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google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

autom.dev

121–130 of 545 posts

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#121
post #33

I've been using DuckDuckGo for years now, ever since it became noticeable that two different people searching for the same search term would get two different results back from Google. Meaning they were no longer completely reliable: they might show one person a result that they hide from the other person by burying it on page 3 where few people ever look. DDG's search results have been poorer recently than they used…

Speaking of page 3, Google's been asking me to sign in if I try to go beyond page 2 of search results. What a wonderful modern WWW we live in.

That somehow hurts me to hear more than anything. I remember days spent in my youth trawling through Google search for anime fandoms and homework answers. Joke used to be that beyond page 1 is the definition of desperation and in the 00s that was definitely true but I discovered a lot of cool distractions in that desperation. This feels like they killed Google Reader again.

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#123
So why are we angry about that ? I mean the end result for the users are exactly the same, it matters only for bots.

Google have such a (justified) bad reputation that whatever they do, people assume it’s entishification. I don’t believed it is on that matter.

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#124
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what’s stopping Google from doing this already?

JavaScript being disabled - Google was already sending analytics pings when search result links were clicked on, using JS.

works without JS in Chrome and Safari (but not Firefox) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLAnchorE...

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#125
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but you can click the link and reveal the information. what is being hidden? from who?

Like the OP says, it's being hidden form scrapers. Like you I don't see a reason for normal users to be concerned.

Unless I want to see what the link is before clicking. Or copy the link.

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#128
Note: Article published by Autom.dev which, from a quick read of their homepage, seems like it scrapes Google search results in violation of Google's terms of service and sells those results to customers via an API. That's just my quick read of it, though, so this could be wrong.

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#129

Most people i see using ChatGPT for any search related work in everyday life. Maybe Google is observing this?

Yeah seems pretty obvious to me that most people are not going to be using a search engine in 5 years. In the sense of searching for something and combing through the results to find the answer.

[dead]

Re: google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that isn't repeatable is by definition unreliable.

Random number generators notwithstanding.

Same seed gives the same sequence. Use that to debug Monte Carlo simulations all the time.
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