Posted on 10/29/2025 9:47:38 AM PDT by ShadowAce
FortNine explores how a search engine generates revenue, using the example of bicycle parts. The video examines the PageRank algorithm and its evolution into targeted advertising. This investigation reveals a surprising method for attributing sales, raising questions about the true impact of online marketing.
bfl
Google search engine sucks.
Um...YouTube...or rather, “ThemTube”, is owned by Google.
The vid will likely get nooked soon.
Might wanna not patronize the criminals you’re trying to indict.
Other platforms do exist.
I still have not figured out out why I’m getting them
"Just make this quarter look better than last quarter, get promoted, and move on."
Have you ever thought that maybe they are really attracted to you?
That’s what figured but since I dont have any pics or personal info up they must be clairvoyant or something
I dont have any pics or personal info up so
the ladies in love must be clairvoyant or something.
Maybe they saw your HS yearbook?....snx.
So how do WE make $$$ from the scam? Suggestions?
Google makes most of it’s money contracted to Government to spy on the Citizens. Google is Alphabet. Biggest intelligence gathering Corporation in the world.
Their advertising is just chicken feed. To concentrate on this is a just misdirection from their real work and real function...
Hmmm ….. hadn’t thought of that but they probably will be disappointed if they find me now :-)
Hmmm, my HS pic ….. hadn’t thought of that..........
but they probably will be disappointed if they find me now :-)
.......c’mon..... you’re still as handsome as ever,
if they’re all falling madly in love with you......chuckle........
When you ask Google or Microsoft Bing a plain stated question, the entire first page of Traditional Search is semi-relevant advertisements for products or services that might be related to your Search question.
When you use AI Search, the plain stated answer appears BEFORE the semi-relevant ads.
With AI Search, you do not even notice the semi-relevant ads.
That’s what I tell myself
That’s not the title of the video. You’re not supposed to change the headline so as to avoid duplicate posts.
What do you think the title should be?
Since the OP couldn’t be a mensch and post the transcript, I had to take up his slack:
Hello, I’m Ryan F9 and this is a bicycle. Bicycles are for children and adults with DUIs, but I’m riding one today because it might help a buddy of mine. A buddy on the losing end of a trillion dollar scam.
[Advert for squarespace redacted]
So, how does a search engine scam a trillion dollars? Well, you remember in 1998 the internet was really annoying to use and you could search for the Stanley Cup and end up on the personal blog of some dude named Stanley who sells dishwear.
So Google’s founder wrote the page rank algorithm. Imagine a tiny internet of three websites. A links to B, B to C, and C to A. A random surfer clicking on random links will have a 33% chance of landing on each site. So each site has a page rank of 0.33. But if B links to C and A, then A must be most important. So it acquires half of B’s page rank, too.
It’s a mathematically simple way to sort the worth of web pages. So page rank can crawl the internet fast, always rebuilding its leaderboard so your search for the Stanley Cup doesn’t pull up something irrelevant like the Toronto Maple Leafs.
When Larry Pageige won a Maronei prize for page rank, they said human access to information hadn’t taken such a quantum leap since Gutenberg built his printing press. And all Larry said was that he was happy his company passed the toothbrush test. That is Google built something that people can use twice a day that makes people’s lives better.
Oh no, what ridiculous stupid machines who builds these things? But no one foresaw just how long this tooth touch would be.
5 trillion searches a day is twice a day for every person on the planet. And that mega data enables the most profitable scam in history. Say you need some new pedals for your little toy here. And the first thing a company like Fortnite would do is make an ad for your precious anglets.
Somewhere on this ad is a transparent one by one image called a spy pixel.
You’ll never see it, but your browser must still request it from the server and in doing so share its IP. That’s how Google knows you’ve scrolled past the ad side.
And nowadays it goes even deeper, Alice.
Pixels are a small piece of JavaScript Google gets customers to install on their own websites. Hit that inspect network tab and you’ll see them firing off to google analytics.com. What you’re scrolling, when, for how long, on what browser, reporting more than enough data for Google to say when you go to for and buy your trinkets, this is my customer.
They saw my ad, I earned my pay. That type of advertising makes up 75% of Google’s billions. It’s 98% of Meta’s revenue. What a doozy of a duopoly. And I have no inherent problem with selling the ad space between the titties on your Instagram feed. Except it doesn’t work like that anymore. Nowadays, people think in search queries. Google knows your pedals are wearing out. They know about the crank brothers shoes on your feet. They know where you live. They know you’ve been creeping that pedal page you pedal file. They know you bounced when you saw the looney 250 looney price tag. But they know you’re a 55-year-old dentist who gets paid in one week and they’re guessing you’ll be back. So, here is the scan. Now, sometime over the next few days, you’ll be watching a mountain biking video, and you won’t even notice the banner ad for those pedals that you were planning to buy.
But since your browser loaded the spy pixel, Google gets credited with the sale when you do.
The customer didn’t discover a product that they hadn’t already chosen, and the company didn’t gain a customer that they didn’t already have. Google just predicted who was about to buy, then showed them an ad at the last minute. It’s the digital equivalent of handing out flyers in the checkout line, then claiming success when people pay for their carts 2 minutes later.
Phew. That’s how Google makes most of their revenue. And that’s a failing of their own toothbrush test. Doesn’t make anyone’s life better, just makes money. We can prove this in a few ways. An expensive option is to massively upscale the spend on a campaign and watch the conversions drop off a cliff, indicating Google had false success, showing your ad to people who were already predicted to be in tomorrow’s customer list, but could not convert when forced to cold call a larger group. The is that?
But let’s put some real numbers on it with, ironically, Google’s own tool. Say Montreal sells 50 helmets one day, Ottawa sells 20. Over time, their causal impact tool can learn to extrapolate Ottawa’s data to predict Montreal’s. So, when we run ads in Montreal and purposely keep Ottawa dark, we can see the difference the ads actually made. In such a test, Google claimed to generate 4,74 sales. But subtract the predicted sales from our fictitiously adless Montreal and we get 160. meaning Google took credit and got paid for 4,544 sales that would have happened anyway. One final spooky proof is to run ghost ads. Pay to show people empty boxes, then watch as Google claims customer acquisitions from that blank rectangle. My buddy once accidentally promoted a 404 page that generated 73 sales. how Google is using their mountain of data to show ads to people who are already about to buy.
To quote my anonymous marketing guru, that’s advertising as inference, not influence. And if that sounds like a subtle difference, the half trillion dollars that it brings in every year is not.
Of course, there are some real new conversions mixed in with the preach to choir, but Google and Meta’s blackbox attribution algorithms ain’t going to tell you which is which. And that’s precisely how it’s possible to scam such a large amount of money because the victims are precisely the people who would want to believe that it’s all good. What marketing manager is going to look at a long list of advertised sales and not go, “Damn, my campaign’s working great. I’m a genius.” And what marketing manager is going to spend a bunch of company money just to show people a blank ad and prove that they’re not a genius? Well, my buddy did, and it made for an interesting expose, even if it didn’t make it any easier for him to advertise the fact that Fort 9 now sells 45,000 mountain bike parts, accessories, and apparel. Hope this video helps you, buddy. Links for those things are down below. Thanks very much for watching.
When I clicked on the link, the headlines says, “How Google is Hurting Us”
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