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How Google is Killing Organic Search

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Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#91

Post by yaddayadda »

PanickedOmlette wrote: post #64
api wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found DDG to be better at finding obscure content, and the Goog to be better at finding what I call "canonical" content. For example, if I search for "binary tree" I probably want Wikipedia followed maybe by StackExchange. Google does that, while DDG sends me deep into the netherworld.

Yeah, sadly that happens sometimes. I revert to Google (with bang syntax) when I am looking for something programming related and want a lot of results from stackoverflow. However, DDG is definitely better at finding some things. I recently searched for gentoo+postgresql related stuff and got highly relevant results, which weren't in Google's SERP.

If you want just stackoverflow results and are already using bang syntax to get them from Google, then you should just switch from !g to !so.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#92

Post by pessimizer »

api wrote: post #54
GuiA wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In light of "designy" things like this, and other "ideological" things that have transpired in the past few weeks, I've been forcing myself to use DuckDuckGo. It's been about a month now, and I find the results terrible . I want to love it, but the first 10 results are pretty much never what I want. Sadly, Google still performs better on this front for me. If anyone has tips to make it better, I'd be very happy to he…

I've found DDG to be better at finding obscure content, and the Goog to be better at finding what I call "canonical" content. For example, if I search for "binary tree" I probably want Wikipedia followed maybe by StackExchange. Google does that, while DDG sends me deep into the netherworld.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=%22binary+tree%22

For me:

1) Wikipedia (in featured box), 2,3) Some Exchange/Notes migration software called "Binary Tree" that owns binarytree.com, 4) cslibrary.stanford.edu on binary trees w/exercises, 5) "Binary Trees in C++" from cprogramming.com, 6) "Binary Tree" at dictionary.reference.com, and 7) "Binary Tree" on mathworld.wolfram.com

...above the fold.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#93

Post by yaddayadda »

limejuice wrote: post #58
GuiA wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In light of "designy" things like this, and other "ideological" things that have transpired in the past few weeks, I've been forcing myself to use DuckDuckGo. It's been about a month now, and I find the results terrible . I want to love it, but the first 10 results are pretty much never what I want. Sadly, Google still performs better on this front for me. If anyone has tips to make it better, I'd be very happy to he…

I've been using DDG for about 1 year now, and I haven't missed google at all. The few times I don't find what I want, I !g to see google results, but they haven't seemed any better. I find as more subject specific sites have grown, that generic search like ddg and google aren't as important to me. I do more searches on sites like stackoverflow, yelp, maps.google.com, tripadivsor, etc. than ddg.

I've been doing the Duck about that long now, and I miss google enough that !g gets used daily. But, I also try to do all of my initial searches, even !g, !so, !w, !gi, and !a through DDG. And, I've set my Firefox address bar to default to DDG.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#95

Post by 3825 »

akharris wrote: post #71
saalweachter wrote: post #17

Nit: this article is really criticizing a UI change which makes local results more prominent (in that they take over the entire page). The local results at the top of the page when you search for "Italian restaurants" are all still organic. In fact, whenever there's a map on the right-and side of the page, it's displacing ads. Now, you can be against Google ever making a UI change, or even against Google showing diff…

The issue there is that the "organic" results you're talking about that show in either the map or the carousel aren't organic at all - they're google local listings. As a restaurant, you are now incentivized to a) buy ads to get traffic from the ad units b) give google data (effectively building a whole other website) through google+/local. You are very much being de-incentivized from investing in a page that is outs…

I find this interesting. I didn't think of Google local listing as not organic but I did the search in the article[1] and sure enough it takes a lot of the real estate. Perhaps, Google could publish a standard way to write your own self-hosted Places page? We will still have questions on how the ranking will work and whether Google will prioritize its own Google+ place pages over self-hosted place pages but I think this would be a start. What do you think?

[1] http://i.imgur.com/Bf74Dd7.png

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#96

Post by donaldc »

brudgers wrote: post #62

I turned on my television and none of the programs were organic. Instead all the content was controlled by my cable provider. I'm beginning to suspect that they just put on those shows to make money off the advertising. It's rather simple. When you type terms into the search box, just imagine the words, "Please show me advertisements for " in front of it.

The organic search results are the loss-leader.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#99

Post by leoc »

saalweachter wrote: post #17

Nit: this article is really criticizing a UI change which makes local results more prominent (in that they take over the entire page). The local results at the top of the page when you search for "Italian restaurants" are all still organic. In fact, whenever there's a map on the right-and side of the page, it's displacing ads. Now, you can be against Google ever making a UI change, or even against Google showing diff…

> Nit: this article is really criticizing a UI change which makes local results more prominent [...] The local results at the top of the page when you search for "Italian restaurants" are all still organic.

I have yet to experience the Google carousel for myself, but aren't these results all coming from Zagat or G+? So these may not be paid (or pay-for-prominence) results, but they're not the results of a Web search; instead they're the results of a search of a proprietary, Google-controlled database. That's not just giving local results more prominence, that's moving a large part of the page to a whole different kind of search: from Web-crawling to searching a Google-owned and -"curated" database. And in many ways that's more important than whether the results are 'organic' in the narrow sense of 'not play-to-play'.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#100

Post by josephlord »

webjprgm wrote: post #86
austenallred wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who sells car insurance leads for a living, this is an interesting discussion. First, Geicko isn't ranked number 1, affiliates who mask themselves as Geicko are. In high rewards markets like insurance (where 30% of the overall price of insurance goes to affiliates) it's actually about which affiliates convert the best and have the best payout. Those SERPs are dominated by black hat SEO. None of that is org…

Could Google Analytics data be used as "something other than links"? They can track traffic, bounce rates, how long people stay, how often the same people return. Would that provide a better indicator of quality pages? It would only apply to sites that opt-in by using Google Analytics, but if it made them rank higher than everyone would do it. (How many don't already?)

No Google already know too much about all of us.
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