I remember when Google made a point of being ethical by putting ads on the right rail with a light blue background so it was clear which results were ads and which were organic.
Every Google result now looks like an ad
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Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#22Not sure about the facts underlying the analysis. In my search results (and it's important to remember that it's possible you get different results than another user, due to launch experiments and trials) the ads do not have icons. They say "Ad" in bold text. The "organics" results have icons.
Yes I see the same, it's really easy to tell what is an ad and what isn't...
The distinction between the two has certainly gone down though (by quite a bit IMO). This feels like boiling a frog.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#23I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I've tried both, and it's just not the same. Google I can bang in cryptic queries like > centos 7 tuned no daemon and get the 3rd link about how to run tuned in a no daemon mode. Bing/DuckDuckGo have the article at around 7th or 8th place, but prefaced by a lot of "while technically not wrong, not what I'm looking for" links.…
I used to work at Bing. If you really want Bing to improve, the best thing you can do is just use it: clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data. Ideally you could use Bing as your default engine, then fall back to Google whenever there's a search that doesn't yield good results. If you have the time, you can also use the Feedback link on the bottom-right of the page to report bad s…
>Ideally you could use Bing as your default engine, then fall back to Google whenever there's a search that doesn't yield good results.
This is what I do with DDG. Unless I have a pretty specific search, or want Google's really nice live sports scores widgets, DDG is usually pretty good.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#24The FTC has spoke on this before. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2013/06/... I believe nearly all the search engines are still guilty of this one. I also think firms should be able to buy "blank space." For example facebook or amazon could pay NOT to have an ad above their result. Maybe they already do, I dont see an ad when I search facebook, however I do see an ad for amazon above the top amazo…
For example facebook or amazon could pay NOT to have an ad above their result
That sounds an awful lot like a shakedown practice. "Nice search result you got there. Would be a shame if it would be obscured by an ad..."
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#25Not sure about the facts underlying the analysis. In my search results (and it's important to remember that it's possible you get different results than another user, due to launch experiments and trials) the ads do not have icons. They say "Ad" in bold text. The "organics" results have icons.
This trick is what caused me to click and Ad for the first time in forever.
If the icons happen to be dark its easy to ignore the 'Ad' text. Maybe its time to supply a complaint. I doubt this is legal in Sweden.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#26I've been in this A/B test for a couple of months now, so I've had time to adjust, and I still hate it. I've just become so used to seeing the complete URL in green. The complete URL! If you hover over the results, you'll see that they like to take bits like numeric components or the query string out.
This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. Their destructive AMP service confusingly shows you Google's domain instead of the website's — and as they can't fix that without losing out on tracking, they're trying to change what the URL means.
Thanks for ruining the Web, Google.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#27I noticed this on a co-workers screen recently and my immediate thought was "what dodgy search extensions have they been installing?". Now that it's on my results as well I can't help but strongly dislike the change for some reason. The icons are both very small and very distracting at the same time and don't aid in adding authority or any important meta information about the site.
The changes seem to have added enough noise to make parsing the page annoying, but maybe it's one of those things you brain learns to ignore after a while.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#28They are still distinguishable (ads have an "Ad" badge as opposed to a favicon). But yeah, new design seems to push them closer to the same format.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#29https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/
It's a little confusing to read now, so for context: at the time Google published this, it only put ads in the sidebar to the right of search results. This post was written to criticize the practice of putting ads atop search results, which competitors sometimes formatted almost indistinguishably from organic search results.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#30Google is an ad network with a search box as the bait. Of course everything looks like an ad, it's by design.