Now when I first started in 2003, a successful website was a quality informational site that was useful and informative. Ads (both banner and text) were to be used sparingly. There was actually a limit of 3 Google ads you could run on any given page - if you tried to run more than that, they would not display. SEO (search engine optimization) played a small part in how high you were listed on a Google search, and a clean well written web page could be rewarded with a generous first page search listing. This in turn led to more web traffic, which led to more clicks on Google ads. With the ads having relevant information related to your website's topic, it was a win win for everyone. As Google changed their algorithms on how they crawl and list your site, your site may rise or fall in a listing on a Google search. They claimed they did this to keep people from cheating on the SEO methods - a constant change would keep people guessing on how to make their site higher in the rankings. I think it was really done for money - if you look at the sites that are at the top of any Google searches, most are there to make money, not inform the internet user. And a lot of money gets paid to Google to bid on keywords.
This leads me to the purpose of this post. This is my rant and the paragraph that will get me deleted once and for all. This pisses me off to no end - Facebook probably gets the most hits (visits) of any website out there. And it is crammed full of "suggested posts", "sponsored posts" and something a friend of yours liked, so now you see it. If you have clicked these posts, you know what I mean, For example, "Man finds secret room, and you won't believe what he finds". You click that link on Facebook and you are taken to a page that has so many banners, photos and links, that even with a reasonably fast computer, the page takes several seconds to load. As the page is loading and the screen fills with images, a lot of times the desired subject matter moves around on the page. By the time the entire page loads, there may be 1 sentence or photo that is even related to the topic. To continue, you have to go to the next page. The "next" buttons or images are often hidden or disguised as ads, so even if you try to click next while the page is still loading, an ad will jump in the way and you click it by accident. So repeat this process 23 times just to finish the damn article. Every time you click a link, ad or image by accident, someone makes money and the ad supplier makes money (usually Google). (The only exception is if it is a link to another spammy site with more garbage).
So this is what pisses me off. The emphasis is not on quality informative sites, but on bullshit accidental clickage. That is where 90% of the money is being made on the web. Like I said before, I made my money, so this is just a sad observation.
But wait, there is a twist - I am always trying to think outside the box, and I would assume Google is too. Since this is all happening primarily on Facebook and Google does not own facebook, maybe they are allowing (or even promoting) these "whorehouse" sites to display on Facebook to create an overall negative distasteful view of Facebook. Like all popular sites, Facebook will fade away when the next great thing comes and I think Google is trying to expedite the process by polluting the site. I hope this is the case.
