Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

goodcheapandfast.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 409 posts

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#231

Post by njarboe »

rossjudson wrote: post #204
tharkun__ wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a really really simple one (at least for your private life but if your company uses G-Suite, you always have the admin to take care of things you forget): Do not use Google! It's as simple as that. I have never had a Gmail account until an Android device sort of forced it on me, because I definitely didn't want to link things up to my real email address, so I just signed up for the whole thing. Do I ever use…

You should keep it all on paper instead, because nothing ever happens to that. ;) I do think there is substantial room for a kind of "major provider reset" service, similar (at least) to what banks do physically. Lost your account access? You need to GO to a place, be on video, have an ID check done, multiple forms of whatever identification. It costs to do this kind of thing, and as a last resort I'm pretty sure mos…

Yes. Google should have an office in the capital of every state/country and maybe every city of over 1 million people where you can go and get things fixed when you really need to. Charge $50 to cover cost an I would be happy to pay it if needed (although the PR hit for doing that would be high).

I really need to transition more things off of the Google ecosystem.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#232

Post by Closi »

superkuh wrote: post #146
KMag wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they still won't tell him the password The Google support people should have mentioned it, but hopefully, they wouldn't be able to tell him the password without investing tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in cracking the hash. https://plaintextoffenders.com/

Is google really encrypting each individuals email based on a password they have no knowledge of? I know privacy oriented email hosts have tried to achieve this, but google? I'd hope the phone tech support understand the goal was to regain access to the account, through a reset or whatever mechanism, and not to just know the password. But maybe if my dad worded it like I did the same confusion could've happened.

They mean google does not have access to the password, as that is done via a one-way hash.

They can do a password reset, however would need sufficient proof of account ownership. Having access to the account is unfortunately not enough proof to show ownership, as that could be achieved with access to someone else’s device.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#233

Post by nly »

jjcon wrote: post #64
meibo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They ask you regularly if the data is still up to date and have disclaimers about situations like this when you register the phone number as an actual authentication factor. Not saying that this isn't at least partly on Google, they should have responsive customer service that can verify accounts - but you could have easily prevented that by being less lazy with keeping your data up to date. Security and account reco…

I moved across a border like 20 minutes away and got a new number - it is extremely common that both things change at the same time for people. It wasn’t a months old number or anything.

Wait, is this a mobile (cell) phone number? Why is this tied to where you live?

In the UK you can take your mobile number with you between network providers and they're not tied to your location.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#234

Post by nly »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #208
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mailserver can’t point to gmail unless I get gmail premium I chose instead to run my own mailserver (it’s a pain, but it’s very scaleable and I use a catch all often). Gmail have created an anticompetative situation where I can chose to pay them money, or have problems communicating with their customers.

I prefer to pay someone... okay, anyone , who isn't Google. Fastmail, O365, Proton, whatever. Solves the problem and supports non-Google options.

I actually want to switch to O365/outlook for my family domain name but refuse on principle because even with O365 Premium they require you to transfer your domain to GoDaddy...

At the moment I'm with Fastmail, but the pricing isn't so competitive

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#235

Post by maccard »

nly wrote: post #233
jjcon wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved across a border like 20 minutes away and got a new number - it is extremely common that both things change at the same time for people. It wasn’t a months old number or anything.

Wait, is this a mobile (cell) phone number? Why is this tied to where you live? In the UK you can take your mobile number with you between network providers and they're not tied to your location.

Not everyone moves in the same country. I moved from Ireland to the UK 8 years ago and the process of updating phone numbers and addresses is just flat out impossible on certain services.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#236

Post by katbyte »

Can_Not wrote: post #160
geofft wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have 2FA enabled? I suspect that if you have either an authenticator app or a security key, it will use that instead of random heuristics. (This isn't a defense of Google's behavior, just a comment on things that are actually within the end user's control.)

I tried to setup 2FA, Google would not let me setup an authenticator app without first giving Google a phone number.

It’s phone number -> auth app -> umbikey -> remove phone number. None of my google accounts use my number for 2fa anymore

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#237

Post by captainmuon »

weisbaum wrote: post #141

Taking a look at your site, it seems quite clear where all your traffic went. You have a pretty great backlink profile compared to other affiliate sites ive seen but the content is incredibly thin. Based on this, me or anyone else who visits the site just sees an advertising site. There are no personal experiences with the products, the products are not related and the UX does not make the user want to continue explo…

I wouldn't say the content is incredibly slim. If you check a few categories, he writes a introductory post and a short summary "review" for each product:

https://www.goodcheapandfast.com/articles/best-noise-cancell...

https://www.goodcheapandfast.com/articles/best-gaming-keyboa...

I know Google says they are all about the algorithm, but I'm convinced they are relying heavy on manual review farms. Of course admitting it would damage their brand, and disincentivize people from coding "to their algorithm". But I'm pretty sure a manual reviewer thought "yep, spam site" and penalized it.

One other thing, the landing page is basically a search engine / portal. In my experience, google also hits everything in this category. (I built a small search engine for a specific vertical in the past - no longer online - and it too showed strange search behavior after a while.) Maybe replace the landing page with a blog / magazine like feed?

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#240

Post by BatteryMountain »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #8

I’ve had similar experiences with other google products: My mom forgot her gmail password and no longer had the same mobile number for a reset, the secondary reset option was set to my email but would not send a reset despite this. We had a live session via thunderbird but there were no channels of support. Luckily we were able to register her old mobile number to achieve a password reset, thanks to a helpful phone p…

I have this problem with paypal:

Made an account about 10 years ago with email address x, mobile telephone number y, bank debit card z with some security questions thrown in.

I cannot remember my password from 10 years ago so I need to reset it.

If I try to reset it, they want to send me an sms otp to the mobile number from 10 years ago which I no longer have. Obviously I cannot update the mobile number if I cannot log in.

Another option they give me is to enter some portion of the debit card number that was linked to the account. I no longer have that account from that specific bank, nor have the old cards laying around.

Another thing they offered was for me to fill out the answers to the security questions, but I absolutely hate these and always fill in random characters by mashing my keyboard, so no go here.

In their help guide they say you can contact support if you cannot log in at all, but you have to log a support ticket.... which requires me to log in. Last time I gave up after 30 minutes of poking around their site to try and find a way to speak/email a human that can help me get back into the account, since almost every path leads back to the login screen which wants my debit card number from 10 years ago.

So I've started ignoring paypal now. All their emails that I still get goes in the trash and I will never use them again. Keep in mind this was a business account linked to a business bank debit card (it was the only way back then to link to an account in my country, and only one bank offered the integration, since then things have become much more reasonable (cheaper business credit cards = international ease)).

I'm fully willing (well not anymore) to send them a copy of my national id card to unlock my account while we speak on the phone, but they seem to have no path to support their clients unless logged in. Maybe its been fixed by now but I no longer care about it enough. If you build systems with an auth mechanism, please cater to all the unhappy paths your clients might fall into. I'm not one of those people who will go scream on twitter to get help, I just silently walk away and you lose a client. It's that simple. I'm not expecting them to treat me like a king, I just wanted to log into their site, that's all.

Post reply on HN