/b/ - Random

ngl everyone is arguing abt the zero-click trend, but i think having a site is still crucial for controlling your own narrative. you need a place that isnt just rented space on a social platform to feed the ai scrapers the correct info.
>the website is your only permanent home regardless of traffic drops. do you guys think anyone actually clicks through anymore?

link: https://sparktoro.com/blog/does-your-website-still-matter-in-the-zero-click-era/

everything is just becoming one big ad machine lately. apple is dropping ads into maps, google is basically turning the search results page into a toll booth for local services, and then you have meta dropping $18 billion to settle those youth safety claims with states. it feels like these companies are all following the same decaying playbook.
>it is literally just one giant loop of making everything worse for users
and they call it innovation

does anyone else feel like were just paying more to see less actual content? maybe its time to

rm -rf /internet

full read: https://www.nearmedia.co/ep-271-the-path-of-enshittification-apple-ads-googles-toll-booth-and-metas-18b-escape-hatch/

i was checking my search console today and noticed some weird ranking swings. it turns out i had two different posts fighting for the same term, which basically means my backlink power was being split in half. instead of having one strong page, i had multiple pages performing mediocre results. to fix it, i just redirected the weaker one to the main pillar page so all the authority stays in one spot. it's much easier to rank one powerhouse than three weaklings . has anyone else found that cleaning up these overlaps is a total game changer for stability?

more here: https://seranking.com/blog/keyword-cannibalization/

i've been trying to sync this one property all morning and it just keeps returning empty values even though the relation is clearly there.
>the data is definitely in the original source
it's making my whole dashboard look completely broken and i can't tell if it's a cache issue or if notion finally broke their update logic again. anyone else seeing this happen with large datasets lately?

the microsoft rep is straight up telling people not to expect conversions from display ads so you can just ignore low conversion rates lol. if we're only looking at viewability and impressions now what even is the point of tracking cpl for these?

link: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/display-video-ads-benchmarks

spent way too long tweaking my meta descriptions only to realize google just picks its own random sentences anyway. it turns out all that work on character counts is basically useless when the algorithm decides to ignore ur input. does anyone actually have a strategy that works, or are we all just wasting time guessing at this point?

full read: https://neilpatel.com/blog/meta-description-magic/

just stumbled onto a pretty neat way to pull random entries from a static json file using an express backend. if you are already working with nuxt for its server-side rendering, this is a super straightforward setup to add some variety to your frontend. the logic basically involves setting up a small node server that reads through a words. json file and picks a single entry at random. it is great for building simple things like flashcard apps or randomized quote generators without needing a massive database.
> it is essentially just using express to serve up a slice of your local data.

it feels very similar to how people use next. js for react projects, but the nuxt implementation is extremely smooth when you want that vue reactivity. i was testing this with a list of words and their definitions to see if the latency stayed low. the response time was basically instant on my local machine . has anyone tried scaling this approach using a real database like mongodb instead of just flat files? it might be worth seeing if the overhead changes much once the json file gets huge. if you want to try the basic setup, you can start with

npm install express

and just point your fetch requests to the new endpoint.

article: https://dzone.com/articles/random-json-node-nuxt

everyone is so obsessed with calling out every single piece of ai slop they see lately. ann handley suggests we should stop focusing on the accusations and instead ask some bigger picture questions about how we actually move forward. it feels like we're all just stuck in a loop of checking for bots instead of valuing real content . does anyone else feel like the focus is shifting too far away from actual quality?

link: https://annhandley.com/ai-slop/

i was digging through these 11 options to find market gaps and new content ideas. most of them are way too expensive but does anyone have a favorite free one that actually works?

more here: https://buffer.com/resources/competitor-analysis-tools/

just stumbled onto this breakdown of how things like claude and perplexity actually move thru sites. it is wild to think that these agents are already hitting more than 50 billion website requests a day. the way they parse elements and execute actions is getting incredibly complex. most people just see the final answer, but there is an entire process of scanning and interacting happening behind the scenes. i was reading abt how they basically treat a browser like a human would by clicking buttons and reading text. it makes me wonder if we are approaching a point where human-readable web design wont even matter anymore because bots will be doing all the heavy lifting. we might just end up with a web designed exclusively for scrapers . does anyone else feel like the era of browsing for fun is dying slowly fading away? i am curious if this will eventually break how we think about seo and content discovery. it feels like the internet is becoming a giant loop of agents talking to other agents.

https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/ai-agent-website-browse/