We tracked the organic search traffic of CNET, Wired, The Verge, TechRadar, and six others from early 2024 to today. Combined, they’ve lost 65 million monthly visits. Some lost over 90%.
We tracked the organic search traffic of CNET, Wired, The Verge, TechRadar, and six others from early 2024 to today. Combined, they’ve lost 65 million monthly visits. Some lost over 90%.
I used to spend a lot of time on tech sites, but tech in general has all become such an evil enterprise. I remember back in the '00s looking forward to the next Android update or even back when a new Windows was going to bring improvements (even if just to fix the bugs). Now every update to every service or hardware is enshittification and SaaS.
New tech used to be really exciting. Engadget started as a gadget blog talking about the newest gadgets doing cool things. MP3 players, cameras, companies trying cool things. That category totally evaporated and reading about the newest smartphone or app with a subscription sucks
Yeah. Sites like CNET and TechRadar seems completely uninteresting at this point. Wired and the Verge seem to have done a better job at transitioning into reporting on how tech affects society, which is much more interesting. 404media seems to be doing well in that business.
The leading article of the Verge at the moment is on what is real in the age of deepfakes, relating to war and disinformation. Wired writes about “All the ways big tech fuels ICE and CBP”. 404media runs a story about how “CBP Tapped Into the Online Advertising Ecosystem To Track Peoples’ Movements”. Meanwhile, CNET is headlining how “Apple’s new MacBook Air is faster. It also costs $100 more”, and TechRadar tells us about “the seven best gadgets we have seen today”. I cannot even imagine caring. I wouldn’t even have cared back when I did care.
Besides, if a tech site does their job these days their readers will not be using Google any more at all.
I really don’t think any of that is to blame, it’s always been that way. The blame it’s squarely on LLM search. People really do believe the nonsense these bullshit machines pump out. I have people sending them to me all the time. And I see creators using screencaps as sources as well. People are fuckin dumb.