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Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

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Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#161

Post by donmcronald »

jsnell wrote: post #38

> I think the answer is because it’s not in their best interest to do so. They like that most consumers will look at these reviews, click through to Amazon and make their purchase with little hesitation. I don't understand the logic here. Why exactly would Google want people to thoughlessly click on Amazon affiliate links from other sites? There's no short-term beneft, since they don't get a cut. And there's no long-…

> Why exactly would Google want people to thoughlessly click on Amazon affiliate links

I don’t think it’s specifically Amazon links, but if they’re mindlessly measuring metrics without thinking about “why” things happen, the affiliate link spam that dominates results might increase ad buys. Think about it. If you can’t rank on the first couple of pages due to affiliate marketing spammers, you might buy an ad. If you’re competing with some of those spammers for ad buys, you might pay more.

It’s just super poor leadership and a lack of critical thinking that has let it happen IMO.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#162

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #155
hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is Consumer Reports in the US: http://cr.org They are a nonprofit that has been independent for decades and have strict policies against accepting gifts, sponsorships, ads, etc, and take other steps to remain free from influence. For example, when they review new cars they send an undercover individual to buy it at normal price from a random dealer so the company and the dealer don't know the buyer is CR (and m…

CR also tends to limit itself to middle-of-the-range items. If you're actually interested in the best, their surveys don't always cover it, since they prefer to review things that most people can/would purchase. This has changed a bit in the last few years, but it's still the case that if you want to find solid unbiased reviews of, for example, high end ranges or washing machines, CR is not always the most helpful.

Good info. As a non-rich person I do appreciate their emphasis on highlighting the products that provide the best value for the money.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#163

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

nwienert wrote: post #147
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #97

So here's a side-question. The original key idea behind Google's approach to search was page rank : how many, and what kinds, of other sites linked to this one (and potentially, in what context). Does anyone think that this can possibly be at the core of Google's page rank anymore? Most pages don't have any significant number of links any more, and if they do, they are presumably garbage most of the time. Who is out…

I agree with much of this. I believe the antidote to this is simply acknowledging small communities curate the best content, so essentially marry many small decentralized communities on a searchable platform. Anonymous but karma/identity weighted profiles, curating and debating lists of their favorite things around a single topic. Aggregate them into a single master index with nice UI, then pay out equitably based on…

>... simply acknowledging small communities curate the best content

This is true for some things. But for reliability reviews, for example, there's a certain power in large numbers. I'd much rather see reviews for common appliances from 200k people (or more) than the same from a group of 2000 appliance-centric folk. That's true even though the 2k set will likely know and care a lot more than many of the people in the 200k set.

On the other hand, with large numbers of people, it's much harder to deal with "95% of reviews are complaints" problem, which tends not to be so much of a problem with "enthusiasts".

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#164

Post by lolsal »

Robotbeat wrote: post #100
zwaps wrote: post #71

Hm, this is not really news, but perhaps it's the first time I consciously think about it. The article is right. I used to search Google for what the best X is. At some point. Indeed, I also used to search amazon and read the reviews. Now, and for what feels like a while, I am not doing that anymore. Like, at all. And this is not a decision I consciously made. If I want to know what the best dishwasher is, I am not g…

I use Reddit a lot for this. But this is an arms race with SEOs and bots. Eventually Reddit will probably be worthless for this.

What makes you think what you're reading on reddit is not already socially engineered advertisements and bot spam?

People have been paying attractive people to "hang out" in bars and pitch gizmos and doo-dads for decades (citation needed); absolutely there are accounts on reddit shilling gizmos across relevant subs.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#165

Post by padthai »

nwienert wrote: post #147
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #97

So here's a side-question. The original key idea behind Google's approach to search was page rank : how many, and what kinds, of other sites linked to this one (and potentially, in what context). Does anyone think that this can possibly be at the core of Google's page rank anymore? Most pages don't have any significant number of links any more, and if they do, they are presumably garbage most of the time. Who is out…

I agree with much of this. I believe the antidote to this is simply acknowledging small communities curate the best content, so essentially marry many small decentralized communities on a searchable platform. Anonymous but karma/identity weighted profiles, curating and debating lists of their favorite things around a single topic. Aggregate them into a single master index with nice UI, then pay out equitably based on…

Part of the spam is clearly condoned by Google, probably for a mix of reasons.

An example is Pinterest, Google can drop or deprioritize their properties, like they do with other actors. But for some reason they do not. Maybe they are scared of litigation.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#166

Post by donmcronald »

jurassic wrote: post #160

I would love if sites containing too many affiliate links were de-ranked in google. Google doesn't get a cut of the affiliate revenue, so I don't understand their incentive to let this kind of spam proliferate.

I would pay to have every page with an affiliate link removed from results.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#167

Post by rchaud »

lumost wrote: post #134
baggy_trough wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An actual "best X for 202X" page is extremely useful; the problem is that there are no search signals to distinguish it from a trivially created spam mockery.

I think that's a failure of imagination. In the early days of search engines and web crawling companies paid subject matter experts such as librarians and other experts to manually grade and categorize web pages. Spam pages tend to be filled with Ads and derivative content, owned by spam company domains, and do not provide unique information relative to other sources. If we as humans can recognize a spam page, why ca…

Can humans recognize spam pages though? Back in the day, such pages would be created on blogspot or other spammy domains, so there was at least a visual signal of some sort. Now the spam is on Facebook groups, Whatsapp group chats, TikTok, Twitter, Medium, Linkedin.....the list goes on.

Online misinformation would not be as destructive as it is if people could tell the difference between say a credible news site and a Macedonian troll farm-run 'news' site written in broken English.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#168

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

robertlagrant wrote: post #128
antihero wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's consumer advocate sites like https://www.which.co.uk/ that are pretty cool. I'd be interesting in knowing other trustable sources, mind.

I came here to say this. Embedding trusted sources like that [0] would a) help fund such useful organisations and b) help drown out link farms. [0] in fact I think in Germany there is a state-sponsered impartial review body for consumer products.

Part of the point of my other comment in this thread [0] is that we shouldn't need to drown out link farms. Google chooses to not hide link farms. Does anyone seriously think that a company (Alphabet) that is capable of sucking in known protein structures and then spitting out predicted structures for thousands of other proteins is not also capable of identifying link farm pages? Yes, it's a non-trivial problem, but chess, go and protein folding are non-trivial problems too. Google appears to have chosen not to treat this as a problem worthy of its capabilities.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27996639

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#169

Post by dylan604 »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #65
mustacheemperor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found DuckDuckGo can be better at some searches, and at others far worse. I was recently trying to search up how to do something in Excel and every result from DDG was some “excel-help” website that was actually just parroting common search terms as the headers on non-articles full of ads. The entire search space has apparently been hijacked by what is essentially a fake help site. I see results like that on goo…

Most of DuckDuckGo's "10-pack" of traditional search results come from Bing: https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/?redir=1#:~:text...

Whenever DDG is mentioned, these "but it uses Bing" comments always pop up. Sure maybe somebody is in the lucky 10k with TIL moment, however these "but it uses Bing" comments leave out the fact that Bing doesn't know you made the search. That's kind of the point in DDG is to be able to search the web anonymously.

I don't know the intent of the "but it uses Bing" posts to just be "in case you didn't know" or "it's lame because it just uses Bing" or something in between. It just seems to me these comments are missing the forest through the tree.

Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it

#170

Post by rchaud »

makecheck wrote: post #70
flenserboy wrote: post #49

Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.

Yep; I can’t believe what used to be bar-none the most useful set of search results will now seemingly scatter results into the list that have zero matches for my search term, as well as some with boldfaced words that I did not even type. And also, for some reason the “zero-click results” stuff really bothers me. I don’t want some crappy AI summary of a Wikipedia page, I want the Wikipedia link first , for example. I…

Apparently it's bad UX to just tell you "we couldn't find any matches". You might leave the site and actually go elsewhere.
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