Good idea. A few years back I built https://originationdata.com that compares mortgage lenders (both FDIC & FCUA members) using HMDA data. I modeled rates by lender, product type as well as by facets like MSA (as well as STL FRED data, too). It grew for a few years and I was ecstatic-- getting backlinks organically from some impressive sites (e.g. larger banks themselves, consumer publications) as well as positive user feedback. Then Google pushed their "Helpful Content Update" and Google search traffic absolutely tanked, so I kind of abandoned it and moved onto other projects that won't be SEO oriented, since Google's view of quality is unbeknownst to me.
Users are broken into two separate buckets: industry and consumers. Industry users keep using the site, based on the number of visitors with 50+ visits coming in directly every weekday. The site also gets cited by organizations with regard to their fees and rankings within geographies. This kind of proves the utility for at least this demographic.
Consumers, for a product such as mortgage, will be fragmented and infrequent users, who will only be in-market for a mortgage for a ~3-6 month window every X years. For this audience, discoverability is what matters-- and they will simply go to a search engine and look for "cincinnati mortgages" for which Google will gladly show 8-12 ads with CPCs of $20. An objective ranking based on rates and fees is useful for the consumer, but not an ad network who would rather drive multiple clicks on paid ads. Being objective and useful isn't enough to play in the space, unfortunately.
Oh snap! I was just looking at originationdata.com this week! So awesome. I had originally hoped HMDA data was more than annual, but no luck. It's also a shame that the current admin turned off the data stream here: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/owning-a-home/explore-rates/
I thought maybe you'd been hit by that update, but even more bummed to hear Google enshittification struck again.
The Modified LAR product is what you may want to look at, then. Yes, it is annual, but if you aren't against modeling data, look at the rate spread value, segment then project vs current FRED data and you'll get pretty close to actuals. You can also extract fees and derive APR in addition to having APY data.
It’s almost same price as Halo11, but seems to be far better product and fit! During first look of it, it felt expensive, but after looking at Halo11, it seems affordable :-)
The Logic of Sports Betting by Ed Miller is probably a good start.
Parimutuel vs house odds is probably a good start in seeing how odds change in different types of markets. Monte Carlo simulations will be useful in coming up with your own tissue odds. Then it is the matter of backtesting and comparing your derived odds versus the books' by looking at things like Closing Line Value, Margin of Error and Return on Investment.
For data, check out Kaggle. Learn how to scrape and circumvent platforms like PerimeterX, Recaptcha and Cloudflare. There are dozens of sites that provide historical odds data, even more basic sports statistic data.
Youtube has finally reached maturity and just like SEO for websites, you are beholden to the opaque algorithms. If you don't own the relationship with the user, it is just a matter of time until the screws get turned.
We are getting to watch The Innovator's Dilemma play out, yet again. The downward trajectory of Google's utility has only been worsening over the past 10 years-- but only in the last 3-4 have mainstream audiences started to notice.
The first part of that statement is valid but the second one isn't.
If anything, most of big tech has shown exceptional humility against new threats
Instagram incorporating stories (Snapchat)
YouTube incorporating Shorts (tiktok)
Google search incorporating AI Mode (perplexity et al)
This is in stark contrast to Kodak and the likes who scoffed at digital camera and phone cameras as distraction. They were sure that their ways were superior, ultimately leading to their demise.
Maybe you misunderstood the scope that Google is a search advertising company first and foremost? Alphabet ignores (yes, they essentially invented transformers, etc.., but actual productive efforts likely correlate to predicted TAM or protecting status quo, answering to shareholders while waiting to acquire threats) a market that will eventually usurp their cash cow of first party search ads, because the new market isn't initially as lucrative due to market size. There is also the consideration of cannibalizing their high margin search ads market with an error prone and resource intensive tech that cannot immediately be monetized in a second price auction (both from inventory and bidder participant perspectives). A $10 billion market for Google would be under 3% of revenue, but if the market grows 10x, it is much more attractive, but now the incumbent may be trailing the nascent companies who refined their offerings (without risk of cannibalizing their own offerings) while said market was growing. We are currently at the stage where Google is incorporating Gemini responses and alienating publishers (by not sending monetizable clicks while using their content) while still focusing on monetization via their traditional ad products elsewhere on the SERPs (text search ads, shopping ads). Keep in mind, they also control 3rd party display ads via DoubleClick and Adsense-- but inventory on 3rd party sites will drop and Google will lose their 30%+ cut if users don't leave the SERPs.
Dozens of major news publications have covered the decline of Google's organic search quality decline and emphasis on monetization (ignoring incorrect infoboxes and AI generated answers). See articles such as https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/09/googl... and a collection even posted here on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30348460 . This has played into reasons why people have shifted away from Google. Their results are focused solely on maximizing Google's earnings per mille, as leaked (https://www.wsj.com/tech/u-s-urges-breakup-of-google-ad-busi...) where the ads team has guanxi over search quality. Once Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts left their roles, the focus on monetization over useful SERPs becomes much more evident.
Haven't there been numerous recent leaks detailing how Google has let revenue team take over from the search quality team over the past few years? [1] They can adjust auction parameters for owned properties to juice CPCs, blend ads to drive CTR and disable functionality of ad-blockers in tranches to squeeze as much growth as needed. Search quality has seemed awful for quite some time [2], but all that really matters is growth for ad ePM-- driven by CTR and CPC. The leaked documents from last year also had comments about correlations between lower search quality and higher ad click rates, so there is that, too.
Youtube also increases ad load. More ads per video, combined with organic growth, higher engagement and wider distribution (smart TVs probably have insane metrics-- plus no real ad blockers there, either) mean they'll keep having display/video ads doing extremely well, too.
They are growing and showing up everywhere, but you never hear about them in terms of real innovation, just helping build the surveillance state. Combine this with cloud based doorbell cameras and it seems like someone is always watching.
This is definitely a neat place to visit. No digital cameras are allowed past a specific point, even. I have snapshots from walking the main loop with my dog from a few years back posted here:
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