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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

#771

Post by scrollaway »

pb7 wrote: post #756
kempbellt wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why does Google owe you traffic?

Google owes mostly-unbiased accuracy to the internet at large. They built their brand and reputation on that. It should not be possible to purchase a shortcut on the accuracy, especially someone else's.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#772

Post by tomc1985 »

mekster wrote: post #768
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. So, they helped make the web a far easier place to look around on things for a few decades and one layout change and you call them that they ruined the web? It's easy to be on the barking side.

It's likely a distaste at the culmination of a lot of anti-customer moves that Google has made over the last few years

Barking side, indeed

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#773

Post by kempbellt »

pb7 wrote: post #756
kempbellt wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why does Google owe you traffic?

If I promise to give you a truthful answer to a question you ask, "What's 2+2?", and then I say, "5" (because math teachers pay me to give that answer), the same argument could be made.

Why do I owe you a fulfilled promise? Because I said I'd be honest? Why do I owe you honesty about my honesty?

Reductio ad absurdum

If I build a search engine and promise that it will give accurate and honest results to your search queries, and then it doesn't do that... why do I owe you? "I didn't force you to trust me" is the most childish way to try and weasel out of broken promises there is.

To answer your question though - they don't, but it makes them a shitty company to lie to/manipulate their users.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#774

Post by bentcorner »

Thorentis wrote: post #578
paganel wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I use ddg as my default search and try !g when I'm not finding something, and it's rare that I find something on google that I couldn't find elsewhere.

Usually I find success when it's extremely niche results (usually rare error messages) that have only a few hits on google on some random forum that the other crawlers just didn't index.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#775

Post by [deleted] »

tomc1985 wrote: post #772
mekster wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thanks for ruining the Web, Google. So, they helped make the web a far easier place to look around on things for a few decades and one layout change and you call them that they ruined the web? It's easy to be on the barking side.

It's likely a distaste at the culmination of a lot of anti-customer moves that Google has made over the last few years Barking side, indeed

[deleted]

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#776

Post by manigandham »

d1zzy wrote: post #700
manigandham wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need lock-in to be anti-competitive. The requirement of extra work to implement AMP to get that higher search results page placement is the issue.

At which point pushing for new technologies as a private entity is anti-competitive vs moving technology forward? If the criteria is just "needs extra work" then unfortunately almost nothing can change and we're all going to live with the existing technology. Change inherently has friction and requires "extra work" with the hope that's an investment which provides returns long term. In other words, say you are a larg…

Let me explain based on my 15 years of adtech experience:

HTML is already fast (see HN for an example). HTML is already universal across devices and browsers. HTML is already published and easily cached for billions of pieces of content.

AMP is a fork of HTML that only targets mobile browsers specifically linking from Google search results. It's useless on its own, but AMP is required to get higher placement on search results pages, so publishers are effectively forced to spend technical resources to output an entirely new format just to maintain that ranking.

If Google wanted faster pages then it can do what it always does and incentivize that behavior by ranking results based on loading speed. These signals are already collected and available in your Google webmaster console. There's nothing new to build, just tweak ranking calculation based on existing data. Sites would get faster overnight, and they would be faster for every single user because HTML is universal.

Do you know why they didn't do that? Because it's the ads and tracking that's slow, not the HTML. Google's Doubleclick and Google Analytics are the biggest adserver and tracking systems used on the web. This entire AMP project is created to circumvent their own slow systems. It creates more work for publishers while increasing data collection by running a "free" CDN that never leaves a Google-owned domain and thereby always supports first-party cookies. It's a perfect solution to protect against anti-tracking browsers and why Chrome now will also block 3rd-party cookies, because it won't affect AMP hosted on Google domains.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#777

Post by mikorym »

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…

It's not just ruining the web, it's essentially dishonesty. Or if you are a pragmatist: lying.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#780

Post by skybrian »

mikorym wrote: post #778

Am I correct that it doesn't say "ad" or "sponsored" at all? Is that even legal (in some countries)?

I just searched on "Hawaii hotels" (to make sure ads show up) and got a bunch of ad links, each prefixed by Ad in bold, followed by a bunch of regular links with a favicon (?) where the Ad appears.

It doesn't seem that hard to distinguish? Perhaps other people are seeing something else?

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