[Gunax]

It's sad how the snall web became invisible.

I used to use all sorts of small websites in 2005. But by 2015 I used only about 10 large ones.

Like many changes, I cannot pinpoint exactly when this happened. It just occurred to me someday that I do not run into many unusual websites any longer.

It's unfortunate that so much of our behavior is dictated by Google. I dint think it's malicious or even intentional--but at some point they stopped directing traffic to small websites.

And like a highway closeure ripples through small town economies, it was barely noticed by travellers but devestating to recipients. What were once quaint sites became abandoned.

The second force seems to be video. Because video is difficult and expensive to host, we moved away from websites. Travel blogs were replaced with travel vlogs. Tutorials became videos.

[nanobuilds]

The experience of the internet would be so much more interesting if the search engines unearthed rare blogs or writing from small creators and bloggers that thought things through or shared original ideas.

It did seem we had that for a while and now everything funnels back to a handful of big platforms.

Maybe as AI swallows the data of the entire web, it would start to look for these small sites, small creators, and rare personal content to keep itself interesting and we'll see more of them?

[Ylpertnodi]

> I dint think it's malicious or even intentional--but at some point they stopped directing traffic to small websites.

Small websites have small dollars?

[Gunax]

Does Google get money for directing traffic to sites (barring sites that pay for ad placement, that is)?

If I search for 'astronomy', Google doesnt earn any money whether i go to the Wikipedia page for astronomy, or Joe's astronomy site, right?

[type0]

They do earn money when you go to Malory's Astrology page that is full of Google Ads

[pixodaros]

Google gets money for showing ads and sponsored content on the search page. If you click on a site with Google ads or Google scripts, it gets more money and monetarizable PII. So its in their interest to prioritize sites with Google ads or Google services, but only Google staffers know exactly how the search algorithm works.

A few years ago they upranked all results on a few trusted domains, so many of those domains filled up with advertising and cheap copywritten content. They framed this as 'fighting misinformation.'

[b00ty4breakfast]

>I dint think it's malicious or even intentional...

it's indirectly intentional in that Google isn't wringing it's hands trying to destroy tiny blogs but they (Google) have deliberately chosen to ignore anything that doesn't play the SEO game, whatever the driver of that game is.