The End Of Independent Publishing And Giant Freakin Robot
After relaunching GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT in 2019, the site grew to a readership of more than 20 million a month, through 2021 and 2022. Then Google decided they didn’t want independent publishers around anymore. Most entertainment keywords have now been given to one big company, whose numerous sites own the top slots for nearly every entertainment-related query of any substance.
No one can find our site to read it so that 20 million unique visitors is now a few thousand a month. Nearly every independently owned entertainment news publisher is in the same situation, in one way or another.
Last week I was one of 20 independent publishers invited to an event at Google in Mountain View, California. I didn’t know why I was going, I didn’t know what would happen, and Google didn’t cover all my expenses. But I went, I went because it was the only chance I had to save the jobs of the few employees GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT has left.
Unfortunately, if you’ve read my account of that catastrophe, you know that instead of finding solutions I received a clear signal from Google that they have no intention of allowing anyone to see GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT’s work.
Google’s engineers were adamant that there is no problem with our website or our content. In fact, some of the geeky Googlers there regularly read our articles and seem to genuinely like us. However, my take away was that we don’t fit in with the search monopoly’s new business model, and so we won’t be shown to anyone.
That business model seems to largely revolve around pleasing big brands. During the course of our conversation with Google, an Independent site owner asked why a “Best Shoes To Buy” (not the actual keyword analyzed, just an example) list from a big retailer like Nike always seems to outrank a “Best Shoes To Buy” list from an actual, unbiased reviewer. Google’s response was to ask, “Well if we don’t rank those big brands first, won’t they be mad?”
Unable to help myself I blurted out, “Who cares? Reviewing things isn’t their business. Selling shoes is.” The Googler in charge ignored my answer.
The End Of Giant Freakin Robot
The situation might change at some point, some day. For now, there’s no reason to expect a better future and the holiday season is fast approaching. The last thing I want to do is send GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT’s brilliant and talented staff to the unemployment lines on Christmas Eve.
So, I’ve decided to shut down new article publishing on GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT now, rather than wait and continue to hemorrhage money as we stomp our way toward inevitable bankruptcy.
What I’m Doing Instead
I’ll continue operating and creating new content on GFR’s YouTube channel. YouTube is a separate entity from Google and while our channel is young, it’s been incredibly successful. YouTube is a fantastic platform, one of the few that still rewards hard work and experience. I expect GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT’s YouTube presence to continue growing. Make sure you subscribe as soon as possible before the big media companies get to work on sabotaging it.
I’m planning to use the rest of my minor social presence to advocate for the few independent publishers still hanging on. They need protection not only from Google but also from predatory scammers who will take advantage of their desperation to rip them off.
I’m also working with a charity called The Quiet Rights Foundation, dedicated to protecting the rights of Introverts in education, in the workplace, and in life. While they make up as much as 15% of the population, Data shows that on average, Introverts make 15-20% less than their extroverted counterparts. In schools, they’re nine times more likely to be bullied or harassed. Learn more at QuietRights.org.
As for the GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT website, it will remain online for now and I may post new content here and there, myself with help from other passionate creators. Just don’t expect it to happen very often.
I’ve been writing and creating for so long, it’s hard to stop. There’s an archive of tens of thousands of interesting, insightful articles here, dating back as far as 2008. I’d hate for them to vanish, but the truth is that with no way to bring readers to read any of them, at some point I’ll probably have to stop wasting money on hosting costs.
For the most part, though, we’re ceasing operations. Not because we want to, but because there’s no longer any point in continuing to produce content if people can’t find it.
GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT has been publishing geeky content on science and entertainment for more than 16 years. It was a good run. Now it’s over. If we’re lucky, maybe at some point we’ll get to start back up again.
The State Of Independent Publishing
GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT isn’t the first site to shut down. Hundreds of independent publishers have shuttered in the last two years, and thousands more are on the way. I’m in communication with dozens of other independents focused on different topics. None of them are doing well. They all expect to be out of business soon.
I went to Google directly, on their behalf, and told them about the problem. The message I walked away with, was that they do not care. Our industry is done.
Future entertainment news and opinion will come from AI recaps scraped and stolen from our archived content or from the big media companies backed by hedge funds that Google has chosen as its designated survivors.
I Was There At The Beginning, I’m Proud To Be Here At The End
I published my first article online in 1997, a submission I sent in to IGN on a lark. I wrote it during less busy working hours at the Austin insurance agency where I was part-time employed as a glorified gopher. I think what I wrote had something to do with Saturday Night Live, but it has long since been erased from the internet.
I started my first website in 2000 and was one of the very earliest online publishers to find business success. It was called CINEMA BLEND, and now it’s owned by one of those big media conglomerates. I can no longer vouch for it.
I was there at the beginning. I’m proud to have been there at the end.
Most of those other early pioneers from the same era quit, sold, retired (Hi Vic! Hope you’re enjoying retirement, you’ve earned it!) or went out of business years ago. Some of the worst and most unethical ones now work for corporate media conglomerates, where they use their past knowledge as a weapon to sabotage remaining independent publishers.
A couple of those independent publishers, like the excellent Garth over at Dark Horizons and brilliant Berge over at JoBlo, are still going. Neither of those sites has gotten any significant amount of Google or Social traffic for years, and they’ve been running with a skeleton staff and working on alternative methods for survival. Everything they do is better than anything you’ve seen anywhere else. I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be allowed to keep doing it, so visit them while you can.
How Old Media Money Subverted The Open Internet
I’ve been lucky to be part of building the online publishing industry from its earliest years. For much of it, the only publishers online were independents. Old media companies laughed at us and derided us. Until they didn’t.
Once old media started shifting its focus to the internet, they soon realized they weren’t any good at it. They couldn’t do what we could do, so their efforts were an unmitigated disaster.
Unable to compete with us on a level playing field, the old print media industries resorted to lawyers. They saw independent publishers getting a lot of traffic from Facebook, so they began threatening Facebook with lawsuits if they didn’t show their content more often, and our content less.
That worked.
Eventually, they did the same with Google, and that worked too.
It wasn’t long before the big platforms got comfortable with the arrangement they’d been forced into through legal threats, and started leaning into it. Now partnering with old media companies and new media companies backed by Wall Street investors has become their entire business model.
But those newspapers and shady hedge funds still aren’t any good at it. They never had to get good at it.
How Independent Publishers Are Kept Under Control
Every now and then the cap Google places on independent publishers slips, and when they do our content takes off like a rocket ship, quickly eclipsing everything the corporate monoliths spew online.
Google and the social networks soon realize what has happened, and cap it back off again. But those brief windows we independent publishers have gotten into what the internet could be like if we weren’t being artificially limited, have been educational.
The independent publisher cap slammed down hard on GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT back in 2022 when we were the ONLY independent publisher in the world to make it on Chartbeat’s annual list of the most-read stories of the year.
It got a lot of positive publicity because it has become so unusual for an independent to do so well. Soon after that publicity, Google issued us a manual penalty which claimed that not only our site, but every site I personally own (one was a site distributing free educational materials for teachers, it didn’t even have any ads on it), was “pure spam”. We made no changes and those penalties were lifted 3 days later. A clear indication they were bogus and stupid. Once they were lifted, GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT’s traffic began declining and it never fully came back.
I’m sure the timing of all that was nothing but a coincidence.
During the last couple of years of decline, we’d try focusing on something different to see if we could change our fate. We started writing more recommendation articles, where we talked in depth about the streaming content we were most passionate about. That got a huge response online, and for a while, our traffic reversed direction.
We reached a new peak and then Google immediately shadowbanned our entire site. Interestingly, every time Google does this, even platforms that are supposed to have no connection to Google, simultaneously follow suit.
This cycle repeated at least four different times over the last two years. Google shadowbans us. We find a way to do something new that people really like and break through the throttling. People notice and start talking about it, we peak, and then Google shadowbans us again.
Every independent publisher I’ve spoken to has experienced a similar cycle. We’re only allowed to do well, as long as the big platforms don’t notice.
The last of these shadowbanning events happened in September 2024. This time, we’ve been hit with a full shadowban from every part of Google and every online platform. When I spoke to their engineers in person, Google told us not to expect improvement any time soon, if at all. So we can only assume that this time, it’s permanent.
Those cracks we slipped through in the past have been sealed off. But for a while, they confirmed that you’d all prefer our content if you were allowed to see it. Unfortunately, most of you will never know it exists.
Or existed.
The cap Google, Facebook, X, Flipboard, Newsbreak, SmartNews, Yahoo, MSN, Reddit, and every other platform puts on independent publishers has crept lower and lower until there’s no space left for us to operate in.
At the Google Creator Conversation Event I attended in October, I stood nearby as another independent Entertainment site owner tried to plead with a Google engineer, explaining that independent publishers don’t need much traffic. “You can keep giving most of it to the big media companies,” he said, “we only need a tiny bit of space to operate in. We’ll take anything! Right now we have nothing.” His pleas fell on deaf ears.
And so, we’re all going out of business.
Thanks for the memories. I hope you had as much fun as we did.
Thank You
I apologize to the brilliant GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT staff. You’re all amazing. I failed to keep it going, that’s on me. Not you. Most of the best writers I’ve ever met worked for this site. If someone’s name appears anywhere on GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT, assume I’d recommend them for pretty much anything. I wouldn’t have hired them if they weren’t incredible.
In particular, I want to say thank you to Drew Dietsch, Erika Hanson, and Doug Norrie.
Doug Norrie and I first started working together nearly two decades ago on CINEMA BLEND. 15 years ago I was the first person he told when he found out his wife was pregnant with their first child. We just happened to be online writing something together, and he couldn’t keep the news to himself. Doug is a born entrepreneur and he’s already off starting another new business. It’s going to be huge. I’m going to miss working with him.
Erika Hanson only joined the GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT team in the last couple of years, shortly after Google started messing with us. I wish I’d found her sooner. She’s one of the most talented, dedicated, hard-working people I’ve ever known. She has an endless number of ideas for how to get impossible things done. And she always gets them done. I’ve been so lucky to have her here with us. I’m not sure what she’s going to do next, but I’m hoping she’ll start some sort of business of her own. If she does, I’ll be first in line to invest in it.
Drew Dietsch was the second hire at GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT when I bought the site back from irresponsible investors and relaunched it in 2019. Everything that’s happened since has had his fingerprints on it. If we’ve had success, the idea for it probably came out of his head. I’ve worked with hundreds of people in this business over the past twenty-seven years. Only a very small handful have been as talented as Drew, and if I had to rank him among them, he’d be at the top.
Doug has left to start a new business, but Drew and Erika are looking for work. If you need brilliant content creators, editors or managers, they can literally do anything and make it incredible. You need them. You’ll never find anyone better. If you can hire them, reach out and message me on X. I’ll put you in touch.
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