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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

#821

Post by onion2k »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #582
baxtr wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Strength of SEO is irrelevant to the ads.

It wouldn't be very surprising if Google varies the number of ads in a search results page based on the search term. For sites that have strong SEO for all of their key search terms that would be indistinguishable from Google placing more ads in pages where that site ranks highly.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#822

Post by tjoff »

nikofeyn wrote: post #800
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 amp is a plague on the internet and should have been shutdown by regulators. it is definitely anti-competitive. i am sick and tired of our government completely slaving to the big tech companies when it comes to regulations and anti-competitive behavior. google amp on mobile overrides behavior on mobile, even on android, so instead of web links opening up in the respective and selected default app, it opens up…

Unless I misunderstood, that is something you disable in each (google)app that has that "feature".

In Gmail for instance: settings: General settings:

Open links in gmail. Turn on for "faster" browsing.

Default is on. Tip: Use firefox focus instead as the default browser to open all links. If the link warrants further look copy the url to your main browser.

The above has nothing to do with amp.

But to not detract, amp truly is a plague.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#823

Post by goodmachine »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #782
marcan_42 wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be an extension (an official one from Google, Personal Blocklist). It was never part of the vanilla search results page itself.

No, it used to be part of the official results before the personal blocklist extension ever existed. Then some features were removed from the search results and then partially reimplemented in that extension.

Personal Blocklist by Google has been forked and reimplemented by a number of people:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#825

Post by gregf »

dvasdekis wrote: post #805
heavyset_go wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You got a laugh out of me :)

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#826

Post by bickeringyokel »

masswerk wrote: post #818
userbinator wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that 25 years into web usage, any controlled access is deemed too complicated? Two words: corporate greed. It's so much easier to persuade and herd them to where they can be "monetised" when they don't know how things work, nor can't figure out how and where to learn.

Somehow the knowledge industry has turned into dumbing down as a business. There's a TV ad for a smart speaker integrated car, showing a hip, but managerial type man downloading the route to his workplace to his car by a voice command from home and subsequently happily arriving at work. – How do you manage to make a living, if you can't memorize you daily drive from home to work? How is this a product? Has augmentati…

I use navigation to avoid heavy traffic. Most of the time it changes nothing but sometimes saves 30 minutes of driving.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#827

Post by javajosh »

GeorgeWBasic wrote: post #710
randomsearch wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think it is. Their hard-earned reputation for canceling services is really hurting them now. They never accounted for the effect of all the users they've been continually pissing off moving up in the ranks in companies and deciding never to use Google services. The leaked communication that suggests that they could actually cancel GCP doomed any chance that that would be a big player next to AWS and Azure.

>The leaked communication that suggests that they could actually cancel GCP...

People need to stop coupling their applications to cloud services for this very reason! It really bothers me that people architect their systems tightly coupled to AWS - Amazon LOVES it, of course, because this is the kind of vendor lock-in that Oracle could only dream about. (Amazon's vendor lock in is strictly superior because it is at runtime. I don't think Oracle ever had that power.)

Its incredible that so many companies have embraced AWS so completely, never giving thought to the the fact that they are giving Bezos total power over their technology investments. The sunk costs are only going to snowball, and AWS can and will raise prices almost arbitrarily, because opting out of AWS will mean a rewrite, which is some multiple of those sunk costs. That is, a company has to recapitulate ALL the money they paid to build software ALL AT ONCE. This is an existential threat to all small businesses, and an easy "just pay extra" grumble for medium and big businesses. Again, great for Amazon, bad for everyone else.

Google can and should get in cloud by pushing cross-cloud technology that lets companies have their cake and eat it too: cloud-hosted auto-scaling applications, AND the ability to pick a new cloud vendor without a rewrite. I suspect K8s is a good push in the direction. So, yeah, it's counter-intuitive but I think G could win big by pushing vendor-independent cloud tech, starting with K8s. The dream is that Google can cancel whatever it wants, and customers will just make an account at another cloud provider and keep rolling.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#828

Post by a_imho »

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 are not dying, but the perception has been long changing from one of tech dearest to be critical by default of Google.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#829

Post by toastal »

wtmt wrote: post #789
terminaljunkid wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If using Mobile Firefox (not FF Preview or FF Focus), then greasemonkey is available as add on.

This is available only on Android though. On iOS, Firefox Focus (or any Firefox or other browser) is tied to Apple's restrictions. So there's no scope for browser extensions as we generally think of it.

And Mozilla is about to roll out Firefox Preview soo with all add-ons but uBlock Origin disabled until they can fix up and test the add-on ecosystem on the new browser. Unfortunately there's more add-ons for privacy/security/ethics than uBlock (Decentraleyes, tracking token strippers, et. al) which will include add-ons that redirect to the original source from AMP.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#830

Post by dm33tri »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #531
cameldrv wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, at the very beginning, Google only had the ads in little yellow boxes over to the right. They were very distinct. Then they started putting ads above the search results, but they still had a yellow background. Then they got rid of the background, but the results were still fairly visually distinct from the ads, and there would only be one or two ads above the search results. Now they just put this tiny little box…

I have also observed people totally ignoring the top link and clicking a lower one even on searches where the top link was not an ad and was the correct page.

They don't show full URL, and a few times when I clicked on "correct" link I got to a shitty landing which I could not escape. Of course most of the blame is on shitty website design, but still I want to see where the link actually goes to because most of the times for me it's confusing.
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