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Every Google result now looks like an ad

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Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#361

Post by therealdrag0 »

kfrzcode wrote: post #318

Anyone here have a pro-Google stance? Because at this point I'm vehemently against the company and most of its products. There's no good replacement for Calendar or Docs/Sheets as of now, that I'm aware of. Microsoft's suite as mentioned by therealdrag0 is an obvious alternative, and perhaps less advertiser-oriented, but still not a great in-browser option IMO. Especially when considering the interoperability of the…

Pro-google stance: They provide tools millions enjoy for free.

As for alternatives have you tried Microsoft's Suite?

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#362

Post by michaelpetan »

i'm not as wise as most here, but as a web UX designer, the new "interface" feels odd, awk-wierd, and as many are saying hard to see whats an ad or not. I was around for the NEW COKE, i did the launch event. Coke lost sight of what the changes, tweaks would mean to consumers. In focus groups the subjects where not informed that the OLD COKE would be taken away, deleted, gone. so when asked how it, tasted better the OLD COKE,a majority said better, but better how, and does better mean your taking away my choice?

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#363

Post by phillc73 »

LeftHandPath wrote: post #260

I've been using duckduckgo and bing for a while now. Google is just a fallback.

My biggest beef with DDG is that they do not do worldwide results very well. Their results are overwhelmingly US centric.

As an example.... I search on DDG, "buy cricket equipment near me". I am not behind a VPN and whatsmyip correctly identifies my hostname with the correct European country suffix. However, the top results on DDG for this query is "Dick's Sporting Goods". Click on that and I get a nasty "GDPR DSG Sorry. Can't help you message." Second result is "Cricket Best Buy," who help "to connect North American cricket fans with the best possible cricket equipment." Next, AA Sports. Fourth, First Choice Cricket, "#1 USA Cricket Retailer".

If instead I try to be more precise with the query, "buy cricket equipment "austria"". First result is US Sports Direct.

Nothing here is relevant to my query. At least try to give me some UK results in the first few.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#364

Post by underwater »

bduerst wrote: post #255
dehrmann wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For branded keywords, it's not just shady, it's racketeering. You wouldn't want your competitor to show up first when someone searches for your brand, would you? Then pay up. E.g. https://i.imgur.com/SfomkdQ.png ; the second result is a competitor's ad, the third result is the organic result.

The difference being that you pay magnitudes less for your branded keywords than the competition, through the quality score. Allowing companies to advertise against their peers is actually creating more competition on the marketplace (which is a good thing). Edit: Disclosure - I work at Google but this is my own opinion on multi-sided markets

Advocating strongly for your employer and their business practices without disclosing the conflict of interest is essentially astroturfing.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#365

Post by zweep »

ping_pong wrote: post #186
cytzol wrote: post #26

I'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…

How is hijacking the domain with Google for AMP not anti-competitive? I'm surprised a class action lawsuit hasn't erupted because of that.

Because the Department of Justice doesn't enforce anti-trust law anymore. Read the book "Chickenshit" for more details.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#366

Post by baq »

bduerst wrote: post #255
dehrmann wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For branded keywords, it's not just shady, it's racketeering. You wouldn't want your competitor to show up first when someone searches for your brand, would you? Then pay up. E.g. https://i.imgur.com/SfomkdQ.png ; the second result is a competitor's ad, the third result is the organic result.

The difference being that you pay magnitudes less for your branded keywords than the competition, through the quality score. Allowing companies to advertise against their peers is actually creating more competition on the marketplace (which is a good thing). Edit: Disclosure - I work at Google but this is my own opinion on multi-sided markets

Put that way, google is a market maker and hence should be regulated. Right now it’s an unsupervised private regulator, which doesn’t make sense.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#367

Post by aabhay »

dougb5 wrote: post #324
pushcx wrote: post #29

https://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.

The post was written to criticize "paid placement" search engines like Goto.com/Overture (see https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2002/03/04/how-overture-go... for details). I believe Google has put ads above search results for as long as AdWords has existed (since 2000).

Vendors pay for placement throughout google's interface and search results, even if the 'list' of links is still 'organic'. For example, the placement of buy links for movies, flights, hotels, etc. Now with instant articles, google places content higher if it allows google to track and advertise within the article.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#368

Post by gpvos »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #350
aaronm67 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not a requirement for AMP. CDNs now let you roll your own domains on the AMP standard All these certificates do is make it so Google's browser (and only Google's browser) will mask the fact you're on Google's domains if you sign the file a certain way. If anything, this shows more anti-competitive practices -- they're adding features into their browser that specifically benefit a features of their search engi…

So the user sees your URL, you're getting the revenue from the ads that are shown, sharing will share your URL, your statistics work flawlessly. In other words: if it behaves exactly as a page hosted on your site (just faster), why do you care? I'm getting the impression that HN users care a whole lot about seeing the request in the nginx log they are tailing.

Well, as a user, I care about not announcing loudly to Google every single step I take on the web.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#369

Post by imron »

cytzol wrote: post #26

I'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…

> I'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

Me too. It just looks ugly.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#370

Post by bduerst »

dessant wrote: post #292
bduerst wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a requirement for AMP. CDNs now let you roll your own domains on the AMP standard: https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-url/ Bing also uses the AMP standard: https://blogs.bing.com/Webmaster-Blog/September-2018/Introdu...

The content is still served from their CDN regardless of the domain. There is no way to serve AMP sites from your own servers and appear in the search carousel among other AMP articles. Google is strong-arming the entire web to switch to AMP in order to increase their control over the distribution of content, and to be in a better position for tracking users. The fact that Microsoft and Cloudflare have joined the par…

That's not true. CDNs host AMP sites on their own domains and infrastructure, independent of Google:

https://amp.cloudflare.com/

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