by James Clive-Matthews | 24 Jul, 2025 | Systems & Technology
The Tragedy of the Commons is coming for the internet:
Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain
404 Media, 23 July 2025
The GenAI equivalent of Googlebombing (remember that?) was one of my first concerns when pondering the likely impact of GenAI search, way back when ChatGPT 3.5 came out and the prospect started looking real.
This kind of thing is, sadly, inevitable. And while Google’s got very solid experience of getting around attempts to manipulate its algorithms, it doesn’t have a great track record of releasing AI products that can distinguish facts from confabulations (remember both the Bard and the Gemini launches?).
The other inevitability is that this is also going to lead to more scammy marketing techniques. We’re going to be inundated with yet more of those snake oil salespeople popping up to promise brands results in GenAI, just as they used to in the early days of SEO – fuelled by similar tactics of vast networks of websites all interlinking to each other to create the impression of authority.
Only now, rather than using underpaid humans in content farms, they’ll be using GenAI to spit out infinite copy and infinite webpages, poisoning the GenAI well for everyone in pursuit of short-term profits.
by James Clive-Matthews | 1 Aug, 2024 | Systems & Technology
The decline in news audiences reported here – 43%, or 11 million daily views – is shockingly high. This follows Canada’s ill-considered battle with Meta, which led to Meta pulling news from its platforms, including Facebook, in the Canadian market last year, rather than arrange content licensing agreements with news publishers.
This amply demonstrates the vast power these tech platforms have in society and over the media industry, and so justifies the Canadian government’s worries. But it also more than shows – once again – how utterly dependent the online content ecosystem is on these channels for distribution.
Meta/Facebook obviously isn’t a monopoly, but a 43% decline in news consumption thanks to the shutting down of one set of distribution channels? It’s a safe bet that much of the rest of the traffic will be from Google, so it’s more of a duopoly.
What impact is this level of reliance on a couple of gatekeeping tech platforms – who can change their policies on a whim at any time – going to have on public awareness of current events and society at large
Elsewhere in the article we have an answer: “just 22 per cent of Canadians are aware a ban is in place”.
Shut down access to news, little wonder that awareness of news stories stays low.
Both Canada (with Meta) and Australia (with Google and Meta) have tried forcing the tech giants into doing licensing deals for content that their platforms promote. In both cases, this has – predictably – backfired, and led to the opposite effect to that intended.
But what’s the solution?
This question is becoming more urgent now that GenAI is in the mix, and starting to provide summaries of stories rather than just provide a headline, image, and link.
Meta/Google were effectively acting like a newsstand – showing passing punters a range of headlines to attract their attention and pull in an audience.
GenAI’s summarisation approach, meanwhile, is much closer to what Meta and Google were being (unfairly) accused of doing by the Canadian and Australian governments: Taking traffic away from news sites by providing an overview of the story on their own platforms.
But the GenAI Pandora’s Box has already been opened. Publishers need to move away from wishful thinking – the main cause of the failed Australian/Canadian experiments – and back to harsh reality.
Unlike the Meta news withdrawal – which could be reversed – this new threat to content distribution models isn’t going away.
by James Clive-Matthews | 7 May, 2020 | Systems & Technology
“I haven’t witnessed an update as widespread as this one since 2003,” says the author of this piece. Some sites are reporting 90% traffic drops, with even the likes of Spotify and LinkedIn apparently impacted. This is big.
What exactly has changed is still unclear – a few days on results are still fluctuating too much for detailed analysis – but one thing does seem certain: “there are multiple reports of thin content losing positions”.
This has been the trend with Google for a while now, with the firm recommending “focusing on ensuring you’re offering the best content you can. That’s what our algorithms seek to reward.”
What *is* good content in this context? After all, “quality” is quite a subjective concept.
Well, algorithms aren’t people, but Google’s long been aiming to make their code more intelligent, and better able to understand context and likely relevance. Keyword stuffing has been penalised for years, as have dodgy link-building efforts. Instead, Google is aiming for near-human levels of appreciation of nuance.
Helpfully, though, Google has also put out a list of questions to help you understand if the content of your site is likely to be seen as quality in the eyes of the all-powerful algorithm:
- Does the content provide original information, reporting, research or analysis?
- Does the content provide a substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
- Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
- If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?
- Does the headline and/or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?
- Does the headline and/or page title avoid being exaggerating or shocking in nature?
All good questions, and all from Google’s own blog.
by James Clive-Matthews | 15 Jan, 2020 | Systems & Technology
This move will reshape the internet, and change how publishers, advertisers, brands and marketers operate.
“View-through attribution, third-party data, DMP and multitouch attribution will be ‘dead’ under the proposals. We’re now facing a world with significantly less measurement and targeting.”
What does this mean? Initial thoughts:
- Less audience targeting from 3rd party cookies => more need for audience insights from other data sources. Owned web properties will become more important.
- Google’s stranglehold on advertising will tighten, as Chrome will track engagement metrics instead.
- Throwing money at supposedly targeted distribution will stop appealing to advertisers, many of whom are already suspicious of the purported ROI of such campaigns.
- Digital ads we see will become less obviously personalised to us.
- Instead, marketing will need to work on its merits – attracting audiences via sustained campaigns based around creative concepts rather than algorithms.
- Yet another revenue source will be cut off for publishers, making it harder than ever to fund traditional journalism.
- This will in turn either open up more gaps for niche non-profit publishers (and brands) to fill, or lead to a decline in the amount of content produced.
Interesting times…
by James Clive-Matthews | 29 Aug, 2014 | Marginalia
*cue thousands of SEO experts desperately trying to work out what this means*
by James Clive-Matthews | 23 May, 2014 | Systems & Technology
Another Google algo update and, as ever, original, interesting, useful content is key to SEO success.
The hit eBay’s taken is interesting, though… An 80% drop in Google traffic coukd be a business-killer for anyone less big. And their content surely *is* original and relevant, what with the products changing all the time?
Possibly another impact from the authorship/Google+ changes the Google guys have introduced? After all, eBay product page writers are hardly likely to be verified Google+ authors. Is this why eBay are starting to invest in creating narrative content around their auctions?
Update: See also the ever-excellent Matthew Ingram on this, who points out the extremely worrying hit the long-running and much-loved Metafilter has taken:
“Reliant on Google not only for the bulk of its traffic but also the bulk of its advertising revenue, Metafilter has had to lay off almost half of its staff.”
The lesson?
Google can kill a site on a whim, and even the experts can’t tell us how or why, because Google’s algorithms are even more secret than the Colonel’s delicious blend of herbs and spices. Any site dependent on search for the bulk of its traffic is playing a very, very dangerous game.
Update 2: More detail on the Metafilter revenue/traffic decline, complete with stats.
The related power of Facebook to stifle updates from sources it has deemed to be suspect for whatever reason simply – and even the New York Times’ recently-leaked innovation report’s charts In the decline of its homepage – makes an obvious cliché all the more true even it comes to Web traffic: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
If more than 25% of your traffic/revenue comes from one source, you’re in danger. More than 50%, you have a potential death sentence. All it takes is one thing to change, and you’re screwed.
