“Pictures of cats” is the URL of this website. When that website title and URL were decided upon this was the top keyword on the Internet and in the world of cats. It was by far the most popular keyword and the title and the popularity of this keyword combined to make this website the top cat website in the world as per Alexa rankings about two years after it was created (2009).
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Expanding from pictures of cats
I decided after about four or more years that you can’t build a long-term successful cat website on pictures of cats. There were some sites at the time that did very well just on pictures of cats but they’ve all gone now. I had to branch out into other areas and did so.
I covered everything to do with domestic, wild, feral and stray cats. This site has over 20,000 articles. Everything is covered in detail. And it still contains great pictures of cats. I am immensely proud of this website. When I read articles that I wrote years ago I am sometimes impressed with what I did. Almost as if someone better than me wrote the article.
Canva
Over the past several months I have used a website called Canva under subscription. Canva website allows me to create infographics very quickly which I love doing. The infographics contain pictures of cats.
It means that I can create my own images with a message without infringing anyone else’s copyright if indeed copyright exists for pictures of cats.
Copyright on pictures of cats
I would argue that on the Internet copyright has disappeared entirely. I also believe that the big website businesses such as Google, Bing and Pinterest agree with me because they present pictures of cats and all manner of other pictures on their websites without the permission of the copyright owner of those pictures. Pinterest’s entire model is based on copyright violations.
Also, it’s impossible to enforce copyright on the Internet because the owner of let’s say a picture of a cat cannot sue a website owner across the world, internationally, for £50 for the use of their picture which the website owner didn’t pay. It’s just not financially viable or practical.
On this website there are 38,000 pictures of cats and associated pictures. It’s a very big pictures of cats library. As mentioned in the last six months or so it’s been infographics rather than straight pictures of cats.
Google search engine policies
The problem today with all websites including mine is that Google’s policies have decreased search engine traffic to websites by up to 60%. This is mainly to do with artificial intelligence and also to do with the fact that the search engines take information from websites and present the information with links in AI answers to questions on the search engine’s website. This means that the Internet user doesn’t have to go to the website. They can of course click on a link within the AI article but they won’t because nowadays people want quick answers immediately.
And so, the website owners have been cut out of search engine results. They are still there and there’s still some traffic but compared to the old days it’s a completely different story for website owners. 17 years ago, when I started, the Internet, anyway, was far less competitive. Looking back now it appears to have been an innocent era. Nowadays it is horrendously complicated. Google makes more demands with its Core Vitals. These are very technical demands. They are mystifying.
Although this website scores 100% on them because I have spent a lot of time behind the scenes improving the site from a technical standpoint.
Google runs the internet
And we have to recognise the fact that Google runs the Internet. Somebody has to and they do. They dictate what gets seen through search results. If a website is dependent on search engine results, they are sinking.
Catster
One well-known cat website, Catster, is a good example. Their website contains lots of pictures of cats and many other articles. It is an internet magazine confined to the domestic cat. This limited content which means the articles became ludicrously obtuse. Less people visited their website and so they bought up two other websites, Excited Cats and The Conscious Cat. They wanted to buy pictures of cats.org but I wanted too much for it. They incorporated those websites into Catster.
Therefore, Catster is much larger and this was a big investment. They must have spent up to $20,000 and more to acquire those sites. They have to recover that expenditure through increased traffic and advertising revenue. Are they going to make it? I don’t think so because they done this at the wrong time because as mentioned above Google’s policies with Gemini, an AI generated Internet article writing service answering questions, are decimating search engine traffic to websites. Catster is dependent upon search engine traffic.
It seems you have to rely upon other sources of traffic such as social media but there’s a limit to that. You can’t flog to death social media because people simply turn off.
Content
The biggest limiter to the lifespan of a website’s content. The only form of content which has no limit is news but even that has a certain limit because the news media websites simply repeat the same things because life is repetitive. News turns full circle. The same problems arise all the time. Therefore, news media websites can become boring.
But websites based on specific content eventually run out of content. Every topic has a limit and you start off picking the low hanging fruit and you end up picking the fruit at the top of the tree which is hard to get to and which is less popular and less interesting.
So, the website gradually dies no matter what you do. Unless you can dream up something imaginative. I have several satellite websites to help support the main website: pictures of cats.org.
Satellite sites
Interestingly, the satellite websites such as Cat Chit Chat, Mau Mew and Your Maine Coon Guide have not declined as much as pictures of cats.org. That’s because these three websites are hosted by Google and Google Blogger. I think that Google protects Google Blogger websites to a certain extent. I don’t know but that’s my guess.
Purpose?
What is the point of this article; a rambling article saying nothing? It is to see whether Google’s search engine picks it up. I don’t think it will but I want to test Google. As mentioned, I don’t think anybody will read it or even should read it!
This is a technical article to test what is going on and to help me find out how to deal with this catastrophic Google policy which has pretty well turned me off entirely writing about cats. I’m minded currently to stop and forget about pictures of cats.org which I have written for, for 17 straight years without stop, every day.
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For some reason Michael I’m no longer getting your daily emails.
Tamara, these notification softwares have always given me problems. However, it seems to be working as I receive the notifications as I subscribe to my own site to check that it works. Perhaps the emails are suddenly going to your spam folder. Have u checked it?