The question is, why has this post been massively upvoted?

It contains zero useful information. Just somebody struggling with AdWords and they don't know why. Not helpful.

I have to assume the vast majority of upvotes are based on the title alone, assuming it's about Search? A large proportion of top level comments are about Search too. Depressing.

Things are upvoted because people feel like discussing the subject. The actual article is usually just a conversation starter, if it's read at all.

The "Google is dead" title in the AI age, probably.

Posting "Google is bad" will pretty much always get you to the top 5 spots on this site.

Massively? I can't know. I read the article and upvoted 1) because it suggests a rocky road ahead for Google and 2) because, as you may have guessed, I dislike ads, dislike Google's complicity in ads, and so am happy to discuss.

I happen to in fact think we have reached an inflection point. Whether "Google is dead" depends probably a good deal on where they go now.

I am fairly confident that the answer is that most people vote based on the title/headline without ever clicking through. I am likely guilty of this as well sometimes. It takes discipline to avoid this behaviour.

> We find that most users do not read the article that they vote on, and that, in total, 73% of posts were rated (i.e., upvoted or downvoted) without first viewing the content. [0]

In this case, my guess is that people are noticing less and less utility from Google search, and that was why they voted like they did.

This same phenomenon is what gives newspaper editors far more power than the journalists, as it is the editors who not only decide the stories to be covered, but even more importantly, they decide the headline. Most people just scan the headlines while subconsciously looking for confirmation of their own biases.

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.05267

Because if you go to /r/ppc or /r/googleads, you will see that the experience of the majority is exactly the same.