Users don't really visit websites anymore - they sit on facebook/google/Reddit/hacker news. So you have to REALLY market to those few people you get from Google search results... as Google really wants you to BUY those users from them - not write good content to get them (even though that's what they say to do..)

one day you can be doing well with google - making enough money a day to pay for your hosting and then next day, serps change and your traffic tanks and you then spend more money to try and correct it and you start copying what others say works - email lists, live chats, exit ads, moore mobile ads - you pray you start earning high CPMs and you start looking to arbitrate - find cheap traffic to hopefully pay less than what you earn to get more traffic and you start falling for fiverr deals that are fake an SEO tricks that penalyze you in the end and before you know it, you're 20k in debt running a website that most people leave within 30 seconds and even though you may have solved thousands of people problems my helping them fix something, learn something, do something or expereince something they choose to create a facebook post or tweet about it rather than comment or join your community - so those big giants earn a LOT more revenue on publisher backs.. for the average deal, facebook and google will earn 80 plus bucks a year on what you do, but us lowly publishers will spend more than that per user to try and ink out some successs

and in the end, the irony is that a website set up to show how bad the industry is will end up with more links, more traffic, more google juice, and higher link authority than a publisher with thousands of hours of work put in being creative, helpful and insightful..

and you wonder why the web is getting so painful :)

I'm not usually one to point out spelling errors, but this mistake is so serendipitous given your usage of it.

penalize + paralyze = penalyze? Somebody call up them Merriam-Webster folks!

Or put it another way: people get this awesome, always updating, huge library about anything.

And they can't even spend a few seconds of effort to get the content.

How do you buy traffic from Google? Ads? Are you saying that "great content" does not work? That great content if i find it at the top of the results has also been paying for ads for those keywords?

but will better quality content without ads get ranked higher than worse quality with ads?

This algorithm approach to everything means its not just google controlling who gets to be "top" but facebook/twitter does the same - if you're not already at the top then the algorithm diminishes your reach - you don't show up on searches, you don't show up on followers of your page, you don't show up on your followers twitter streamline unless you're trending - and for the most part to trend you need status or to pay to play...

its tough... but what it really means is google/facebook/twitter don't create any content whatsoever but they monetize it by controlling it algorithmically and you have to generally pay to play to perform well - buy facebook ads, twitter ads, google ads.

more often then not, the higher the ranked content is in google - the more ads you will see because they're monetizing the crap out of that position.. ironically if you're a publisher and you do google Adsense (their ad network) and you choose to embrace their automatic ad platform they inject so many ads on your website that its almost saddening - and again, they control this algorithmically.

https://bookmarklets.arantius.com/unfix

Might need to add a "nuke" like option.

Well, at least some engineers are good at what they do?

I've never seen a website handle that combo well. 100% of the time you'll click an anchor and have to scroll down slightly

Exactly, I hate the bait-and-switch of chat windows.

"Oh hey there, do you have any questions?" pops up after a couple minutes on the site, then you reply with a question and you get "We will respond to you within a couple hours, you are important to us".

I think it erodes your user's trust in you.

People like to build and show off these "helpful" assistants as AI tech, but how much do they actually get used?

"Oh awesome, yeah I have a question about using XYZ"

and then the system would instantly reply, "Please enter your email here and we will get back to you. <Company Name> typically responds within 3 hours."

> What happens if I'm not home when the shipment arrives?

I received exactly the answer I was looking for.

I have also seen chat windows that display an "Away Message" showing that you won't receive a response right away before you type anything at all, which isn't deceptive.

Also, you can actually select the text on the site. Would be much better clicking the mouse linked somewhere or triggered an event.