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Google is dead. Where do we go now?

circusscientist.com

261–270 of 873 posts

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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is built with content from the open web, but it has also killed the open web. The death of Adwords is only one symptom of that. I don't know what comes next, I just know it will be worse.

No, google search has stopped being useful years before "AI".

It was still useful to advertisers and publishers.

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

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is really where it is at these days. Discord servers with 50-100 people form the new social fabric of the internet where real community lies. In theory Reddit was supposed to be this but 1. Reddit communities tend to get too large 2. Subreddits overflow into each other too much through cross posting and brigading 3. Post history being public meant that you could get banned/brigaded for your comments on a tota…

99% of the population hasn't a clue what Discord is/does

You probably mean, 99% of anyone older than 25.

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

#263
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been some years since I've had to put ads on the web, but I found Reddit ads insanely effective. Really, Google ads have been dead for a long time. I found them hardly effective at all since maybe 2011.

A surgeon in our family got basically all his (private) clients from Google. Spend was multiple k per month. If you consider that one surgery brings in 7k in revenue, then those numbers actually make sense. He's retired now but did this up to 2y ago.

This is a Kshaped example that’s solid. Some SMBs can afford per keyword large spend in focused high reward arenas. The rest can’t do anything.

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

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my anecdotal experience, it's moved to private, trust-based channels: iMessage, WhatsApp, email, face-to-face interactions. Our 30-year bender of putting our lives online and blurring the public and the private has finally ended: people don't want to be online, don't trust social media, don't really trust any media, and are living simple local lives with a small circle of friends that they get together with regula…

It's interesting to see how much of a behemoth Discord has become. Seems like there's a Discord for everything - from open source projects to hobbies and games to individual groups of friends/family. It's occupying the segment that subreddits historically have. However, it's perhaps-intentionally search-opaque. You can't Google to find a message/link/download that's gated by Discord. And it also gives a sense of comm…

Subreddits ultimately took over when Usenet moderation failed to keep up. I had chat groups before the Web was really even a thing and they lived on until things like Slashdot and Digg took the reins.

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

#266

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…

> seven figures every month on Google ads

What are you advertising?

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is really where it is at these days. Discord servers with 50-100 people form the new social fabric of the internet where real community lies. In theory Reddit was supposed to be this but 1. Reddit communities tend to get too large 2. Subreddits overflow into each other too much through cross posting and brigading 3. Post history being public meant that you could get banned/brigaded for your comments on a tota…

99% of the population hasn't a clue what Discord is/does

Which is likely why it's so good still. The usenet before the eternal September.

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

#268

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…

Your experience is 100% compatible with the linked article: the seven-figure spender is presumably running a much higher margin business and can scale narrowly profitable ads much more effectively. The natural equilibrium for a perfect ad market is for the ad spend to be exactly equal to increase in revenue: a perfectly efficient market with no profit for the advertiser. Google (and Meta et al) are so good that for many SMBs they are completely cornered at the zero-point: spend as much as you can just to stay in the same place financially.

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and based on the anecdotal evidence of one advertiser The author admits as much.

The question is, why has this post been massively upvoted? It contains zero useful information. Just somebody struggling with AdWords and they don't know why. Not helpful. I have to assume the vast majority of upvotes are based on the title alone, assuming it's about Search? A large proportion of top level comments are about Search too. Depressing.

I am fairly confident that the answer is that most people vote based on the title/headline without ever clicking through. I am likely guilty of this as well sometimes. It takes discipline to avoid this behaviour.

> We find that most users do not read the article that they vote on, and that, in total, 73% of posts were rated (i.e., upvoted or downvoted) without first viewing the content. [0]

In this case, my guess is that people are noticing less and less utility from Google search, and that was why they voted like they did.

This same phenomenon is what gives newspaper editors far more power than the journalists, as it is the editors who not only decide the stories to be covered, but even more importantly, they decide the headline. Most people just scan the headlines while subconsciously looking for confirmation of their own biases.

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.05267

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