Did adblockers ruin the web 1.0 business model leading to poor search results?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36388262

by senttoschool • 3 years ago

13 24 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hypothesis one:

* adblockers got popular, browsers start shipping with default blockers

* websites convert to subscription model to stay alive

* subscription model hides content

* hidden content pages don't rank as well as useless long form free SEO articles

* people can't find anything genuine on the internet anymore for free

* people append "reddit" to search results as one of the the last places they can get free genuine content

Hypothesis two:

* adblockers got popular, browsers start shipping with default blockers

* Free content websites lose revenue but can’t convert to subscriptions because while the information is valuable to some, it’s not valuable enough that people will pay for it

* To remain free and not shut down, free content websites leverage sponsorships/affiliate links to make enough revenue

* Free content will now always be accompanied by a sponsor/affiliate, leading to bias information that doesn't seem genuine

15 years ago, someone can make a website where you can slap some Adsense ads on and make enough money to continue to provide free content. While you still needed to optimize a bit for SEO, the free information is still genuine and quality.

keikobadthebad• 3 years ago

Nope, SEO ruined web search all by itself without adblockers needed to explain it.

senttoschool5• 3 years ago

15 years ago, I used to write a blog where I wrote free content in my area of expertise (PhD). The blog paid for itself via Adsense ads. It was a part-time thing. Eventually, the revenue dried up and I moved on.

Today, I'd never imagine myself being able to put out free content as a main source of revenue without either some sort of sponsorship/affiliate and or subscription. It's more likely that I will write but put my content behind a subscription on Substack or something like that.

And because of that, people lost the ability to read my content for free. I'm not saying that my content was insanely valuable but there exists a gap in which the content is valuable to many people but not valuable enough that people are willing to pay a subscription to read it.

In addition, subscriptions usually mean that you have to write full-time. Most experts in their fields would not likely to quit their main jobs just to write on Substack. This means Substack writers aren't likely to be at the top of their field - they're just good at writing and they write consistently.

Dah00n3• 3 years ago

This means Substack writers aren't likely to be at the top of their field - they're just good at writing and they write consistently.

One could easily argue the same argument about those "in the top of their field". In some big western countries (at least one) social and fundraising skills is as much a contributor to being "in the top" while in other countries or areas of expertise it is the ability to spew out papers. Rarely are "the top of the field" equal to "the best in their field".

I'd even argue sharing knowledge like you did for free for everyone is a plus towards "top of the field" while not doing it is a negative. The most important part of knowledge is for it to be shared, freely, not held ransom for fundraising or better pay as happens all too often.

I'm glad that GDPR keeps the grubby hands that vie for my personal info at least a bit out of reach these days. All that has changed is that you could no longer swap out your visitors information (which most back then nor today hardly understand the concept of) for a paycheck. The knowledge wasn't shared for free - someone else paid the bill - often with no knowledge, understanding or choice.

manuelmoreale2• 3 years ago

Today, I'd never imagine myself being able to put out free content as a main source of revenue

How about doing it not as a main source of revenue? How about writing and sharing content you're passionate about just because it's a good thing to do?

skilled• 3 years ago

* people append "reddit" to search results as one of the the last places they can get free genuine content

Genuine is reaching too far in this context. Reddit is getting gamed just like any other platform, you've just told yourself that it isn't. People have known about appending "Reddit" for years now. Many large tech sites write stupid articles like, "The 10 most popular mechanical keyboards according to Reddit users" and similar clickbait.

I'd also add to this that there are SEO tools that can give you tens of thousands of "Reddit" keyword suggestions in a single click, alongside their search volume, cost per click, etc. Brands absolutely will and do abuse this because it's marketing, just like everything else.

Speaking of SEO tools, that should perhaps be on your list of culprits with the issue of poor quality search, or rather - poor quality results. SEO tools make it an absolute breeze to get a global overview of what people search for and how hard it is to rank for that content. Outside of the major keywords, there are millions of long-tail keywords that can be exploited by thin content, and because people do search for those long-tail queries, Google has no choice but to index and rank that content.

senttoschool5• 3 years ago

I think I used "reddit" as a main example since people have been talking about SEO and appending "reddit".

Of course there's still plenty of other good content out there besides Reddit. Stackexchange is another one. But small blogs by experts powered by ads seem to be mostly gone?

I frequent the site Anandtech.com. It used to provide amazing free tech hardware content. Incredible deep dives into CPUs/GPUs etc often with 10+ pages for a single product review. It was powered by Adsense ads. Today, it's almost dead as they one of their main experts, Ian, decided to just write on Substack independently. I will say that a lot of tech reviewers have moved onto Youtube where it's harder to block ads.

Dah00n3• 3 years ago

Ian Cutress is on YouTube too.

https://youtube.com/@TechTechPotato

p-e-w• 3 years ago

adblockers got popular, browsers start shipping with default blockers

No major browser has ever shipped with an ad blocker enabled by default. Firefox blocks trackers, and Brave is not a "major" browser under any reasonable definition of the word.

senttoschool5• 3 years ago

True but competition means browsers will start to incorporate more and more blockers by default.

My original post was inspired by this news: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/17/safari-link-tracking-pr...

Apple has been shipping more and more "privacy-focused" Safari features. They're basically making it harder and harder to have a viable ads-driven internet business.

Apple stops one step short of outright blocking all ads on Safari. But of course, even on iOS/iPadOS, it's extremely easy to add an adblocker to Safari.

Apple has an intrinsic reason to try to kill the ads-model because they have the Appstore and they want businesses to convert to a subscription model so they can get 30% cut.

That said, given that Google is ads driven and they control Chrome, they won't ever try to kill themselves.

Dah00n3• 3 years ago

The cynic (and economist) in me firmly believes Apple does this to hurt their biggest competitor but I guess without board meeting access it is mostly semantics as the outcome is the same.

not_your_vase• 3 years ago

Adblockers got popular, because the internet became literally unusable and unreadable without them. Are you a regular adblocker user? I recommend you to turn it off for 10 minutes to see what I'm talking about.

Search results did get bad for crappy SEO spam on one hand, but on the other hand Google stopped simply returning relevant results for almost anything.

Try to search for "kotaku". 4 pages of results (feel free to click next -> next to see where it ends).

Try to search for "arm7ve" (this is the CPU-arch used in the first RPi). 43 results.Most of them are irrelevant.

A few weeks ago everyone was laughing at the new website "The messenger", because Google didn't show them on the first few pages. You know what? I tried to search for "Theme ssenger", and they were the first hit. Then Google asked me I wanted to search for "The messenger". When I clicked yes, it gave me the usual irrelevant stuff.

I started to collect these, though I don't know why. This is not because of adblockers. This is not bad seo. This is bad search engine. Or more like bad search engine product managers. Or more like bad search engine product manager employers.

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

When ads were just a small image or adsense text banner people didn't mind.

I remember the first time I installed an ad blocker, ebay had decided to use a large autoplaying macromedia flash banner on every page, which caused Firefox to grind to a halt after opening half a dozen tabs.

gary_0• 3 years ago

Once upon a time I only manually blocked really annoying ads by blackholing them in my `hosts` file. I wanted to give the ad-supported sites I used a fair shake. I protected my privacy by setting the browser to delete new cookies on exit.

But over time my `hosts` file ended up covering every ad network and was gigantic because every major site was doing something abusive, so I just switched to an adblocker.

And since I started using an adblocker things have gotten even worse! When I see someone browsing without one the Web looks totally unusable.

zhte415• 3 years ago

Wasn't Web 1.0 in a time before ads, or, depending on site, of banner ads and paid search placements that Google, sought to end?

And Web 2.0 defined by remixing, RSS, Torrents in the mainstream, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and many more less acquired today?

I struggle to put the silod and gated repositories of members', and of non-members, knowledge and social interaction in the 'Web 2.0' bucket.

[Edit: The term webX.Y might not even apply much anymore. Quite a lot of the world is app-first where websites are an anachronism, an out-dated concept where a web browser may not be knowingly opened for a month, if ever. For many, the web is dead or not even known; today, for plural manys, it's all AppLand.]

richardjam732• 3 years ago

Web 1.0 needs to reload the entire page from the server to update data on the page. Web 2.0 allowed pages to update content without reloading by using AJAX and DOM manipulation.

Dan422• 3 years ago

No.

Web 1.0 was one-to-many publishing, the direct translation to the web of existing pre-web business models. Thus "1.0", the first iteration based on known/previous models.

Web 2.0 was many-to-many publishing, user-generated-content, stuff that wasn't possible or even conceivable prior to the web. Thus "2.0", the second iteration based on characteristics unique/native to the web.

Honestly, people need to stop redefining those terms.

TheLoafOfBread• 3 years ago

I got rid of ads when developers of ads decided to:

* Use 100% of my CPU to blinking Flash banner

* Overlay whole screen with an ad

* Start jumping around with a close button

* Started playing ad videos on full volume.

They were so intrusive to spread the message, that people went great lengths to shut them up. They caused their own demise.

kichimi• 3 years ago

I feel like many here don't remember having 20 popups constantly open in the taskbar. It was maddening. Popup blockers were the first adblockers.

Dan422• 3 years ago

It's an interesting hypothesis.

Unfortunately I see a bunch of people kneejerk to say "adblocking is good" or "ads are bad" when that's not really relevant to the question.

But I don't think it's adblockers that caused the ruin the of the ad-based free content model, rather they are the symptom. I believe the cause is Google capturing an ever-higher share of the ad revenue. Let's say in the old days 80% of the ad revenue went to the publisher (and 20% to the ad ecosystem), and that was enough to keep the lights on. Ad revenue dried up, but it's because the share that goes to the publisher is now 20% while the "ecosystem" (mostly Google now) captures 80%. This happened gradually like a frog boiling in water, and as ads generated less revenue per unit, publishers were forced to add more ads per page to compensate. Just one more ad. And one more. And 15 years later there's more ads than content. In response, users started using adblockers more and more, which led to decreasing revenue, which led to more ads per page. A vicious cycle.

Nowadays there's so little revenue to made made from ads (since most is captured by Google) that only content with the smallest production cost can make it. Genuine content is not economical, and the only content that can survive on those razor-thin margins is automatically-generated SEO spam.

Did adblockers ruin the web 1.0 business model leading to poor search results?

Related Stories