're usually incomplete, wrong, or absent. It's a terrible experience even when it's supported.

ChatGPT (or even Amazon's kind of janky Rufus) immediately finds top near-perfect matches for me to choose from. 15-20 minutes of aggravating digging turned into 90s of letting ChatGPT think and search while I was off grabbing a coffee.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#167

Post by JKCalhoun »

fairity wrote: post #125

Surprised to see this upvoted because the takeaway is completely incorrect, and based on the anecdotal evidence of one advertiser. As someone who spends seven figures every month on Google ads, what’s much more likely to be happening here is that the individual advertiser is either getting outcompeted or they’re executing ads poorly. Google ads revenue in the US continues to grow every quarter. And, since advertisers…

> and based on the anecdotal evidence of one advertiser

The author admits as much.

Re: Google is dead. Where do we go now?

#170

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #161
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google searches don't produce good results these days. The enshittification has become too extreme. Google openly admits as much (and further intensifies the enshittification) by placing a huge AI summary above those results. I haven't asked Google a question it has failed to provide a more than adequate answer to in ... months? years? And on all my devices, I run google search with &udm=14, so I am not talking abo…

I don't want a list of links that I have to then click through in a kind of Russian roulette—hoping I don't get some kind of SEO crap.

Google seems relatively good at never giving me SEO crap near the top of most of my search results.

And a list of links to original sources or close to it is precisely what I do want.

If you want an LLM to generate an answer from its training data, that's fine, but go use a different search engine instead of demanding that the one many of us have relied on for decades has to do that.

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