Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Every Google result now looks like an ad

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#531

Post by Polylactic_acid »

cameldrv wrote: post #408
dougb5 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

No, at the very beginning, Google only had the ads in little yellow boxes over to the right. They were very distinct. Then they started putting ads above the search results, but they still had a yellow background. Then they got rid of the background, but the results were still fairly visually distinct from the ads, and there would only be one or two ads above the search results. Now they just put this tiny little box…

I have also observed people totally ignoring the top link and clicking a lower one even on searches where the top link was not an ad and was the correct page.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#532

Post by joshuamorton »

dessant wrote: post #498
joshuamorton wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we set up our own CDN to serve our own content from our own servers and receive the AMP badge in search results This...doesn't make sense. You lose the value of a CDN (both to you and to the consumer of your content, in this case Google and the end user) if you're rolling your own.

It no longer makes sense to be able serve our own content without it being pushed down in search results? We were talking about CDNs because your collegue mentioned AMP CDNs, but the main point doesn't change: we cannot serve our own content from our own servers and get the same placement in search results as AMP content, even if our content loads verifiably fast and is as performant as an AMP page on the client.

> We were talking about CDNs because your collegue mentioned AMP CDNs

I have no clue who bdeurst is. They certainly aren't a colleague of mine.

> even if our content loads verifiably fast and is as performant as an AMP page on the client.

Can you explain to me how your page load time is 0ms? My understanding is that a correctly functioning AMP-cached page will load for the user in a whopping 0ms, because it can be preloaded.

The entire design of AMP starts from a fairly straightforward premise: "How do we reduce (user-visible) page load times to 0, safely, cross origin?" If your pages user-visible loading time is longer than 0, you're failing to keep up with AMP.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#533

Post by lonelappde »

roozbeh18 wrote: post #342
Guest0918231 wrote: post #252

It's funny, because if you run AdSense on your website, Google has very strict guidelines about not misleading users and making a clear distinction between advertisements and your content. However, when Google shows ads on their site, they don't need to follow those rules, they blend them in as closely as possible. Also, what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? See the belo…

almost any average PC user I have worked with, do not know where to enter URL and always search the URL.

For most PC users, the URL goes in the same place as the search, so they absolutely know.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#534

Post by brennebeck »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #520
rijoja wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really? Wouldn't a "strong SEO" site be ideal for their spiders?

If you have good SEO and drift to the top of queries that actually are relevant for your site then you don't need to buy as many Google ads.

Wouldn’t having strong SEO incentive competition to buy ads? Of course it also incentives them to work on SEO, but the only way to ‘get above’ a top ranking site would be to buy an ad, no?

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#535

Post by d1zzy »

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…

> and as they can't fix that without losing out on tracking

Tracking what users click to as the result of a search is critical feedback information for training your models/algorithms, it's not just about "hey let's see where this user goes to fine tune ad targeting for them". And, AFAIK, every search engine out there does it(?)

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#536

Post by Polylactic_acid »

neodymiumphish wrote: post #322
sabertoothed wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecosia serves Bing results (iirc). The search result quality is awful.

DDG also uses Bing. I've never used Ecosia before, but it's interesting to me that the experience would be so dramatically different when they're both using the same source. Must be some interesting factors involved in DDG's search to assist in pulling more relevant results out of Bing.

DDG isn't just a skin over bing. I heard it consumes multiple sources and applies its own ordering rules.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#537

Post by d1zzy »

manigandham wrote: post #457
bduerst wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. CDNs also use their own non-Google domains and infrastructure for AMP hosting: https://amp.cloudflare.com/

Effectively 0 AMP sites are using anything other than Google's CDN.

But as long as it's possible it doesn't qualify as lock-in.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#538

Post by ShorsHammer »

naravara wrote: post #509
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…

>Thanks for ruining the Web, Google. When does the mass-migration to DuckDuckGo go mainstream?

It has certainly got some mainstream attention recently:

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1199783221162053633?lang=en

https://www.businessinsider.my/twitter-jack-dorsey-duckduckg...

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#539

Post by bendiksolheim »

neodymiumphish wrote: post #322
sabertoothed wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecosia serves Bing results (iirc). The search result quality is awful.

DDG also uses Bing. I've never used Ecosia before, but it's interesting to me that the experience would be so dramatically different when they're both using the same source. Must be some interesting factors involved in DDG's search to assist in pulling more relevant results out of Bing.

I do not know about Ecosia, but DDG does not use only Bing. According to Wikipedia, it uses over 400 different sources. So in theory, given they have a smart enough algorithm, DDG should be able to produce better results than Bing.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#540

Post by ronilan »

dougb5 wrote: post #505
cameldrv wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, at the very beginning, Google only had the ads in little yellow boxes over to the right. They were very distinct. Then they started putting ads above the search results, but they still had a yellow background. Then they got rid of the background, but the results were still fairly visually distinct from the ads, and there would only be one or two ads above the search results. Now they just put this tiny little box…

Top ads in fact came first, in 2000, and were there through the launch of AdWords. History: https://searchengineland.com/google-adwords-turns-15-a-look-...

This suggests otherwise:

“For example, entering the query "buy domain" into the search box on Google’s home page produces search results and an AdWords text advertisement that appears to the RIGHT of Google’s search results” [1]

It is from October, 2000. It is so ancient, it is even before Schmidt happened. I don’t believe anything preceded that, but to be sure we’ll have to wait for Larry to chime in and clarify.

[1] http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-self...

Post reply on HN