Gross! We established Gear Analytica to address exactly the issues that you raised with the industry of gear reviews. Now we need to fend off the Brooke bots!
Ugh. Thanks for the research. As someone who bootstrapped a site depending on affiliate links, my big take is that readers aren't stupid. Nobody is going to buy from a link based on a slop review. I know that the analytics on the articles I've taken the time to write thoughtfully have a significant amount more read time than the ones I hastily threw together. So it might start to rank well but once people see the online equivalent of Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice: "Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing..."
Good piece (and the previous one linked to around SEO). I do think your modest around the pace of search die off though. I just resigned a senior Ed role on a v established UK outdoor title, and certainly we saw organic search fall off a cliff as Google introduced AI at top of field… enough to force a pivot to alternate revenue source for the publisher. This has introduced all sorts of new pressures - I could write a book, but won’t here! Anyway, anything based solely on the previous SEO rule book is now fubar’ed. For a business already on tight margins, it happened already. Cheers again for a good read - subscribed.
GROSS. Can those brands do anything about it? Like update their affiliate guidelines or something - I wouldn't buy gear from a company who knowingly let their products get advertised like this.
Gross! We established Gear Analytica to address exactly the issues that you raised with the industry of gear reviews. Now we need to fend off the Brooke bots!
Ugh. Thanks for the research. As someone who bootstrapped a site depending on affiliate links, my big take is that readers aren't stupid. Nobody is going to buy from a link based on a slop review. I know that the analytics on the articles I've taken the time to write thoughtfully have a significant amount more read time than the ones I hastily threw together. So it might start to rank well but once people see the online equivalent of Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice: "Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing..."
Good piece (and the previous one linked to around SEO). I do think your modest around the pace of search die off though. I just resigned a senior Ed role on a v established UK outdoor title, and certainly we saw organic search fall off a cliff as Google introduced AI at top of field… enough to force a pivot to alternate revenue source for the publisher. This has introduced all sorts of new pressures - I could write a book, but won’t here! Anyway, anything based solely on the previous SEO rule book is now fubar’ed. For a business already on tight margins, it happened already. Cheers again for a good read - subscribed.
GROSS. Can those brands do anything about it? Like update their affiliate guidelines or something - I wouldn't buy gear from a company who knowingly let their products get advertised like this.