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I would argue that advertising ruined the web. SEO for sites selling real products only goes so far. People are often searching for information, and monetizing that activity through advertising is what caused the disaster of low quality content flooding the web today. I'm not saying things would be perfect without advertising, just much better than they are now.

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Advertising ruined the UX of Google’s search page, but I would argue the exact opposite when it comes to the web itself.

The real thing that ruined the open web and viability of search was, ironically, when Google killed display advertising by cutting Adsense payouts to near zero.

Now publishers monetize via the much more sinister “affiliate” marketing. You know, when you search for “Best [X]” and get assaulted with 1,000 listicles packed with affiliate links for junk the author has never even seen in person.

At least in the old system, you knew that an ad was an ad! Now the content itself is corrupted to the core.

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