Google in trouble: Root Level Domain or Root Cause Analysis?

Google's headquarters, the Googleplex
Picture Source: Wikipedia

What is Root Level Domain and what is Root Cause Analysis?

It is easy to define Root Cause Analysis (RCA). For example, you can read an article on it in the English Wikipedia.

In the context of Risk Management, RCA is a Risk Identification and Risk Assessment technique.

Root Level Domain is not well defined in the context of Google's Blog spot.

Therefore the answer to the question in this post's title is: Root Cause Analysis.

Google is in a risk. The next post in this blog will be titled: Vendors Survival: will Google Survive until 2030?

Google and The Devil

The proverb "the Devil is hidden in the details" is applicable to Google's advertisement in Blogger's blogs: A good new idea but poor design and very poor execution.

This is a small indicator showing that Google is not the same Google of 10 or 20 years ago.

Background

Google offered free blogging services in Blogger. People who use Blogger's services could earn some money based on exposure and clicking of Google's advertisement on the posts they are publishing. Until recently the bloggers were responsible for designing the advertisement patters e.g. location in the blog's pages, size and colour.

Google is providing tools, feedback, tips and analytics helping bloggers to customize the advertisement in their blog's pages.

First Step: Good idea

A new option was offered to bloggers. They can select it and Google will take care of advertisement placement and appearance in the blogs.

I thought that it is a good idea. I am an expert in the topics I am writing about in three different blogs. However, my knowledge and understanding in web advertisement is very limited.
Google could do a lot better job. It is a Win-Win situation: Google advertisement in blogs will be more effective and I will earn more money.

I made the simple change authorizing Google to take care of advertisement in my blogs.
In the next month I earned more than in months before.

Second Step: Something went wrong in Google

On January 2020 my earnings declined significantly. I would not care if I would not get the following message every day:

Earnings at risk - You need to fix some ads.txt file issues to avoid severe impact to your revenue.

FIX NOW

LEARN MORE

The screen included statistics showing that I earned nothing but there were pageviews. In previous months the same pageviews statistics would generate some earnings.

There was no choice but to fix the problem.
10 years ago or 15 years ago Google provided videos explaining the problem and how to fix it. Usually their were two participants in the video: a young man and a young woman discussing the issue and describing step by step solution. Showing images of step by step actions. Needless to say that English was their Native Language.

This time i had to guess were should I place HTML/Javascript code provided by google. I ought to place it on the first level under Root Level Domain of my site.

I guessed incorrectly. I found some queries and answers by Google's experts. However, they did not provide a unique and straight forward answer. I looked for a video explaining the problem and depicting the answer.

I found one. I do not know if the man explaining is a Google's employee.
I do know that he is not an English Native Speaker and it is not easy to follow his advice. The explanation is far from being clear and helpful.

Happy End?

Not yet. I finally understood what Google is expecting me to do and did it.
No revenues yet.
There was another message in the next screen telling me that: "It may take a few days for changes to update. If you’re using another ad network, remember to add the network to the ads.txt file. See the ads.txt guide for more details".

What to expect for an implementation in 3rd decade of 2000?

1. The user should define parameter or few parameters defining what he would like to do.

2. Google software should automatically create the code and place it in the Root Level Domain.

3. The option allowing Google to design the advertisement in blogs pages should be the default option or at least the default option for new blogs.

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