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Google is burying the web alive

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Re: Google is burying the web alive

#81

Post by asdhtjkujh »

nicbou wrote: post #46

I can weigh in on this. I run a small information website ( https://allaboutberlin.com ). My traffic has been growing steadily for 7 years, but now its down 30-ish percent year on year. From what I'm hearing, my competitors (and friends) are having it worse. My main mission is to put new information on the internet. It's harder to do this if AI destroys the economics of it. It's also harder without an audience who pr…

I came across your website organically and it's been a great resource for me in the last few months, including times when the answers presented by Gemini have been definitively and legally incorrect. Thank you for organizing all of this information so clearly.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#83

Post by baq »

I'm finding that google's own gemini flash is cannibalizing google search in my own usage, but there's no other way for them to survive being eaten alive by the competition.

The sad realization is you probably shouldn't expect humans to read your content anymore - it'll be quoted verbatim (best case) by the all-consuming LLMs, just without your ads, your layout or anything yours at all that isn't your written or spoken words. (Sad part is that's often an improvement until chat interfaces start putting product placement in their responses. We can truly bury the web then.)

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#84

Post by shadowvoxing »

water-data-dude wrote: post #45
TonyTrapp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When "to google" has literally become a verb in several languages, you know it's not going to be that easy to convince literally hundreds of millions of people to use something different. For many unsavvy people, Google is and continues to be their window into the web, and they wouldn't even know they can have it another way.

I wish Duck Duck Go was fewer syllables so I could try to force it into conversations as a verb.

They own duck.com. They should revert to that.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#85

Post by baq »

pixl97 wrote: post #49
gspencley wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like more curation than we had before. My wife and I recently bought a commercial space and have been trying to find contractors for renovation projects. It has kind of blown us away at how unresponsive most have been. Like, we'll reach out them ... wait DAYS, sometimes they get back to us ... maybe a week later they'll come for a site visit to give us a quote and then we need to keep following up with them ...…

>Like, we'll reach out them ... wait DAYS, sometimes they get back to us ... maybe a week later they'll come for a site visit to give us a quote and then we need to keep following up with them ... just to get a quote. Jeesh these companies are dumb... they could be selling referrals to other businesses but are instead dropping them on the floor.

The best way to sell your boring contracting company is to take it off the web and wait for private equity to make an offer.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#88

Post by oceansky »

pphysch wrote: post #11
romaaeterna wrote: post #3

As someone who remembers what the web was like 25 years ago, I have a feeling that they're burying a corpse.

Yes, a corpse killed by Facebook, Reddit, Discord and other closed platforms.

How's reddit a closed platform? It's superbly indexed by Google. In fact searching site:reddit.com often greatly improve my results.

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#89

Post by somat »

Magi604 wrote: post #67

I used to hate the AI overview, but I've slowly been getting used to it and now I will often settle for what the AI gives. It's better than scrolling through loads of links and trying to weed out garbage SEO optimized sites.

How hard is it to get the infernal engine to work for you?

"Belphegor-2 go wade through the search results and discard the low quality machine slop, I only want results linking to curated human generated pages."

Re: Google is burying the web alive

#90

Post by oceansky »

Spivak wrote: post #41
pphysch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a corpse killed by Facebook, Reddit, Discord and other closed platforms.

Does it actually matter that Discord is closed or would the problem still exist if Matrix won and the content contained within was nonetheless still not indexable by search engines and communities were invite only? Because the fact that Discord is flourishing is I think a direct result of it not being a part of the giant amalgamated omniplatform indexed by search engines. Being shielded from the masses is the point.…

But the counterpoint is that it's much harder to find any information, including personal anecdotes from people, without being part of the particular community.
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