The Crowd 315: Searching

Hi Crowd! Search is cooked. Which might mean the internet as we know is about to very different. That’s a bold claim, but hear me out. If you are not someone who makes your livelihood by posting things on the internet it may come as a surprise to you that publishers have a somewhat complicated relationship with search (Google specifically, but all search in general). Pull a chair up around the fire and I’ll tell you a story. In the beginning it was good, if someone wanted to learn something they could search for it and if you had a site about that thing the search engine would tell people that and send them to your site. That’s the ideal, great for everyone. It lasted for a few years. Then came GoogleAds. Now not only would people get sent to your site, you’d also get paid for them being there. Even better, right? For a minute. But as soon as there was a financial reason for people to go to your site, someone else wanted that traffic instead. Now where your site was on the search…