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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

#581

Post by CalChris »

pyrale wrote: post #561
dheera wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would love to be able to overrule Google and always sort Wikipedia as the first result. Maybe this can be done with a browser extension.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#582

Post by Gustomaximus »

baxtr wrote: post #496
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…

Google hates strong SEO sites, because they won't make them any money. So that's a clever way of pushing them further down. I wondered when all results on the first page will be Ads only.

Google decides the layout. You can have the 'strongest SEO' in the world and Google still decide if they put 1 ad or 9 in front of the result.

Strength of SEO is irrelevant to the ads. The only thing Google hate is when sites manipulate themself to rank higher and offer a worse user experience.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#583

Post by naravara »

Retric wrote: post #570
naravara wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yeah for a long while I felt like an idiosyncratic person for using it and it did feel like a minor sacrifice. Nowadays it really does seem like a competitive platform on quality. Slightly less good at parsing the semantics, but much better at actually showing me search results instead of ads.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#584

Post by jethro_tell »

pyrale wrote: post #561
dheera wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use duckduckgo, and for the most part, you know what you are searching for so the !tags are really good. !w search term, just takes you right to wikipedea. When I really have no ideal what or where I'm looking for something, I still find myself looking on google a bit, but for the most part, !youtube, !arch, !git, !stack, get me exactly what I want about 99 percent of the time.

Check it out, because it sounds like it might start to match your workflow: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#585

Post by JohnFen »

nostrebored wrote: post #563
drusepth wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whenever I get an AMP page, I always go to the non-AMP version, even for smaller news providers.

I find the non-AMP version to be superior every single time, but I use NoScript so I don't see the popups, video ads, autoplay, etc.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#586

Post by catalogia »

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…

> "I personally use it as a Wikipedia search engine in 90% of the cases"

I use search keywords, such that when I put "wiki example" in the search bar, my browser pulls up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=example

I also do this with several other sites that I commonly use. In doing this, I've dramatically reduced the number of times I use a general purpose search engine in a day.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#587

Post by trts »

yomly wrote: post #576
komali2 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

These were brilliant ads. I remember installing Chrome not long prior to this period and it had its issues, but it was so fast that I couldn't not use it.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#588

Post by BigJono »

pyrale wrote: post #561
dheera wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is complete fucking bullshit. It's driving me mental that when I search for something, Wikipedia usually isn't on the front page. It's almost always the best result for most things, it should be on top.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#589

Post by dessant »

joshuamorton wrote: post #571
dessant wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the correct term I was looking for is prefetching. That's a secure way to tell the browser to start loading search result links in the background.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#590

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

pyrale wrote: post #561
dheera wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having to search for “xxxxxxx wiki” more and more now. No I don’t want Healthline and Medicinenet links above the Wikipedia entry, thank you Google.

I wish by each search result there was a button that said “banish this domain to oblivion, I never want to see it again.”

You could improve search really fast that way if you still cared about things like that.

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