6 ms·

I'm curious about the tourism sector problem. In tourism, I would think the goal would be to promote a location. You want people to be able to easily discover t

I'm curious about the tourism sector problem. In tourism, I would think the goal would be to promote a location. You want people to be able to easily discover the location, get information about it, and presumably arrange to travel to those locations. If Google gets the information to the users, but doesn't send the tourist to the website, is that harmful? Is it a problem of ads on the tourism website? Or is more of problem of the site creator demonstrating to the site purchaser that the purchase was worthwhile?

SamBam 2y ago
Presumably the issue is more the travel guides/Time Out/Tripadvisor type websites. They make money by you reading their stuff, not by you actually spending money in the place.
epolanski 2y ago
We would employ local guides all around the world to craft itinerary plans to visit places, give tips, tricks, recommend experiences and places (we made money by selling some of those through our website) and it was a success. Customers liked the in depth value of that content and it converted to buys (we sold experiences and other stuff, sort of like getyourguide). One day all of our content ended up on Google "what time is best to visit the Sagrada Familia" and you would have a copy pasted answer by Google. This killed a lot of traffic. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that the previous user was a bit naive taking his fight to LLMs when search engines and OSs have been leeching and hijacking content for ages.
- popalchemist 2y ago
  If your content has a yes/no or otherwise simple, factual answer that can be conveyed in a 1-2 sentence summary, then I don't see this as a problem. You need to adapt your content strategy, as we all do from time to time. There was never a guarantee -- for anyone in any industry at all -- that what worked in the past will always continue to work. That is a regressive attitude. However I do have concerns about Google and other monopolies replacing large swaths of people who make their livings doing things that can now be automated. I am not against automation but I don't think the disruption of our entire societal structure and economy should be in the hands of the sociopaths that run these companies. I expect regulation to come into play once the shit hits the fan for more people.
- CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  I totally get that it killed your traffic. If a thousand people a day typing in "what time is best to visit the Sagrada Familiar" stopped clicking on the link to your page because Google just told them "4 PM on Thursdays" at the top of the page, you lost a bunch of traffic. But why did you want the traffic? Was your revenue from ad impressions, or were you perhaps being paid by the city of Barcelona to provide useful information to tourists? If the former, I get that this hurt you. If the latter, was this a failure or a success?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Moreover, if it's the former, then good riddance. An ad-backed site is harming users a little on the margin for the marginal piece of information. Getting the same from a search engine is saving users from that harm. Parent has the right question here: why did you want the traffic? Did you intend for anything good to happen to those people?. I'm going to guess not; there's hardly a scenario where people who complain about loss traffic and mean that traffic any good.
    - vsl 2y ago
      Now think of the 2nd order effects: they paid money to collect that useful information. If it’s no longer feasible to create such high quality content, it won’t magic itself into existence on its own. It’ll all be just crap and slop in a few years.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        > If it’s no longer feasible to create such high quality content, it won’t magic itself into existence on its own. It’ll all be just crap and slop in a few years. Except it kind of does. Almost all high-quality free content on the Internet has been made by hobbyists just for the sake of doing it, or as some kind of expense (marketing budget, government spending). The free content is not supposed to make money. An honest way of making money with content is putting up a paywall. Monetizing free content creates a conflict of interest, as optimizing value to publisher pulls it in opposite direction than optimizing for value to consumer. Can't save both masters, and all. That's why it's effectively a bullet-proof heuristic, that the more monetization you see on some free content, the more wrong and more shit it is. Put another way, monetizing the audience is the hallmark of slop.
- account42 2y ago
  So essentially you created elaborate ads and are now upset that the bigger ad company is better at it than you. As much as I dislike Google, people who create content FOR google are infinitely worse IMO as they bury all the genuine content created by people without a profit motive. You can always go find a business model that doesn't depend on Google driving traffic to your website.
klyrs 2y ago
Google snippets are hilariously wrong, absurdly often; I was recently searching for things while traveling and I can easily imagine relying on snippets getting people into actual trouble.

SamBam 2y ago

Presumably the issue is more the travel guides/Time Out/Tripadvisor type websites. They make money by you reading their stuff, not by you actually spending money in the place.

epolanski 2y ago

We would employ local guides all around the world to craft itinerary plans to visit places, give tips, tricks, recommend experiences and places (we made money by selling some of those through our website) and it was a success. Customers liked the in depth value of that content and it converted to buys (we sold experiences and other stuff, sort of like getyourguide). One day all of our content ended up on Google "what time is best to visit the Sagrada Familia" and you would have a copy pasted answer by Google. This killed a lot of traffic. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that the previous user was a bit naive taking his fight to LLMs when search engines and OSs have been leeching and hijacking content for ages.

popalchemist 2y ago
If your content has a yes/no or otherwise simple, factual answer that can be conveyed in a 1-2 sentence summary, then I don't see this as a problem. You need to adapt your content strategy, as we all do from time to time. There was never a guarantee -- for anyone in any industry at all -- that what worked in the past will always continue to work. That is a regressive attitude. However I do have concerns about Google and other monopolies replacing large swaths of people who make their livings doing things that can now be automated. I am not against automation but I don't think the disruption of our entire societal structure and economy should be in the hands of the sociopaths that run these companies. I expect regulation to come into play once the shit hits the fan for more people.
CobrastanJorji 2y ago
I totally get that it killed your traffic. If a thousand people a day typing in "what time is best to visit the Sagrada Familiar" stopped clicking on the link to your page because Google just told them "4 PM on Thursdays" at the top of the page, you lost a bunch of traffic. But why did you want the traffic? Was your revenue from ad impressions, or were you perhaps being paid by the city of Barcelona to provide useful information to tourists? If the former, I get that this hurt you. If the latter, was this a failure or a success?
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Moreover, if it's the former, then good riddance. An ad-backed site is harming users a little on the margin for the marginal piece of information. Getting the same from a search engine is saving users from that harm. Parent has the right question here: why did you want the traffic? Did you intend for anything good to happen to those people?. I'm going to guess not; there's hardly a scenario where people who complain about loss traffic and mean that traffic any good.
  - vsl 2y ago
    Now think of the 2nd order effects: they paid money to collect that useful information. If it’s no longer feasible to create such high quality content, it won’t magic itself into existence on its own. It’ll all be just crap and slop in a few years.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > If it’s no longer feasible to create such high quality content, it won’t magic itself into existence on its own. It’ll all be just crap and slop in a few years. Except it kind of does. Almost all high-quality free content on the Internet has been made by hobbyists just for the sake of doing it, or as some kind of expense (marketing budget, government spending). The free content is not supposed to make money. An honest way of making money with content is putting up a paywall. Monetizing free content creates a conflict of interest, as optimizing value to publisher pulls it in opposite direction than optimizing for value to consumer. Can't save both masters, and all. That's why it's effectively a bullet-proof heuristic, that the more monetization you see on some free content, the more wrong and more shit it is. Put another way, monetizing the audience is the hallmark of slop.
account42 2y ago
So essentially you created elaborate ads and are now upset that the bigger ad company is better at it than you. As much as I dislike Google, people who create content FOR google are infinitely worse IMO as they bury all the genuine content created by people without a profit motive. You can always go find a business model that doesn't depend on Google driving traffic to your website.

klyrs 2y ago

Google snippets are hilariously wrong, absurdly often; I was recently searching for things while traveling and I can easily imagine relying on snippets getting people into actual trouble.