Google is getting even worse for independent sites

The web wasn't meant to be like this. We're watching the slow death of independent thoought and expertise, replaced by content farms optimized for ad revenue. When genuine experts who actually test products get buried beneath 64 shopping listings and recycled "best of" posts from mega publishers, we've lost our way.

The tragic irony is that this system actively punishes quality while rewarding mediocrity at scale. This isn't just about traffic or revenue - it's about the fundamental promise of the web as a democratizing force for knowledge sharing.

And this isn't a technology problem. It's a business model problem. When search prioritizes ad revenue over quality, we shouldn't be surprised when quality dies.

The solution isn't complex, but it requires us to rethink our relationship with "free" services.

It is insane how they have destroyed a wide swath of indie websites, I just wrote on this subject and how bad they hit us: https://build.shepherd.com/p/hi-google-please-stop-the-bed-a...

Google’s strategy has always been “pay to play”. Just look at their recent deal with Reddit, now much of SERP is slop from Reddit.

But with AI overviews, that may have been the last nail in the coffin for indie creators

I am terrified that Google will kill the website I live from the same way. It’s a genuinely useful website that people in my area know and love. Everything is written by hand from original research. It is only a matter of time before my traffic is handed over to Reddit or some other top 50 website that happens to have user generated content on the topic.

I'm complaining for years that google search is giving less and less relevant answers to the point I almost exclusively add "reddit" to the query, or even started to use AI for getting a first overview of technical questions I may have. It went shit before chatgpt but it's worse and worse now

One thing that's weird is that housefresh specialises in reviewing air purifiers but they have nothing on the Xiaomi series, which is what everyone I know has, at least here in Spain.

Misleading, article from May;

Some discussion about the HouseFresh case at the time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40239811

I wonder if this is also punishment for their article a few months ago? Google will never own up to that of course. But still ..