Remember when Tom's pages used to load quickly...

[V8VENOM]

Now it's just a bombardment of ads. Then the articles started becoming purile jouranlism. Then the content became endless fan boy debates. Then the endless cost debates. Now most pages (including this one) load with really basic errors:

"commentsScriptLoading is undefined"

and overlapping submit button graphics (red box and one wiht a green check mark one saying "Submit Query" the other saying "Submit"

This site just isn't useful - progressive downhill slide. Getting good information, that is reliable and accurate from people that actually own and use regularly the hardware they speak of, is pretty rare. It's a pissing contest site and it's not even funny to read any more, just endless pages of the same. 99.5% fluff and it takes hours (even days) to find any really useful information.

Then we started getting the "Inquirer" style articles with dubious sources and content that just isn't relevant to Hardware and/or software -- like the "Superbowl Comcast Porn" article. This site isn't about content, it's about getting attention and getting hits. The more hits, the more advertisers, the more revenue.

The only solution to fix this problem -- not visit the site -- when hits go down the ads will stop as will the revenue -- but from the ashes it is possible to have a Tom's Hardware 2.0 and hopefully a lesson learned.

Rob.

 

[randomizer]

Stop dreaming. If hits go down, they will need more ads to compensate.

I am not getting those errors, although I do get some broken functions on some pages, do you use a crappy browser like IE? :lol: Actually, better question: Are you on the UK site? The US site is much more functional, at least with regards to the forum.

 

[V8VENOM]

Advertisers want to see hit counts or they don't advertise cause they're not getting exposure. No advertiser is gonna pay someone to display their product when no one is watching -- that's how advertising works.

True IE is crappy, but it is Microsoft after all and I don't really expect anything to work reliabliy with M$ label associated to it. But Safari on my Mac also exhibits similar issues with Tom's site. And Firefox is a disaster for stability/reliability -- and it screws up MSDN DVD installs.

But all the Ads seems to display and work just fine.

No, it is not the UK one.

 

[randomizer]

Do you have any idea how many hits this site gets? I'm fairly sure that if every forum member left it would be no more than a small dent in traffic. The "Tom's Hardware" brand is what makes people come here. Although it may surprise you, over the last six months the Alexa rank (not that Alexa means everything) has had a net improvement, whereas Anandtech (which is already only at 8529 vs 1116 for TH) has had a net decrease in rank.

What is not surprising is that Tom's Games has had a huge drop in traffic.

 

[justinblue]

Hi,

We are actually working very hard to decrease what is called "page weight" or loading time. Believe it or not, the problems are not caused entirely by advertising. I know advertising is a big part, but we are even working to speed that up.

Overall, reducing this page loading time is a key priority of the company.

Justin