11 ms·

Hm, I think there's scumminess on both sides, since (as GP noted) even simple sites (e.g. for lyrics) are bloated and unusable. Before: User: Hey Google, what

by SilasX 7y ago

Hm, I think there's scumminess on both sides, since (as GP noted) even simple sites (e.g. for lyrics) are bloated and unusable. Before: User: Hey Google, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9% APR? Google: Oh, MortgateSite would know, go there. MortgageSite: Here's your calculator. User: Okay, let me put in the numbers ... awesome, thanks! Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a look. MortgageSite: Thanks for the referral, Google! Everyone wins. Today, it's more like: User: Hey Google, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9% APR? Google: Oh, that would be this much: ... . Here are some sites where you can dig deeper. User: Um, okay, might be worth a look. Let's try MortgageSite. MortgageSite: uhhhhhhh hold on a second. Hey, see our BUY THIS PRODUCT mortgage calculator. AND THIS ONE User: Uh, okay, I'll just type in-- MortgageSite: HEY! It looks like you're new to this site. Want to get on our mailing list? User: You know what? Screw it. MortgageSite: Confound you, Google, for stealing our traffic!

tamersalama 7y ago
Funny thing that usually "BUY THIS PRODUCT" is also a Google Product (Ad)
checktheorder 7y ago
>MortgageSite: HEY! It looks like you're new to this site. Want to get on our mailing list? Dear every web developer in the world who makes no effort to fight your employers' marketing department on this: I hate you.
- zaat 7y ago
  I'm not related in any way to that scene, but what would you tell to marketing when they tell you that that while the mailing list pupup is obnoxious and annoying, it results in X users enrolling and later on Y of them actually ends being customers?
  - mechamicro 7y ago
    There does seem to be a sizeable number of people who take any request on a webpage as a command, and comply with the email popup. Which would then generate leads. But, this popup harassment is just going to turn away experienced users. Many of whom will be the educated, well-compensated demographic the site most wants to cultivate. And a subset of that group will have the ability to create or edit blockers, which will then be turned against the offending site. Thus making it more difficult for that company to reach the more desirable users. That's what I would tell marketing. That wouldn't work for all companies. Some will be thrilled to get a boatload of inexperienced or naive users. But would be nice if the others would start to get worried about what they're losing with their bounce rate.
  - checktheorder 7y ago
    Are you asking for a hypothetical scenario where I was the web developer in question having to stand up to some marketing drone? Take a closer look at the key phrase in my post: "makes no effort". If a web developer who's trying to pay the rent makes even a single comment to the marketing drones about how email signup forms might not be a good idea, and asks if they're sure they want to do it, then that web developer has my sympathy and not my hatred. But if they just cheerfully say "Yes sir!" when the marketing drones make that demand, then I hate them just as much as I hate the marketing drones, because at that point they are marketing drones.
    - zaat 7y ago
      I was asking because I have been thinking if there are any convincing arguments or incentives for avoiding such tactics, besides moral and integrity. I'm afraid that if's all depend on moral and integrity it is unlikely we are going to win this battle.
      - checktheorder 7y ago
        Morals and integrity are foreign concepts to marketers. I used to think that marketing had a place, if properly used. After working with marketers for a decade, I just consider them and their whole wretched field a lost cause. I have no sympathy, no empathy, no compassion for any of them. Nowadays I make every effort to use only paid services whenever possible. (If any Fastmail devs are reading... I frickin' love you guys.)
        zaat 7y ago
        This is great but it ain't gonna fix my internet
- adtac 7y ago
  sometimes I try to mess with sites that ask for an email address for a mailing list by entering their own addresses: like "support@domain.com", "webmaster@domain.com", etc. let them deal with their own spam, then they'll understand.
  - checktheorder 7y ago
    I like you.
  - mechamicro 7y ago
    That's a great idea. I'll try that next time. My version of petty revenge is to sign up with one of my throwaway Gmail accounts, and then mark them as spam as soon as the first newsletter rolls in. Hopefully, there's others doing the same and they'll be at least partially blacklisted.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    My go to has been "ceo@example.com" for years. Or various Five Eyes addresses.
    - checktheorder 7y ago
      >My go to has been "ceo@example.com" for years. I think I may make the effort to learn how to make a Firefox extension to automate this. Scrape "about us", "contact", etc. page in background for first email address, then autofill it into the email spam form. Boom, done.
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    This is great! I usually just do something like bs@fake.com.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  > employers' marketing department In some places this a growth hacking/marketing tactic (that works), in others it isn't the marketing team but someone up high demanding it because they've seen it. Am still a marketer, but I've been in the latter and trying to fight the good fight.
nostromo 7y ago
Google could fix that if they wanted to. I remember when Google used to push content developers to be better: no paywalls, no overlays, faster response times, no scammy ads, no content farms. Those days seem to be over. Google is constantly sending me to content behind paywalls and under pop up content.
- ajross 7y ago
  So you blame Google for paywalls and full screen ads on the pages... you demand they send you to in lieu of just hosting some content themselves? Seems like Google just can't win in that scenario. FWIW: I agree that for a long time, the need to rank highly in Google's searches pushed content sites to be a better experience. And the equilibrium we've reached isn't as nice as it was 10 years ago. I just don't think "because Google" really captures the complexity here.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    Google's whole value proposition is sending me to the best place on the web for a given query -- so yes, when they don't do that it's frustrating. No, I don't blame them for hosting the content themselves for some queries. I never said that. Just as Amazon holds some responsibility when I purchase a counterfeit item on their platform, it behooves both companies to have higher quality standards -- and both have the market strength to do it.
- skybrian 7y ago
  I agree that paywalls seem more common. But the early web had plenty of popups and scummy ads. Popup blockers were added to browsers quite a long time ago. Content farms were huge before Google started kicking them out in 2011. Have they made a comeback? Google's latest attempt to keep the crap under control (AMP) is very unpopular on Hacker News, but I guess it shows they are trying to do something?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Content farms were huge before Google started kicking them out in 2011. Have they made a comeback? Have they not? Content marketing seems as alive as ever, if not more. > Google's latest attempt to keep the crap under control (AMP) is very unpopular on Hacker News, but I guess it shows they are trying to do something? Because we - myself and many of those other HNers disliking it - believe that with AMP, making web more performant and less crappy is only an excuse, and one that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
ryandrake 7y ago
You forgot: MortgageSite: Please wait while we take 10 seconds to calculate an interest rate AND CHECK OUT THIS SPONSOR! MortgageSite: Five more seconds. YOUR COMPUTER MIGHT HAVE A VIRUS!! DOWNLOAD THIS FREE SCANNER NOW! MortgageSite: Your rate has been calculated! Click HERE to reveal it using a totally pointless JavaScript animation! User: Finally, now I’ll just move my cursor up and close this tab. MortgageSite: OMFG YOURE GOING AWAY! Please come back and click on me more!!!
- leetcrew 7y ago
  also, "your rate is ready! just enter your email address and we will send it to you!"
rchaud 7y ago
And yet if you type in a mortgage-related query, the first few entries Google will show you are ads. Not the calculator you're looking for. Even then, mortgages aren't something Google can realistically calculate because lenders don't structure loans that simply. There is a fixed rate period, and a variable period after that. First-time searchers may get suckered in by a personal finance site that relies on ads just as Google itself does, but after that, they'll be using the calculators that are on lenders' own sites when it's time to comparison shop.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  The ads in search results are a utterly, completely different character to the on-site garbage parent is talking about. They are simple text entries that are clearly marked.
- nradov 7y ago
  The majority of US home mortgages are 30 year fixed rate with no variable period.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    The majority of UK home mortgages are 25 year with fixed rate for 2-4 years followed by variable rate(which if course no one ever goes on, you simply remortgage as you're about to go on the variable rate instead).
    - rchaud 7y ago
      Canada is the same. Nearly impossible to find a mortgage where the fixed term is longer than 5 years.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Perfect world: User: Hey Gateway, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9 APR? Gateway: Here's your calculator, already prefilled with the data taken from your query. Done. The problem with all these little sites is, besides bloat, that the "Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a look." ends up with user getting malware and/or scammed. The problem with Google is that they can hardly be trusted at this point to do things like this in the interest of users. They want to be the frontend through which you access the Internet. I used the word "Gateway" in my example as a placeholder; my imaginary perfect world recognizes that things like "currency conversion", "song lyrics" or "mortgage calculator" are data[0], which should be separate from the frontend used to access it. I dream of the Internet where things like these are API-driven and do not involve loading anything other than what's requested - neither ads, nor "value-adds", and definitely not all the rest of the webpage surrounding a mortgage calculator, which is bloat obstructing requested functionality. -- [0] - yes, even mortgage calculator; it's a mathematical model, an algorithm, and code is data.
- rubidium 7y ago
  https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what%27s+the+monthly+payment+on+a+20-year+mortgage+with+3.9+APR https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what%27s+the+monthly+p... You're dreaming of what wolfram alpha is trying to build. Edit: funnily enough, they parsed the input slightly wrong but you can quickly get to your answer.
  - joe5150 7y ago
    works perfectly if you put a percent sign after 3.9
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  Perfect world: User: I can afford a livable four walls and a roof from a small amount of savings, without needing to mortgage decades of my future. Brilliant.
  - cortesoft 7y ago
binthere 7y ago
Your second part is wrong. According to the data most users don't dig deeper, they just stop at the answer Google already gave. MortgageSite doesn't even get the traffic in the first place.
- SilasX 7y ago
  I was using that example to establish that the sites (that are losing the clicks) are just as scummy as (if not more than) Google for "stealing" the clicks. That, in turn, helps explain why users might be reluctant to dig deeper, showing that general scummy practices are at least as much to blame as Google "stealing" their content.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Those sites or sites like them made the content initially that google now steals. I remember a world without lyric sites. These sites provide value. The top links google shows may not because of page layout or bloated sizes but those are the links google presents there are lyric sites with no javascript. Meanwhile tons of mortgage related calculator pages exist on most bank sites and other non-spamming pages. Clicking a google search result takes seconds to load the link while clicking a ddg link feels much faster. The additional tracking and redirections start to make things feel sluggish.
puranjay 7y ago
It's a chicken and egg problem. Website owners are forced to monetize more aggressively as the traffic from search slows down. And as they monetize more aggressively, the user experience suffers, causing them to tank in the SERPs, fueling even more desperation.

by SilasX 7y ago

tamersalama 7y ago

Funny thing that usually "BUY THIS PRODUCT" is also a Google Product (Ad)

checktheorder 7y ago

>MortgageSite: HEY! It looks like you're new to this site. Want to get on our mailing list? Dear every web developer in the world who makes no effort to fight your employers' marketing department on this: I hate you.

zaat 7y ago
I'm not related in any way to that scene, but what would you tell to marketing when they tell you that that while the mailing list pupup is obnoxious and annoying, it results in X users enrolling and later on Y of them actually ends being customers?
- mechamicro 7y ago
  There does seem to be a sizeable number of people who take any request on a webpage as a command, and comply with the email popup. Which would then generate leads. But, this popup harassment is just going to turn away experienced users. Many of whom will be the educated, well-compensated demographic the site most wants to cultivate. And a subset of that group will have the ability to create or edit blockers, which will then be turned against the offending site. Thus making it more difficult for that company to reach the more desirable users. That's what I would tell marketing. That wouldn't work for all companies. Some will be thrilled to get a boatload of inexperienced or naive users. But would be nice if the others would start to get worried about what they're losing with their bounce rate.
- checktheorder 7y ago
  Are you asking for a hypothetical scenario where I was the web developer in question having to stand up to some marketing drone? Take a closer look at the key phrase in my post: "makes no effort". If a web developer who's trying to pay the rent makes even a single comment to the marketing drones about how email signup forms might not be a good idea, and asks if they're sure they want to do it, then that web developer has my sympathy and not my hatred. But if they just cheerfully say "Yes sir!" when the marketing drones make that demand, then I hate them just as much as I hate the marketing drones, because at that point they are marketing drones.
  - zaat 7y ago
    I was asking because I have been thinking if there are any convincing arguments or incentives for avoiding such tactics, besides moral and integrity. I'm afraid that if's all depend on moral and integrity it is unlikely we are going to win this battle.
    - checktheorder 7y ago
      Morals and integrity are foreign concepts to marketers. I used to think that marketing had a place, if properly used. After working with marketers for a decade, I just consider them and their whole wretched field a lost cause. I have no sympathy, no empathy, no compassion for any of them. Nowadays I make every effort to use only paid services whenever possible. (If any Fastmail devs are reading... I frickin' love you guys.)
      - zaat 7y ago
        This is great but it ain't gonna fix my internet
adtac 7y ago
sometimes I try to mess with sites that ask for an email address for a mailing list by entering their own addresses: like "support@domain.com", "webmaster@domain.com", etc. let them deal with their own spam, then they'll understand.
- checktheorder 7y ago
  I like you.
- mechamicro 7y ago
  That's a great idea. I'll try that next time. My version of petty revenge is to sign up with one of my throwaway Gmail accounts, and then mark them as spam as soon as the first newsletter rolls in. Hopefully, there's others doing the same and they'll be at least partially blacklisted.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  My go to has been "ceo@example.com" for years. Or various Five Eyes addresses.
  - checktheorder 7y ago
    >My go to has been "ceo@example.com" for years. I think I may make the effort to learn how to make a Firefox extension to automate this. Scrape "about us", "contact", etc. page in background for first email address, then autofill it into the email spam form. Boom, done.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  This is great! I usually just do something like bs@fake.com.
wastedhours 7y ago
> employers' marketing department In some places this a growth hacking/marketing tactic (that works), in others it isn't the marketing team but someone up high demanding it because they've seen it. Am still a marketer, but I've been in the latter and trying to fight the good fight.

nostromo 7y ago

Google could fix that if they wanted to. I remember when Google used to push content developers to be better: no paywalls, no overlays, faster response times, no scammy ads, no content farms. Those days seem to be over. Google is constantly sending me to content behind paywalls and under pop up content.

ajross 7y ago
So you blame Google for paywalls and full screen ads on the pages... you demand they send you to in lieu of just hosting some content themselves? Seems like Google just can't win in that scenario. FWIW: I agree that for a long time, the need to rank highly in Google's searches pushed content sites to be a better experience. And the equilibrium we've reached isn't as nice as it was 10 years ago. I just don't think "because Google" really captures the complexity here.
- nostromo 7y ago
  Google's whole value proposition is sending me to the best place on the web for a given query -- so yes, when they don't do that it's frustrating. No, I don't blame them for hosting the content themselves for some queries. I never said that. Just as Amazon holds some responsibility when I purchase a counterfeit item on their platform, it behooves both companies to have higher quality standards -- and both have the market strength to do it.
skybrian 7y ago
I agree that paywalls seem more common. But the early web had plenty of popups and scummy ads. Popup blockers were added to browsers quite a long time ago. Content farms were huge before Google started kicking them out in 2011. Have they made a comeback? Google's latest attempt to keep the crap under control (AMP) is very unpopular on Hacker News, but I guess it shows they are trying to do something?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Content farms were huge before Google started kicking them out in 2011. Have they made a comeback? Have they not? Content marketing seems as alive as ever, if not more. > Google's latest attempt to keep the crap under control (AMP) is very unpopular on Hacker News, but I guess it shows they are trying to do something? Because we - myself and many of those other HNers disliking it - believe that with AMP, making web more performant and less crappy is only an excuse, and one that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

ryandrake 7y ago

You forgot: MortgageSite: Please wait while we take 10 seconds to calculate an interest rate AND CHECK OUT THIS SPONSOR! MortgageSite: Five more seconds. YOUR COMPUTER MIGHT HAVE A VIRUS!! DOWNLOAD THIS FREE SCANNER NOW! MortgageSite: Your rate has been calculated! Click HERE to reveal it using a totally pointless JavaScript animation! User: Finally, now I’ll just move my cursor up and close this tab. MortgageSite: OMFG YOURE GOING AWAY! Please come back and click on me more!!!

leetcrew 7y ago
also, "your rate is ready! just enter your email address and we will send it to you!"

rchaud 7y ago

And yet if you type in a mortgage-related query, the first few entries Google will show you are ads. Not the calculator you're looking for. Even then, mortgages aren't something Google can realistically calculate because lenders don't structure loans that simply. There is a fixed rate period, and a variable period after that. First-time searchers may get suckered in by a personal finance site that relies on ads just as Google itself does, but after that, they'll be using the calculators that are on lenders' own sites when it's time to comparison shop.

wool_gather 7y ago
The ads in search results are a utterly, completely different character to the on-site garbage parent is talking about. They are simple text entries that are clearly marked.
nradov 7y ago
The majority of US home mortgages are 30 year fixed rate with no variable period.
- gambiting 7y ago
  The majority of UK home mortgages are 25 year with fixed rate for 2-4 years followed by variable rate(which if course no one ever goes on, you simply remortgage as you're about to go on the variable rate instead).
  - rchaud 7y ago
    Canada is the same. Nearly impossible to find a mortgage where the fixed term is longer than 5 years.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Perfect world: User: Hey Gateway, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9 APR? Gateway: Here's your calculator, already prefilled with the data taken from your query. Done. The problem with all these little sites is, besides bloat, that the "Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a look." ends up with user getting malware and/or scammed. The problem with Google is that they can hardly be trusted at this point to do things like this in the interest of users. They want to be the frontend through which you access the Internet. I used the word "Gateway" in my example as a placeholder; my imaginary perfect world recognizes that things like "currency conversion", "song lyrics" or "mortgage calculator" are data[0], which should be separate from the frontend used to access it. I dream of the Internet where things like these are API-driven and do not involve loading anything other than what's requested - neither ads, nor "value-adds", and definitely not all the rest of the webpage surrounding a mortgage calculator, which is bloat obstructing requested functionality. -- [0] - yes, even mortgage calculator; it's a mathematical model, an algorithm, and code is data.

rubidium 7y ago
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what%27s+the+monthly+payment+on+a+20-year+mortgage+with+3.9+APR https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what%27s+the+monthly+p... You're dreaming of what wolfram alpha is trying to build. Edit: funnily enough, they parsed the input slightly wrong but you can quickly get to your answer.
- joe5150 7y ago
  works perfectly if you put a percent sign after 3.9
jodrellblank 7y ago
Perfect world: User: I can afford a livable four walls and a roof from a small amount of savings, without needing to mortgage decades of my future. Brilliant.
- cortesoft 7y ago

binthere 7y ago

Your second part is wrong. According to the data most users don't dig deeper, they just stop at the answer Google already gave. MortgageSite doesn't even get the traffic in the first place.

SilasX 7y ago
I was using that example to establish that the sites (that are losing the clicks) are just as scummy as (if not more than) Google for "stealing" the clicks. That, in turn, helps explain why users might be reluctant to dig deeper, showing that general scummy practices are at least as much to blame as Google "stealing" their content.
- wolco 7y ago
  Those sites or sites like them made the content initially that google now steals. I remember a world without lyric sites. These sites provide value. The top links google shows may not because of page layout or bloated sizes but those are the links google presents there are lyric sites with no javascript. Meanwhile tons of mortgage related calculator pages exist on most bank sites and other non-spamming pages. Clicking a google search result takes seconds to load the link while clicking a ddg link feels much faster. The additional tracking and redirections start to make things feel sluggish.

puranjay 7y ago

It's a chicken and egg problem. Website owners are forced to monetize more aggressively as the traffic from search slows down. And as they monetize more aggressively, the user experience suffers, causing them to tank in the SERPs, fueling even more desperation.