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

401–409 of 409 posts

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#401

Post by LdSGSgvupDV »

tehlike wrote: post #216
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…

Ex google employee here. I used to have two email accounts, one something I registered for fun (and my main email), other with my name+lastname@gmail. I set up forwarding from second one to first one, then I forgot the password. I tried to login probably a decade later last year. Couldn't remember the password. Asked internally if someone could help. They said they can't(they can easily verify who I am if they wanted…

Maybe you just need a warrant?

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#402

Post by cik »

RamRodification wrote: post #357
cik wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep a phone number I never answer, with a voip provider I've used for decades. That number forwards to whatever number I care about. I give out only the movable voip number, never my physical cellphone number, when it comes to services. This is what iNUM was supposed to solve. Sadly it didn't take off.

Does that mean you could be screwed if that voip provider disappears before you have time to change things? Or do you own the number somehow (like a domain name?) so that you can move it elsewhere in that situation? I know nothing about voip providers and this makes the setup sound scary to me.

Yes, you'd be screwed if that happens. But it's significantly less likely that they're skiffed than a telco provider, given how they work. I know way too many people who have had the latter happen - and none the former.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#403

Post by ryan29 »

johnwdefeo wrote: post #292
ryan29 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure what to think of that site. I think it's above average for an affiliate marketing site, but I also wonder how reliable the recommendations are if they're derived from automated analysis of other systems like reviews, pricing, etc. when we know those are garbage systems that are constantly gamed. Even filtered, it's still garbage in garbage out, right? I think that (affiliate based monetization) is…

I spent my first year scrubbing the seed corpus to minimize the GiGo effect: https://www.johnwdefeo.com/articles/amazon-review-analysis - I also review all the pricing data manually to flag and discard outliers. Not sure about why Anandtech stopped endurance testing, but I would assume cost cutting. I left the company in Sept. 2018 which was right after it was acquired by Future PLC. They're a frugal lot.

I looked through the product listings a bit (I mentioned it elsewhere) and they look reasonable for things I've researched lately. I hope it works out for you because there's a huge lack of trustworthy product data and massive amounts of trash to sort through these days.

I'd probably be your target market. I'm usually looking for products that are good value. Ignoring the fact that I'm from Canada and all your links are US, I'm also the kind of person that would make an effort to buy via one of your affiliate links if I used your site as a source for products I want to research more in depth. However, I don't think most people would make that effort and maybe that'll be a problem.

Put another way, it looks like a great site to use as a starting point for products I don't know much about, but I'm going to jump to other in-depth review sites before buying anything and might convert through their affiliate links instead. Add in sweet (get it?) industrial scale affiliate link hijackers plus price watching services like CamelCamelCamel and all of a sudden there are a lot of ways I can use your site and never give anything back (unintentionally).

I'm also not sure I'll remember your site to go back to it (sorry). I wonder how a browser addon would work out. The no ad, no tracking design of the site lends a lot of credibility in terms of being trustworthy, so I'd consider installing an addon for the type of data you have. If you can build a reputation as the brand that filters Amazon down to the X% of products that aren't garbage, that might get some traction.

For example, if I'm browsing Amazon and could click on a GCAF addon that showed me a curated list of similar products that aren't complete trash, that would be helpful to me because there's too much garbage to sort through manually on Amazon. Once I'm on the product page (via your affiliate link in the addon), I might open a new tab to read other reviews, but I'm not going to click back through to the product page when I already have it open in another tab. Or if you sort by products that are currently on sale I might just open tabs for the ones on sale and just buy something right there.

I also manually jump from Amazon to BestBuy before buying stuff. If the pricing is close enough I buy it at BestBuy instead. If I could click an addon that linked me directly to the same product page at other stores I think you could capture that too, at least from me.

Anyway, good luck! I hope it works out for you.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#404

Post by ryan29 »

yokem55 wrote: post #150
ryan29 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very likely the case. Check the IP on a site that does IP reputation scoring [1]. They probably don't have a database of "bad" addresses for IPv6, so it squeaks by for now. I'm sure that'll change in the future though. My current IP shows "0 - low risk" with that tool. Grabbing a random PIA IP shows "93% - Abusive IP" with a warning about being a high risk proxy connection. The random VPN IP is also on SPAM b…

FWIW - I suspect the "IP reputation" site you referenced is utter bullshit when it comes to its "Proxy Detection". Looking at my own residential public address it calls it a 'low risk proxy' when I can assure that it most definitely is not. It doesn't help that their explanation for how they attempt to detect this is a pile of marketing word salad. I don't expect them to be completely transparent to their methodology…

> I suspect the "IP reputation" site you referenced is utter bullshit when it comes to its "Proxy Detection".

It very well could be. That wasn't an endorsement by any means. The problem from what I can see is if services like that are convincing CTOs to use their lists it becomes relevant (even if the info isn't accurate).

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#405

Post by hertzrat »

viraptor wrote: post #163
hertzrat wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disreputable and reputable services alike change ip all the time. The only people who don’t are home users and I suspect VPN users. I don’t fully understand how this is supposed to help you decide if something is safe

> Disreputable and reputable services alike change ip all the time. If you're running a serious mail service your IPs don't change that much. Not only will you have a pool of IP addresses just for that reason, you'll also likely need a few unused ones for when one of your users tanks your reputation and you have to roll them. Nobody taking real money for email will use a randomly assigned IP as source. (unless it's r…

That's a good point

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#406

Post by tharkun__ »

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 exactly, I will just not have these things and the more people do that instead of giving in, the more alternatives can survive and thrive. See the other post of using apps that are actually free to install on Google Play, but you sign up for an account that you might also pay money for. Now the thing that you rely on for your life is no longer tied to a specific Google account.

If you loose access to the account for that 'thing', sure you're screwed with regards to that 'thing'. But it's just one of the eggs in your basket.

If you do _everything_ through Google, then Google is your basket full of eggs and if you don't play ball with the basket, it will take away all your eggs.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#407

Post by tharkun__ »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #147
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…

> Some of this obviously requires 'abstinence' and not having the same 'cool toys' as other people. I.e. if I buy lots of fancy apps that I actually rely on for my daily life, then loosing this Google Account will hurt. Pleco is a necessity for me, but it's not tied to the Google account. It has its own registration system. Same goes for WeChat. The Android Kindle app isn't really a necessity, but it's desirable. It,…

That is absolutely the right way to deal with it. Bravo! Use the apps that have their own accounts, don't require an account etc.

I do the same actually and don't use apps or services that will only allow you to "Login with Facebook", "Login with Google" etc.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#408

Post by reactchain »

johnwdefeo wrote: post #322
reactchain wrote: post #250

There is a recurring lesson with these type of threads: don't build a business that is dependent on an unstable, black-box algorithm of a mega-corp. If your business is so fragile that an algorithm update by Google causes you to have no customers, then you should have built a business with a bigger moat, brand recognition, etc. It sounds like this business was more of an SEO hack.

Even with brand recognition, it's hard to build a product review business that doesn't rely on Google. Until 2018, I was the head of insights at one of the largest online publishers in the U.S. 90% of the company's revenue was tied to organic search. Sure, branding helped to prevent huge impacts like the one that I saw, but plenty of our competitors suffered big drops that resulted in 100s or 1,000s of layoffs.

True, but I think it points to an inherent weakness in the business model. The reason it's so hard to build these businesses without relying on Google (and playing cat and mouse with their ranking algorithms) is because customers fundamentally don't care whether they get their content from you or someone else.

Re: My Google Traffic Has Fallen to Zero

#409

Post by nicolas_ »

jjcon wrote: post #30
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…

> 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. I’m in a similar position except I know my password. Google decided for whatever reason that my location was too different and now requires that I verify via a phone number I no longer have. I have access to the recovery email and even get ‘su…

I'm facing the exact same issue on a 11 years old Google Account with Adsense, Gmail, and a lot of Google services tied to it. Since I know the password, have access to the recovery email, know the recovery questions and answers but Google doesn't even let me enter the recovery process and block me from doing so because of my "unknown device". I'm stuck and I have all the info needed...

Happy Edit: Following your post and just for the fun I tried to log back in and instead of the usual error message Google asked me to enter my full recovery email address. Then, I had to enter a valid phone number and to create a new password. I HAVE ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT AGAIN!!!!! I don't know how the fuck it worked but if you're in the same position try to log again in a few weeks. What I did the past few months: fill out the Gmail recovery form. (no impact). Bought Google One and asked for support at least 3 times (no impact). Tried to log back in multiple times over the course of a month or two (no impact). Thought the account was toast, I was looking to alternative solutions but I tried again and it fucking worked!

Post reply on HN