the only one that's a loss is How To Geek, which had some genuinely useful info
the rest are ad scams
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
#42I 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…
There is no modular PSU cable standard. Mixing cables between PSUs can destroy your hardware. Even among the same brand there is no standard.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#43I wonder how this affect Google's bottom line. Their entire business model was to funnel traffic to websites with their ads. What is their income source now that they've all but stopped doing that?
Ads in the AI results, obviously. Google is now the king of the the SEO spam website game: plagiarize the info from others, slap ads on it, and profit. That is the purpose of LLMs: end copyright law, but only for the 5 tech companies wealthy enough to run these massive models. The rest of us still have to follow the law, of course.
But they aren't doing this, are they? How can their ads revenue be constant (as per your sibling comment), while nearly 60% of the traffic is gone (as per the article), before such a scheme has rolled out?
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#44Earlier 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.
Once or twice, for me it's deflected rather than answer at all.
On the other hand, they've also surfaced information (later independently confirmed by myself) that I had not been able to find for years. I don't know what to make of it.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#45I 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?
This then becomes the hardware manufacturers problem. If their new hardware fails for to many users it will no longer be purchased. If they externalize their problem solving like so many companies, they won't be able to gain market share.
This creates financial incentives to pay companies running the new version of search. Your thinking of this as a problem for these companies, when in reality it is a financial incentive.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#46AI has successfully scraped enough of their content so that they are no longer needed. Thanks for creating the content, now someone else will make money with it.
good luck in 4 years when the only answer they can give about new hardware is "I don't know"
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#47I 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?
Yea so I’ve had an issue getting video output after boot on a new AMD R9700 Pro. None of the, albeit free, models from OpenAI/Google/Anthropic have really been helpful. I found the pro drivers myself. They never mentioned them.
Thats not to say AI is bad. It’s great in many cases. More that I’m worried about what happens when the repositories of new knowledge get hollowed out.
Also my favorite response was this gem from Sonnet:
> TL;DR: Move your monitor cable from the motherboard to the graphics card.
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#48If 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
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#49It doesn't help that tech publications and gaming websites keep getting bought out by crypto and gambling companies.
https://aftermath.site/gameshub-clickout-media-seo-gambling-...
Re: Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
#50Will this result in loss of revenue, then layoffs, then less content, leading to a death spiral. Is the future just AI slop everywhere?
Bots creating content, bots clicking on content, bots reading that content, and bots creating more content from it. It'll be like a capitalist cousin to Newspeak[1]; instead of a top-down enforcement of the language it will evolve by popular demand.