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I started the Australian Rail Maps website in 1996, and it's been online for 30 years since then. I opened a Google Adsense account in 2004 and have displayed Google Ads for the 22 years since then. But today, I stopped using Google Adsense, and railmaps.com.au is now free from advertising. 1/10

Over the years, ad revenue grew beyond all my expectations, way beyond just funding web hosting. In fact, I earned more than enough to live on. The effect of Covid on travel put a major dent in things, but, just as we were recovering from that, something much worse happened 2/10

In 2021 and 2022 as life returned to normal post-covid, after an initial bounce closely mirroring public transport post-covid trends, railmaps web search traffic and Adsense revenue both declined steadily. It took me a while to twig to what was happening. Too long probably. 3/10

AI summaries at the head of Google search results have decimated web traffic to railmaps.com.au Traffic from Google search is now down by 95% compared to pre-covid. Traffic from other search engines is unchanged, but they're so minor in comparison as to be more or less insignificant. 5/10

Of course, part of this is due to the cornucopia of new websites and apps providing travel planning info today. And that is a genuinely brilliant development. More strength to their arms. But of course, Google themselves are also in that business, and I am a competitor. 6/10

The recent gutlessness from GoogleMaps isn’t the reason I am cutting ties after 22 years. But honestly, it is the trigger and tipping point. And whilst my peak revenue month, January 2020 was stunning, revenue has today fallen to just 3% of that level. Quite frankly, it's no longer worth it. 7/10