I actually think that this change is more from social media than it is from SEO. Both are excellent sources of traffic but optimized a bit differently. But the

I actually think that this change is more from social media than it is from SEO. Both are excellent sources of traffic but optimized a bit differently. But the end result of both if these "optimizations" (including optimizing for ads) is a terrible experience and almost completely worthless content. Yet, sometimes, I cannot help but click... I see a site like Mashable as totally optimized for social and ads. I remember a point in time when the site was interesting--when APIs seemed like new thing and hackers were "mashing" sites together on a scale like had never been done before. It chronicled the new web 2.0 trends (which I have to admit were really powerful--no one can deny that the landscape of the Internet was changing). But now it's just a bunch of crap. Top ten lists (which, of course, make you click through each item so you'll refresh ads). And infographics: they used to be cool. Now they're just stupid charts with a graphical background and font. Every time I click one I think to myself, this didn't have to be graphical and it's not very informational. Like a movie trailer the headlines of these traffic-hoarders are catchy just to get you to click on it and once you arrive you're disappointed and 10 cookies have been dropped on you. Or you see some modal covering the content asking you to do something that will help the site proliferate itself. If you can stomach all this deception and read the meat of the article most of the time you don't feel very satisfied. You click the back button unless you're tricked into clicking another of their links. I think the only real way to stop this is to significantly demote sites that have one than one or 2 ad units on the site.