I got to try one of these out at a wedding last weekend, it was a ton of fun and well worth the price. Going to have to buy one of my own to play around with.
I think its a combination of a few things. Their on page content optimization is great and each merchant landing page is very well targeted. They have great domain authority and are known as a comprehensive source of coupons for the merchants they work with. They promote user interaction with voting and comment mechanisms which increases time on site and decreases bounce rate. Their page also loads incredibly fast and they load in non essential user content after the dom has been downloaded. Not too familiar with their linking strategies but I bet they are pretty good. Basically they have a huge team who focuses on it all day long.
Yeah from what I've heard changing domains is one of the hardest things to do successfully in SEO. This is especially true the older the domain is and the more authority it has.
Its nice to see Goodsearch showing up on the board as a competitor these days. I've been working as an engineer and the primary technical SEO there for the last year and a half. Goodsearch takes this somewhat shady business model and at least tries to do some good.
I've been able to 5x our organic coupon traffic over the last year but you reach a certain point where the top competitor is just too entrenched. I definitely worry about this being a parasitic practice and Google has been favoring brands more and more in the SERPs. I'm surprised they are getting such a high multiple on their revenue considering the risks.
This made sense until you tagged on the last paragraph. Drug use over a long time certainly builds tolerance and forms of addiction. You offer no proof that people affected in this way 'never work' in real life though.
There was basically the same article on medium a few weeks ago titled something like "A shiny content farm is still a content farm". I have to agree... not really new.
Meh, the nice thing about human beings who become cynical is they soon get replaced by fresh ones, just like everyone else. Maybe individuals will burn out but I see humans remaining passionate for some time.
Letting them know that you are in demand shouldn't hurt and I have used offers to negotiate things like salary and equity. I think with any negotiation process its more about how you approach it. I would try to re-emphasize that you are excited about the position you are being offered but that its a competitive market with many choices these days.