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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

#161

Post by PacificSpecific »

ctoth wrote: post #100
PacificSpecific wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure what sorts of weird codebases you're working with but I recently saw Claude programming well on a Lambda MOO -- weirder than that?

I had to Google that haha.

It's in that realm but more complex. I do plan to repeatedly come back and try though. Just so far it hasn't been useful.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#162

Post by tracerbulletx »

Aboutplants wrote: post #48

If you’ve visited any of these sites recently it’s obvious that part of the issue is that you’re bombarded with pops, ads everywhere, autoplaying video, etc. It’s nauseating and a horrible user experience. If all I’m looking for is straightforward content/info then I’m naturally using the most efficient way to get that content/information and visiting a website is not the most efficient way anymore

My tech tutorials blog never had any ads, still doesnt. Still lost more than half the traffic. That's not the reason, that's an excuse and a distraction from the topic that AI captures everyone's IP and removes a lot of their economic incentive to create it.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#163

Post by ilamont »

Aboutplants wrote: post #48

If you’ve visited any of these sites recently it’s obvious that part of the issue is that you’re bombarded with pops, ads everywhere, autoplaying video, etc. It’s nauseating and a horrible user experience. If all I’m looking for is straightforward content/info then I’m naturally using the most efficient way to get that content/information and visiting a website is not the most efficient way anymore

I used to work as a technology journalist. A guy from the business side always used to say, “there’s no way we are leaving money on the table“ as justification for putting ad modules, video players, lead generation forms and other junk around our articles. We had no say in the matter.

Someone from the financial times did a test about the impact of this garbage on read times and brand loyalty. This was maybe 15 years ago. Of course the more ads shoehorned onto the page, the worse the metrics were.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#164

Post by rayiner »

ugh123 wrote: post #127
Aboutplants wrote: post #48

If you’ve visited any of these sites recently it’s obvious that part of the issue is that you’re bombarded with pops, ads everywhere, autoplaying video, etc. It’s nauseating and a horrible user experience. If all I’m looking for is straightforward content/info then I’m naturally using the most efficient way to get that content/information and visiting a website is not the most efficient way anymore

Add to that cookie accept popups and the www has really turned to junk lately

The WWW has been trending towards junk since the early 2000s. HN is still the pinnacle of web design.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#165

Post by AngryData »

Yeah because its mostly just slop, and now their slop is competing with AI slop. Googling anything that more than a handful of other people will google results in the same simplified and cut down information on all of the top 20 pages, 10 of which are AI slop copying both each other and the other top SEO slop.

I use to be able to quickly discard the top few SEO results, but now its all SEO results for pages, and none of them contain anything besides the barest of surface details to be essentially worthless.

As an example try googling about what trees can be grafted to cherry trees. It is one of the easiest trees to graft requiring no special tools and multiple different species of fruit trees will graft onto cherry tree stock. And yet how many of those other species do you find listed or mentioned int he first 10 results? It is just generic slop about "Yes trees can be grafted, take Species A stick and slice into Species A tree, blah blah blah 14 pages of the same thing repeated" except they just replaced Species A with cherry, and if you google any other tree grafting it is the same article just with pear or apple or apricot, nothing about it is specific to cherry tree grafting or cross-species grafting.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#166

Post by AngryData »

unglaublich wrote: post #122
Aboutplants wrote: post #48

If you’ve visited any of these sites recently it’s obvious that part of the issue is that you’re bombarded with pops, ads everywhere, autoplaying video, etc. It’s nauseating and a horrible user experience. If all I’m looking for is straightforward content/info then I’m naturally using the most efficient way to get that content/information and visiting a website is not the most efficient way anymore

Is anyone here actually browsing the internet without ad-blockers? As soon as I accidentally turn them off I am disgusted by the consumerist, snake-oil, sexist, shit-storm that's advertisement.

Here? Probably not many. But in general? Yes, the vast majority of people do not even after being told about it, they are conditioned to accept ads because they are not optional on most any other device (minus techie hacks like pihole and such that understandable most people don't know how to do or understand).

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#167

Post by josephg »

vkou wrote: post #121
afavour wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a downward spiral. As views start to decline there's more pressure to make money from the views that remain.

If views increased, there'd also be more pressure to make more money from them. The direction of views is irrelevant. What's relevant is the forward passage of time. As t -> infinity, shitty monetization -> infinity.

It’s not inevitable. It’s just a specific form of leadership failure that comes from grabby short term business people being in charge of everything.

As a counter example, the Economist or the NY Times don’t feel anywhere near this bad. They make you pay. But subscribers get a much nicer product in return.

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#168

Post by onetokeoverthe »

eggbrain wrote: post #29

Many of today's news websites (tech or otherwise) cashed in their goodwill / reputation / page rank to sell ads. The first shoe dropped when news websites realized they weren't generating content fast enough. Hard, in depth journalism takes time, but when people want to know something that happened _today_, they don't want to wait a week for all the facts to come out, and so the major websites started losing traffic…

[dead]

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#169

Post by onetokeoverthe »

xrd wrote: post #5

I 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…

[dead]

Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024

#170

Post by schubidubiduba »

cyberax wrote: post #142
unglaublich wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone here actually browsing the internet without ad-blockers? As soon as I accidentally turn them off I am disgusted by the consumerist, snake-oil, sexist, shit-storm that's advertisement.

I run adblock, but it's been not very effective lately. Sites either work around it, or just outright refuse to work.

Are you using a chromium-based browser? Google crippled adblockers on those. I essentially never see ads on firefox
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