Seems a search engineer exodus is imminent.. What good is your best work if the world does not get to see it? Can not write this in a resume.
Every Google result now looks like an ad
801–810 of 1001 posts
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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
> I posted the solution below, Sorry to be "that guy" but for me the solution is to use DuckDuckGo. It's not perfect, but neither is trying to play arms race with Google's JavaScript.
DuckDuckGo is great, but Searx[1] is even better. It's a metasearch engine that aggregates several search providers that you can self-host, or access via one of several public instances.
I run an instance on my local network, but you can run it for free on Heroku, AWS or GCP or even on a Raspberry Pi. There are several Docker images you can choose from.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#803I'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.
that's a rather simplistic and faulty argument. there are plenty of things wrong with "lure and then abuse" scenarios, and it isn't really an argument at all to say "but look at all the good the lure phase did".
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#804I'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…
There are alternative search engines of course. I use StartPage which has the benefit of local results (but can be fully anonymous) but still uses Google search results. DDG is a great alternative, but isn't for me. And then there's Bing
Just FYI, Startpage was recently acquired by a shady company.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#805Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I posted the solution below, Sorry to be "that guy" but for me the solution is to use DuckDuckGo. It's not perfect, but neither is trying to play arms race with Google's JavaScript.
DuckDuckGo is great, but Searx[1] is even better. It's a metasearch engine that aggregates several search providers that you can self-host, or access via one of several public instances. I run an instance on my local network, but you can run it for free on Heroku, AWS or GCP or even on a Raspberry Pi. There are several Docker images you can choose from. [1] https://github.com/asciimoo/searx
Ironic that I once switched from Dogpile to Google. We have come full circle.
Edit: Looks like Dogpile still works, and flags the google ads properly. I'm switching back!
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#806Different thought: our expectations are in the way. Let's see it as it is.
If the whole page looks like an ad then maybe we should see it that way. Google search is now for finding which ad to click on. Its now an advertising index. Not a general search engine. They don't want you finding anything but ads. So they've made everything look like ads.
I think I'll stick with DDG. Unfortunately if the whole page is an ad then the whole page is likely irrelevant. No matter how much data they have on me, paid content in my search results are likely not what I want to see.
Them knowing I have fish hasn't helped them advertise to me. Google results don't include who I regularly buy from. Even reading my fish hobby email account hasn't helped them improve. I've already used google search with that google account etc. All the ads were completely useless. Trying to sell me irrelevant items from irrelevant retailers. Wrong fish. Or trying to steer me towards boats. If anything, I didn't find what I needed and dropped back to DDG. I needed information necessary to a sale and paid content is completely inappropriate.
All that infrastructure slowed down and frustrated a sale. So. Not so good.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
See the replies elsewhere. The metrics go beyond simple, naive "click counting." Specifically they also measure metrics like "regret" - if you went back to the search results and chose something else this indicates it wasn't a useful search result for the query and this counts against it. In theory this is quite a nice defense against clickbaity, content free results.
> Specifically they also measure metrics like "regret" I explicitly addressed this: > clicking on many results can indicate that they're bad (I click another result because the previous wasn't good), or because they're good (I'm browsing choices). You don't know the reason why I clicked back. Maybe I got what I needed at a glance, and I'm browsing to the next thing to see if there's more of what I need. You don't kno…
It's just you pretending search engines are simpler then they are. Noone's just ranking most clicked sites first - that's too naive and encourages clickbait. Clicks are an ingredient in the overall ranking system, which is generally also trained on relevancy labels by human annotators/raters/assessors. These human labels are far more reliable and can penalize all the bad clickbaity stuff which clicks can't, but unfortunately also very expensive to obtain and thus low volume.
We may not know exactly why you clicked back, or why Joe wasted 15 minutes on a site, but from all clicks in aggregate and from the human-labelled data, we can tell how that correlates with the clicked site's relevancy and quality and utilize your clicks accordingly to improve the ranking.
Finding such correlations is still by far and large what all search engines do, rather than trying to truly understand the query. It's only now starting to change with recent advances in deep learning and NLP.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#808Pure uBlock Origin filter syntax:
www.google.com##+js(remove-attr.js, onmousedown, .rc > .r > a)
www.google.com##.rc > .r > a:after:style(content: attr(href); display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; color: darkgreen; white-space: nowrap; width: 100%)
www.google.com##.rc > .r > a > br
www.google.com##.TbwUpd
www.google.com##.B6fmyf:style(right: 0px)
(submitted 4 days ago as a Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22072706)
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#809I used to think it was just me not keeping up with the cultural change. Then Amazon made their search result unusable by interlacing each product row with a product advertisement row. Browsing visually just looking at pictures became insufferable.
I then installed Stylus, a firefox extension that allows you to add a few lines of CSS to any website. I dont do webdev, but the level of CSS it requires is minimal. I just made filters for all the websites with these toxic features.
I wish there was a repository where people could share their CSS corrections with each other to make the web saner.
Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your link is gold. A historic artifact. Amazing how clear the writing is, how simple the message. That’s, like, totally not the corpspeak Goog emits now on a daily basis. So, let’s do some digging. Earliest version of url dates back 4+ years. https://web.archive.org/web/20151213182805/https://www.googl... Things were a little better than, but not by much. This has to be earlier. Ah, here is: https://books.google.ca/b…
The google books link appears to have died: "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book" (I'm fairly certain that I have not viewed anything from this book, nor any book for that matter, this year.)