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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

#571

Post by joshuamorton »

dessant wrote: post #543
joshuamorton wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

AMP pages are preloaded, that's how your get the 0ms load time. If Google would instruct the browser to preload other search results the same way, those would also be available in 0ms when the user accesses them.

See my statement about secure, cross origin preloads. You're asking a search engine to XSS attack its own users.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#572

Post by jboy55 »

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…

They're just turning the big dial that squeezes more money out of every user. They resisted for so long, but now they can't grow YoY without turning it. It's a one-way dial too, you can never turn it back.

Yahoo did this, most easily seen back on Yahoo Messenger, where I believe they fit an ad in 6 point type between two elements.

I've seen it at plenty of places that does revenue based A/B testing. You do an A/B test, measuring $ vs User retention. Money goes up, and retention maybe is affected, but over a few weeks, it looks like its the same. So you go on to the next test. Eventually, you find you have to do drastic measures to stop bleeding money. I wish I could say how long you need to measure retention for, but its probably too long for the test to make sense.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#574

Post by tech234a »

A little while back I started experimenting with changing the user agent string and found that there are actually many different variations of Google’s search UI that are currently accessible. For example, I was surprised to find that by setting the user agent string to Netscape Navigator 4, I could get a lightweight, no-JS version of Google that looked like it was from the early 2000’s. By using a user agent string from IE6/IE9, I could get a version of Google they looked like it was from around 2010 (the former with a simple white navigation bar, and the latter with a more complex black navigation bar). I found it interesting that these UIs seems to be almost frozen in time: many of their navigation bars contain some outdated links that either redirect or 404. I assume this mean that old browser versions are stuck in time in terms of Google search UI also.

Many of these UIs don’t have the controversial changes that Google has recently been implementing, including adding favicons and hiding full URLs.

I also found that there were several different mobile UIs for Google with different navigation schemes and search box styles.

I implemented what I found in a simple Firefox extension that changes the user agent string for Google searches [1].

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search...

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#575

Post by kempbellt »

lonelappde wrote: post #524
hendi_ wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay five figures a month for my "$domain" ad. It's not cheap by any means, but we're forced to buy, otherwise our competitors steal our traffic.

"Steal"? If customers searching for your brand are happy to buy from your competitor with a different name, maybe your brand isn't so strong? And if you are profiting from advertising your brand to people who don't choose your product over alternatives, isn't your marketing just "stealing" purchases from competitors?

Yeah, that's not how it is working right now. It's more like:

User: "Google, how do I get to Costco?"

Google: "Here are directions to Target."

User:"But I asked for directions to Costco."

Google: "Target gave us a lot of money. So, firstly here are directions to Target. If you still want Costco, keep scrolling, but Target is great. You should shop here."

When you literally search for one brand and the first result is a competitor, just because they bought out the ad space for your brand name's keywords, that is theft, imo. Or extortion if you'd prefer. It's at the very least, extremely disingenuous and sleazy. Customer loyalty is looking up the preferred brand to begin with.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#576

Post by yomly »

komali2 wrote: post #506
IvyMike wrote: post #382

Others have mentioned that this is almost certainly the result of a long course of A/B testing. The problem with this kind of aggressive A/B testing is that it's a game of "how far can we push the user?" So instead of having enthusiastic fans, they have people who begrudgingly use them. Sure, Google picks up an extra nickel here or there, and I'm sure some PMs got a raise. But I don't know any strong Google boosters…

Haha, I remember when they announced chrome like 15 years ago, hyper excited 13 year old me literally emailed ceo@google.com with how excited I was. I uninstalled Firefox and installed chrome. And now I exclusively use Firefox again.

Ha you are totally right, Chrome was such a joy to use back in the day...

Remember when google was cool?

https://youtu.be/SC-2VGBHFQI

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#577

Post by jwond »

paganel wrote: post #560
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…

To be honest I’m not sure what everyone else is searching for on Google the search engine anymore. I personally use it as a Wikipedia search engine in 90% of the cases while 9% is for stackoverflow queries, other than that I get all the info I’m interested in from dedicated FB groups and different sub-reddits. And I’m also a 40-year old guy, from what I can see at people younger than me they spend almost all their we…

You might like DuckDuckGo and “bangs”. https://duckduckgo.com/bang

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#578

Post by Thorentis »

paganel wrote: post #560
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…

To be honest I’m not sure what everyone else is searching for on Google the search engine anymore. I personally use it as a Wikipedia search engine in 90% of the cases while 9% is for stackoverflow queries, other than that I get all the info I’m interested in from dedicated FB groups and different sub-reddits. And I’m also a 40-year old guy, from what I can see at people younger than me they spend almost all their we…

Huh, I've just realised I'm much the same. Google is used by me primarily for (and in this order in decreasing proportion): Wikipedia search, Stackoverflow search, company name search, medical related search, current event search (sports scores, election results), (smallest minority of the time) other random queries.

Everything else I get from HN, Reddit, FB, etc.

The instant google results are the vast majority of the time taken from wikipedia. Sports scores and election results are taken from other sites that Google has started top present quite nicely, but that I could easily get elsewhere. Company name searching is basically just using Maps indirectly.

Google as a raw search query product is dying. A competitor could probably service 90%+ of queries just by being great at serving instant result previews at the top for a set of the most popular data (mass-media, wikipedia, local maps).

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#579

Post by catalogia »

johnnycab wrote: post #275
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. I posted the solution below, which I found a few days ago. The script will work with greasemonkey and tampermonkey, it will provide you with results similar to the ones before the change. If you also use uMatrix, there will be no ads. https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/395257-better-google

> "the solution"

That's a solution, but not a particularly great one since it requires too much from the user to see mass adoption.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#580

Post by akcreek »

lonelappde wrote: post #524
hendi_ wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay five figures a month for my "$domain" ad. It's not cheap by any means, but we're forced to buy, otherwise our competitors steal our traffic.

"Steal"? If customers searching for your brand are happy to buy from your competitor with a different name, maybe your brand isn't so strong? And if you are profiting from advertising your brand to people who don't choose your product over alternatives, isn't your marketing just "stealing" purchases from competitors?

I can't speak for the OP, but in our situation, the customer doesn't realize they are buying from a competitor. We regularly get support requests from customers we can't find an order history for. It's almost always the case that they ordered from someone else thinking they were ordering from us. They searched our name, clicked the first result, and placed the order.

We've even seen this happen with repeat customers of ours. It's tough since Google allows the ads to be very confusing, but then we also have competitors who have blatantly copied our style, content, and have even named themselves in a similar manner.

We also spend just under five figures a month on branded keywords to combat this. We rank #1 organically for all of them, but there are always 3-4 competitors bidding on them so we only get a small portion of that traffic if we don't pay for those keywords and get the #1 paid spot as well.

Even with that in place people will still get duped and click ad #2, #3, or #4 that go to competitor sites.

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