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If you imagine Google's job is to present useful information, these blogs that are maximizing cash while simulating usefulness are exactly the sorts of things I would hope Google to want to filter out.

(I don't think Google's often capricious ranking changes really succeed at this, but the outcomes in this post seems like something hypothetically good?)

by wannabebarista5 hours ago|

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About half of what I clicked through were sales funnels.

Traffic for my blog has fluctuated depending on whether or not my site is referenced in the Overview that month for relevant phrases.

by simonw5 hours ago|

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This whole thing is a pretty fascinating insight into a whole other corner of the internet ecosystem:

> For more than a decade, one of the most rewarding blueprints for making money online was to “start a blog."

Then:

> These hundred authority sites and blogs were chosen back in 2022 as they appeared in “bloggers who make six figures” roundups that the entire creator economy circulated as evidence that the model was real and profitable. [...] If you tried to start a blog between roughly 2015 and 2022, most probably you read blog income reports as they were the proof of concept and held up to a generation of aspiring small publishers as this is what winning looks like, and you can do it too.

It's the blog/SEO equivalent of today's TikTok influencer culture.

by ghaff4 hours ago|

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There was a pretty small slice of bloggers like Michael Arrington who really put in a lot of time and created a brand/company that did pretty well off blogging (for a time). But blogging then and now is pretty much a side-gig for a lot of people that doesn't bring in much money. Which is fine. But social media, which has itself contracted, has cut into a lot of that.

by ijk3 hours ago|

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I did start a blog in that time period and this is the first time I've ever heard of this. (Admittedly, I wasn't trying to directly make a living off of it.)