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AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

arstechnica.com

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Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#641

Post by WaxProlix »

brokencode wrote: post #562
pembrook wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the experience on virtually every content website that used to be tolerable or even good. But this is because there is no viable monetization model for non-editorial written word content anymore and hasn’t been for a decade. Google killed the ecosystem they helped create. Google also killed the display ad market by monopolizing it with Adsense and then killed Adsense revenue sharing with creators to take…

YouTube is 20 years old now. Either the encrapification is very slow or they landed on a decent ad model. Plus there is a subscription that eliminates ads. I think it’s a great experience for users. Many creators also seem to do well too. I think this should be the model for a new generation of search. Obviously there will be ads/sponsored results. But there should be a subscription option to eliminate the ads. The k…

It's funny, I had YouTube's paid offering for a few years (I used the service a lot and want to support non ad-based revenue streams). But they changed something a while back that started giving me a degraded experience, and eventually made the site unusable. Did some digging and it turns out they were detecting my adblock and intentionally making my experience bad despite being a paid customer. I submitted a ticket or whatever but of course nobody gave a shit. I ended up upgrading my adblocker to something that worked on the new YouTube but of course at that point why keep the subscription if I have to fight some ads arms race anyway?

Ads are useful and have their place in keeping the web accessible to everyone, but Google's anti user policies really stretch that relationship.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#642

Post by rurp »

dahart wrote: post #584
DanielKehoe wrote: post #532

I've written high-quality technical how-tos for many years, starting with PC World magazine articles (supported by ads), a book that helped people learn Ruby on Rails (sales via Amazon), and more recently a website that's good for queries like "uninstall Homebrew" or "xcode command line tools" (sponsored by a carefully chosen advertiser). With both a (small) financial incentive and the intrinsic satisfaction of doing…

> am I standing at the gates of hell in a line that includes Tower Records and Blockbuster? Maybe, but there’s a big difference - Netflix doesn’t rely on Blockbuster, and Spotify doesn’t need Tower Records. Google AI results do need your articles, and it returns the content of them to your readers without sending you the traffic. And Google is just trying to fend off ChatGPT and Meta and others, who absolutely will,…

The recent taking of people's content for AI training might be the most blatant example of rich well connected people having different rules in our society that I've ever witnessed. If a random person copied mass amounts of IP and resold it in a different product with zero attribution or compensation, and that product directly undercut the business of those same IP producers, they would be thrown in jail. Normal people get treated as criminals for seeding a few movies, but the Sam Altmans of the world can break those laws on an unprecedented scale with no repercussions.

As sad as it is, I think we're looking at the end of the open internet as we've known it. This is massive tragedy of the commons situation and there seems to be roughly zero political will to enact needed regulations to keep things fair and sustainable. The costs of this trend are massive, but they are spread out across many millions of disparate producers and consumers, while the gains are extremely concentrated in the hands of the few; and those few have good lobbyists.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#643

Post by tartoran »

marcellus23 wrote: post #607
Nicook wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its encrapification is real. It has been slow though, mostly affecting niche interests and smaller creators. And the ad experience has definitely gotten worse, but adblockers help. Try using youtube without and adblocker.

Using an adblocker certainly won't help smaller creators and niche interests. If you don't want ads but want to support creators, pay for Premium.

I have a question. How much do small creators get for views from Premium users? Say they get a few thousand views per video, would they get anything from Premium users?

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#644

Post by coldpie »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #577
anton-c wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they like to make stuff more than they value a subscription. I'm gonna write music no matter what happens to it.

I understand that, I’m in the middle of a project right now that has no commercial value to me. What I’m not going to do is offer it up to Google et al so they can profit from it.

> What I’m not going to do is offer it up to Google et al so they can profit from it.

What are you going to do with it? If you publish it, the law currently allows Google to hoover it up and there's nothing you can do about it.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#645

Post by snickerdoodle12 »

WaxProlix wrote: post #641
brokencode wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is 20 years old now. Either the encrapification is very slow or they landed on a decent ad model. Plus there is a subscription that eliminates ads. I think it’s a great experience for users. Many creators also seem to do well too. I think this should be the model for a new generation of search. Obviously there will be ads/sponsored results. But there should be a subscription option to eliminate the ads. The k…

It's funny, I had YouTube's paid offering for a few years (I used the service a lot and want to support non ad-based revenue streams). But they changed something a while back that started giving me a degraded experience, and eventually made the site unusable. Did some digging and it turns out they were detecting my adblock and intentionally making my experience bad despite being a paid customer. I submitted a ticket…

Bullying their paying customers is such an insane choice

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#646

Post by golergka »

WaxProlix wrote: post #641
brokencode wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is 20 years old now. Either the encrapification is very slow or they landed on a decent ad model. Plus there is a subscription that eliminates ads. I think it’s a great experience for users. Many creators also seem to do well too. I think this should be the model for a new generation of search. Obviously there will be ads/sponsored results. But there should be a subscription option to eliminate the ads. The k…

It's funny, I had YouTube's paid offering for a few years (I used the service a lot and want to support non ad-based revenue streams). But they changed something a while back that started giving me a degraded experience, and eventually made the site unusable. Did some digging and it turns out they were detecting my adblock and intentionally making my experience bad despite being a paid customer. I submitted a ticket…

Why would you use Adblock if you pay for premium?

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#647

Post by _DeadFred_ »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #514
nicbou wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is built by the same companies that built the last generation of hostile technology, and they're currently offering it at a loss. Once they have encrusted themselves in our everyday lives and killed the independent web for good, you can bet they will recoup on their investment.

That indeed is likely to come, but having experienced user hostile technology, the appropriate response is to prepare. Some trends suggest this is already happening ( though that only appears to be a part HN crowd so far ): moving more and more behind a local network. I know I am personally exploring local llm integration for some workflows to avoid the obvious low hanging fruit most providers will likely go for. But…

Would be cool if local libraries got together and figured out how to allow access to community LLMs. That fits more with my idea of the future and AIs than having the now dystopian tech companies running/defining it all.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#648

Post by WaxProlix »

golergka wrote: post #646
WaxProlix wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, I had YouTube's paid offering for a few years (I used the service a lot and want to support non ad-based revenue streams). But they changed something a while back that started giving me a degraded experience, and eventually made the site unusable. Did some digging and it turns out they were detecting my adblock and intentionally making my experience bad despite being a paid customer. I submitted a ticket…

Why would you use Adblock if you pay for premium?

There are other websites on the internet, and I don't want to/didn't consider toggling off ghostery, noscript, ublock origin, etc per domain that I choose to pay for.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#649

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

croes wrote: post #598
scarface_74 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I pay for Apple News, Slate, Stratechery, Downstream+ (podcast), Accidental Tech podcast, etc. I donate to electoral-vote.com via Patreon. Most of my news comes from podcasts and those ads don’t bother me as much as web ads. I said I wasn’t morally opposed to them. I don’t use any app that is ad supported without the option to pay for an ad free experience the same with streaming services.

That's not my point. Thanks to AI crawlers the traffic costs will rise and all the sites who were ad free either need additional income, most likely ads, or will shut down.

Services like CloudFlare are offering better services all of the time to block web crawlers.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#650

Post by _DeadFred_ »

lopis wrote: post #534
svachalek wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't be obvious. They'll be highly customized brain worms influencing your votes and purchases to the highest bidder.

Which sounds very illegal in most places, as clearly identifying sponsored content is required. Let's see how that turns out.

For hire drivers/having employees had very specific legal requirements in most areas. Let's see how that turned out. Oh yeah, the dystopian tech companies won and we the people got the benefit job/job rules being thrown out for the beauty that is independent contractor 'gig work'.
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