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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

#561

Post by pyrale »

dheera wrote: post #549
rijoja wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I guess sites with real, useful content (e.g. Wikipedia) don't need strong SEO since they have a ton of back-links from other sites that validate their high ranking, so "strong SEO" is really about making a less useful site look more useful, which makes sense for them to hate. SEO really translates to "How to fool Google into boosting your ranking artifically".

In my experience, Wikipedia has been relegated lower and lower in search results.

So much so that I now specifically use their search tool rather than go through google just in case some interesting thing pops up.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#562

Post by Retric »

iudqnolq wrote: post #559
Retric wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing costs for your competition is a net win for you.

And Google

Depends on the industry, but if you can profit at lower prices you can force your competition to spend less on advertising. That’s bad for Google.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#563

Post by nostrebored »

drusepth wrote: post #271
texasbigdata wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also what is the technical benefit? On android it feels like a downgrade

What makes you think it feels like a downgrade? AMP results seem to, on average, load faster with a better UI to me.

Not sure why this is being downvoted. I encourage people to visit the non-AMP version of smaller news providers.

Enjoy the popups, video ads, autoplay, bloated sizes, etc.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#564

Post by rhlsthrm »

markosaric wrote: post #230

Many don't like Google's new design. Rather than resort to hacks, try an alternative search engine. There are many and you might even find one you like. https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.ecosia.org/ https://duckduckgo.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ https://swisscows.ch/ ...

I'd love to see a write up about the differences between all these. "Find one you like" makes it seem like a good search engine is more subjective than it is. It would be cool if these companies collaborate and shared their indexing strategies, algorithms, etc to make the whole alternate search engine space better in general.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#565

Post by cldellow »

taurath wrote: post #417
milesskorpen wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate, these kind of brand ads are usually very cheap and frequently generate some incrementality - you're basically paying to have your links take over a larger part of page 1. Even if competitors weren't going to advertise, it might be worth it.

If I were a competitor, and it’s that cheap and effective for Expedia, then I’d never allow Expedia to have that real estate.

It's absolutely extortion, but it's cheaper for Expedia to buy than a competitor due to Google's auction rules.

Essentially, the bid to be #1 is discounted by the click-through rate. If 90% of people who search "expedia.com" will click an ad for Expedia, and only 10% of people who search "expedia.com" will click an ad for travelsite.com, travelsite.com has to pay 10x what Expedia does to make up for the lost revenue.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#566

Post by benibela »

gpvos wrote: post #400
LoSboccacc wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs. so, about that 4.6 Locators are human transcribable. Users can copy Internet locators from one medium to another (such as voice to paper, or paper to keyboard) without loss or corruption of information. This process is not required to be comfortable. you can't copy a page title into a client and expect it to find the right reso…

> you can't copy a page title into a client and expect it to find the right resource, now, do you? You can type it into Google, though...

My mother opens every webpage by typing the URL into google

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#567

Post by randomsearch »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #453

Very much a way to mitigate the FTC's requirements on making advertising more distinct than organic results. It is an unpopular opinion but I believe Google is dying. They have been for a long time. The cancer is that nothing other than search ads generates the revenue and margins they need and the margins on search ads are now down 90% from where they were in 2010. Personally I'm long on Microsoft/Bing as a candidat…

Google’s biggest opportunity is Cloud. They’re playing catch up but with the culture and staff they have, that’s where I’d be focussing my efforts. I think the 2020s will be the biggest decade for cloud adoption.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#568

Post by georgiecasey »

JoeSmithson wrote: post #455
ChuckMcM wrote: post #453

Very much a way to mitigate the FTC's requirements on making advertising more distinct than organic results. It is an unpopular opinion but I believe Google is dying. They have been for a long time. The cancer is that nothing other than search ads generates the revenue and margins they need and the margins on search ads are now down 90% from where they were in 2010. Personally I'm long on Microsoft/Bing as a candidat…

> "the margins on search ads are now down 90% from where they were in 2010." Do you have a source for this?

i presume he means the increase in the traffic acquisition costs like the $12billion (!!) they pay Apple to remain the default search engine in Safari.

i always found this baffling business logic from Google. i think Google is a strong enough brand that a lot of people would switch to it if it wasn't the default. maybe not everyone would switch but not worth $12 billion a year

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#569

Post by mcv »

One of the responses on twitter links to another twitter thread: https://twitter.com/johnny_makes/status/1218668895655079936

This one explains very well how I've recently come to feel about Google Search. I still remember when they were new and everybody flocked to them because they had the cleanest search with the best results. These days I barely see any results anymore because I'm automatically parsing them all as ads.

Because that's what they did here: organic results look more like ads now. So my automatic ad blindness filters them out. Whenever I search on Google, I feel like I'm only getting useless results, so I switched completely to DuckDuckGo now (I've used it before, but only occasionally; from now on it's going to be my default everywhere).

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#570

Post by Retric »

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?

Might be now? I just swapped my default search to DuckDuckGo.

I have been having several issues with google search recently, this just seems like a good time to make the jump.

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