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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

#831

Post by cyanydeez »

pembrook wrote: post #512
littlecranky67 wrote: post #233

Here is the experience when clicking a link on mobile: * Page loads, immediately when I start scrolling and reading a popup trying to get tracking consent * If I am lucky, there is a "necessary only". When unlucky I need to click "manage options" and first see how to reject all tracking * There is a sticky banner on top/bottom taking 20-30% of my screen upselling me a subscription or asking me to install their app. U…

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…

Basically, if we are smart Software as Public Infrastructure will take root and basic search and publication will be seen as ordinary government operations, like public parks and national forests.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#832

Post by gorbypark »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #711
languid-photic wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I think part of the reason for llms.txt is optimize context. eg beyond content, the human docs often have styling markup which wastes tokens.

Hmm, sounds like LLMs.txt might be nicer for humans to read all well.

Sometimes they are! I use the expo docs as a human all the time. Some project however seem to really "minify" their docs and are less readable. I'm not quite sure how minifying really saves space as it seems like they are just removing new lines as the docs are still in markdown...

Good for humans example: https://docs.expo.dev/llms-full.txt

Bad for humans example: https://www.unistyl.es/llms-small.txt

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#833

Post by chrz »

tim333 wrote: post #651
rurp wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

The trouble is what the LLMs do is effectively read a lot of articles and then produce a summary. What human writers do is quite similar - read a lot of stuff and then write their own article. It's quite hard to block what people have usually done because it's done by an LLM rather than a human. I mean even if you want to ban LLMs, if an article goes up how can you tell if it's 100% written by a human or the human us…

'write their own article' is using existing stuff and adding your own spin and flavor to it, thus creating something new. An LLM summary is lifefless summary and the moment we remove new human articles for LLM to summarize whats left is LLM summarizing other LLMs and then?

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#835

Post by namblooc »

EchoReflection wrote: post #706
drewr wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend noticeably less time on youtube than I used to because they keep shoving shorts in my face. I'm a premium subscriber, I click "fewer shorts," nothing changes. Maybe I should be thankful?

I recently quit YT premium after decades of having it, and now I actually (weirdly) feel good when I see ads bc it's a reminder that I'm not giving Googletube 20$/month

I wouldn't use the word decades to describe a time span of less than 11 years at maximum, but you do you!

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#836

Post by hansvm »

zahlman wrote: post #708
hansvm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of a couple weeks ago it had a variety of unsafe food recommendations regarding sous vide, e.g. suggesting 129F for 4+ hours for venison backstrap. That works great some of the time but has a very real risk of bacterial infiltration (133F being similar in texture and much safer, or 2hr being a safer cook time if you want to stick to 129F). Trust it if you want I guess. Be cautious though.

A shorter cook time is safer? Do you sear it afterwards or something?

The problem is that 129F is a borderline safe temperature at any length of time. 3-4hrs is closer to what you want to kill _all_ the salmonella and e coli, but 2hrs kills enough that it's very likely to be safe, and 129F isn't a sufficient temperature for any length of time to kill clostridium perfringens and other similar bacteria, resulting in spoilage occasionally with a greatly increased likelihood the longer you cook it.

Separately, yes, you do normally sear it afterwards. It's for flavor/appearence/texture reasons though, and a number of people recommend mildly chilling it (say, for 15min or so) first so that you don't overcook any of the interior from the sear. The pan should be much hotter than a lot of people expect.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#837

Post by briangriffinfan »

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…

So websites move to the Spotify model of getting paid... that's gonna suck.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#838

Post by Nicook »

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 use patreon for ones I care about. And many of the niche interests I'm interested in are demonetized anyways which is the crux of the issue.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#839

Post by nativeit »

leptons wrote: post #721
ceejayoz wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of your videos have in-video ads? "This segment is sponsored by NordVPN!" style stuff?

I use Youtube on a Chromecast with the SmartTube-beta app, which skips in-video ads, if they are demarcated by the creator - and most videos with in-video ads have that. The app just skips right by the in-video ad, as well as a bunch of other non-interesting video content if it is specified in the video timecodes by the creator. Another great feature of SmartTube-beta - and it's the feature that brought me to that ap…

This sounds amazing. I personally resorted to FreshRSS and an extension that allows me to spoof feeds from YouTube and socials as if they were RSS. It’s not perfect, but it is a chronological plain-text (apart from hyperlinks) list of content that I feel materially healthier for having switched to. My past experiences with alternative frontend interfaces for YouTube is that they last a few months, then Google tweaks their API just enough to break them all for a few weeks.

I also pay for YT Premium, and I have maintained a family subscription since they initially offered one. I wish they would just provide Premium users with options for turning off shorts, comments (per-channel ideally, but across the board would be fine too), games, and everything else I don’t care to ever engage with.

I also run a self-hosted AdGuard service for DNS-level adblocking, but it sounds like Google’s getting around that as well. Next stop will be DNS with SSL and a proxy. I am a little concerned that I am having to establish what must appear from the outside to be a very sketchy anonymizing infrastructure, and it’s all just to use the web the way I always have, whilst avoiding the increasingly intrusive and anxiety-inducing tracking and advertising.

Re: AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks

#840

Post by nativeit »

bombela wrote: post #696
tempestn wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just pay for premium?

Not OP. I did pay, for 10y. But the video quality kept slowly degrading (lower bitrate). And ads in the video content kept increasing. YouTube also increased advertising some paying shows, YouTube shorts, and more. No way to say no, only "yes forever" or "no thanks not right now". And it comes back in a few weeks. It also constantly sneakily lowers the video quality. So I stopped paying. I combine ad block and sponso…

I’m amazed people can get rid of shorts for a few weeks. For me, I tell it I don’t want to see them and it’s literally back as soon as I refresh the feed. It’s aggressively anti-UX.
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