Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by C.R. Culver
In reply to <a href="https://www.justapack.com/how-google-is-killing-bloggers-and-small-publishers-and-why/#comment-90900">Michael Miszczak</a>.
I’m staying that you lost your Google audience not because of your ads, but because the rise of advertising on blogs in general led to a web so unreliable that Google had to respond somehow. You must be aware of the phenomenon where an entrepreneur wants to create a site like yours in the travel or recipe space purely to get advertising views, so they hire someone from a developing country off a freelancing platform to rewrite an existing blog. That had been going on for over a decade, and now GPT makes it free. If Google is crawling myriad "independent" sites that are, in many cases, actually artificial creations designed to convey ads, no surprise that it would begin deprioritizing that entire part of the web. And sure, Google is an ad company itself, so its changes would be designed to improve its bottom line.
The assumption that every single free travel site uses ads, is mistaken, but of course it is easy to think this when Google has hidden independent sites from its results. I’m in the bicycle-travel space nowadays. Though younger generations have largely moved to apps like Instagram, Komoot, or PolarSteps for documenting their travels due to the mobile-first design, there are still loads of traditional cycling blogs on the web with no advertising whatsoever. Some people just like documenting their trips as a journal for themselves, first of all.
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by Michael Miszczak
In reply to <a href="https://www.justapack.com/how-google-is-killing-bloggers-and-small-publishers-and-why/#comment-90899">C.R. Culver</a>.
I'm not really sure what you mean Chris. When we first started out we had no ads. We grew our audience and our income with affiliate sales, but we were very open about that. We added adverts into the site around 2017 and continued to grow. We didnt lose our google audience because of ads. It sounds as if you dislike ads on websites in general, which is fair, nobody likes them. And yet virtually everyy single free site on the internet uses them to generate income. And Google itself sells more ads than anyone else.
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by C.R. Culver
I have seen your post discussed at a few venues now. One of the most common criticisms is that your blog isn’t an example of the golden age of blogging, but rather of the advertising-laden type that arose later. As someone who has traveled as lifestyle since the early millennium, and participated in the blogging ecosystem, I can’t help but agree. You see, for long years, blogs by continual travelers had no advertising at all, not even affiliate links. Of course people wanted to establish an income that would let them stay indefinitely on the road, but there were other ways to do this, e.g. learning IT skills and working remotely; short-term, high-income jobs like tour-guiding for Russians in Southeast Asia; busking in the more lucrative countries; or combinations of the above and all manner of other things.
I sympathize with the young people who felt the pinch in the years after the 2008 crisis. But once advertising appeared on travel blogs, it began to distort blogging; many blogs tailored their content in order to increase income. Readers couldn’t trust what they found through Google any more, and reliable skillsharing began to move elsewhere on the internet (or, alas, vanish completely in some cases). Obviously search engines, too, would eventually respond to this, even if their chosen solutions don’t actually improve the situation for travelers.
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by Jack Yan
I wonder if we'll see the renaissance of human-edited directories since the search engines are increasingly useless. There's only one left, to my knowledge, of any scale (Curlie, developed out of the old Open Directory Project, a.k.a. DMOZ, a.k.a. Newhoo, a.k.a. Gnuhoo). It's not that current though a few editors are still there updating their pages. Until search engines learn to weed out "AI" content, this seems to be a good way forward.
After having it as my default since 2010, I ditched DuckDuckGo (which really is a Bing front end with more privacy) in 2022 for Mojeek. Larger index, but poorer ranking (due to a smaller user base so the algorithm hasn't had as much finessing). Basically, anything I can do to keep things away from Big Tech, who are no friends of independent publishers and bloggers.
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by vadim
It is a sad story. You invested a lot of hard work and emotions in this site. It is a work of love, I am sure.
And yet, let me quote "Life-line" by Robert A. Heinlein (1939):
"""
Before we leave this matter I wish to comment on the theory implied by you, Mr. Weems, when you claimed damage to your client. There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.
"""
Google has no obligation to provide links to any site, regardless whether it did it in the past or not. Google was _always_ ad machine, and search was means to serve ads. Now they found a better way to serve them.
There is a lot of cry about copyright violation. It is not an obvious question for me. Compare it with reading the books or textbooks. While the things you learned might be copyrighted, your acquired knowledge is not. Your answer is your answer. Copyright protects expression, but not the knowledge. My re-telling of Homer's story is original, even if incomparably worse than _Iliad_. But, if people are satisfied with my version, Homer cannot complain. Good rule for using a paragraph of Homer is to put quotes and a reference to the original ( see above :-) ) What does AI bot? Does it provide answers, or provide quotes? In my experience, it is mostly former (however deficient the answers are).
All that said, there is an interesting question: ok, Google, you provide all the answers. Who has insensitive to put fresh information online? What are you going to train your bots on? (using book analogy, authors would limit book circulation and start hiding knowledge from Google.) Where do you end up 10 years from now?
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by Mike Warot
I agree that breaking up Google is a good idea. Way back in the mists of time, the main way we found out about each other's work was from links in other blogs. It tended to be a virtuous circle, but starting out was haphazard at best. You could get some attention in replies at the bottom of posts, but then the spam came and killed those off.
I think that one way out (with the goal of making conversation independent of google) would be for us to pick up RSS again, and perhaps come up with some RSS specific search engines. Some sort of federated mechanism for ratings and reputation would help.
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by Kate Morgan Jackson
I’ve been writing my food blog, Framed Cooks, since 2009. I’ve definitely had ups and downs, but like you, I always picked myself up and adapted. While I haven’t yet had the traffic drop so many of my fellow bloggers have, I can see it coming, and I am struggling with the question of whether I keep going because I love it, or do I hang it up. Maybe I’ll go back to writing it the way I did in 2009, the way I loved to when my mom was the only one who read it, since she might be the only one who reads it again soon. Thank you for your insight on all of this. I’m not a traveler, but I’m going to travel over to your blog right now.
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by Suzy Taylor Oakley
I ditched Google for DuckDuckGo several years ago. I've deleted Google Analytics from all my websites and I've never used my gmail account as my primary email (I have it so I can use the calendar that I share with others, but I've been seriously considering ditching Google Calendar, too). Google is too invasive and greedy for my tastes.
I'm about to launch a new website, and I plan to love the heck out of my newsletter subscribers and grow that way.
All the best to you, Michael and travel partner (sorry, I don't know her name).
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by BDT
In reply to <a href="https://www.justapack.com/how-google-is-killing-bloggers-and-small-publishers-and-why/#comment-87005">Lauren | JustinPlusLauren.com</a>.
Ha. We are actively encouraged to use AI for work ourposes, and I questioned the quality of output from AI, the management responded with a well, your the subject matter expert, so you sanity check the content, and make adjustments accordingly.
So train myself to use a shitty bot, then correct it's errors.
Nah, I'd rather just create content that's accurate.
Comment on How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why by Marc Tabyanan
Great article. Sad, really. And yes--public utility.