Google Tactic: Blame Others for an Issue

September 23, 2025

Sadly I am a dinobaby and too old and stupid to use smart software to create really wonderful short blog posts.

The shift from irrelevant, SEO-corrupted results to the hallucinating world of Google smart software is allegedly affecting traffic to some sites. Google is on top of the situation. Its tireless wizards and even more tireless smart software is keeping track of ads. Oh, sorry, I mean Web site traffic. With AI making everything better for users, the complaints about declining referral traffic are annoying.

Google has an answer. “YouTube Addresses Lower View Counts Which Seem to Be Caused by Ad Blockers” reports:

Since mid-August, many YouTubers have noticed their view counts are considerably lower than they were before, in some cases with very drastic drops. The reason for the drop, though, has been shrouded in mystery for many creators.

Then adds:

The most likely explanation seems to be that YouTube is not counting views properly for users with an ad blocker enabled, another step in the platform’s continued war on ad blockers.

Yeah, maybe.

My view is that Google is steering traffic across its platform to extract as much revenue as possible. The model is the one used by olive oil producers. The good stuff is golden. The processes to squeeze the juice produces results that are unsatisfactory to some. The broken recommendations system, the smart summaries in search, and the other quantumly supreme innovations have fouled the gears in the Google advertising machine. That means Google has to up the amount of money it can obtain by squeezing harder.

How does one fix something that is the equivalent of an electric generator that once whizzed at Niagara Falls? That’s easy: One wraps it in something better, faster, and cheaper. Oh, I forgot easier to do. Googlers are busy people. Easy is efficient if it is cheap or produces additional revenue. The better outcome is to do both: Lower costs and boost revenue.

Google is going to have the same experience reinventing itself that IBM and Intel are experiencing. You may think I am just a bonkers dinobaby. Yeah, maybe. But, maybe not.

Stephen E Arnold, September 23, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Financial, Google, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.