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Google timer

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Re: Google timer

#61
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesson: don't put to much stock into a product that can be replaced by a few lines of code on a search result page.

It's also probably a product that didn't take too many lines.

Depends if it was built by a hacker or a company with product managers.

Re: Google timer

#62

Interesting side effect. There's this web site: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/1hour/ which comes up top of the google search results for "timer for 1 hour" for me. Now there is absolutely no way they can compete with Google's own offering from an SEO perspective. While this example is trivial to some extent, does it set a precedent that while you can advertise and compete with Google, they can always have the…

Lesson: don't put to much stock into a product that can be replaced by a few lines of code on a search result page.

It may be trivial, but by my estimation the domain "online-stopwatch.com" gets somewhere in the region of 50k-100k visitors per day as a first-order approximation. It wouldn't surprise me to learn they were making between $300-$500 daily in ad revenue, or somewhere on the order of $100k - $200k per year.

Re: Google timer

#63
post #43

Yet again I am reminded that my google is not necessarily the same as 'your' google Just like how "define: something" doesn't show a dictionary definiton for me anymore, a functionality i used all the time. And now can't be sure whether was actually removed, or just removed for me!

Didn't come up for me on .com, only on .ie.

I'm not sure why exactly, but I really hate this. I hate it that sometimes results have a news link and sometimes they don't. I hate that youtube suggestions are tailored to me. There are rational reasons. I want the thing I use to be there when I try to find it. But, I dislike it beyond the inconvenience. It just feels wrong, like I'm being probed.

Re: Google timer

#65
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has been keeping users from calculator web sites with its calculator/unit converter since before Mark Zuckerberg even wrote Facemash[1]. A fairly obscure timer feature that only shows up when you search for a particular phrase is nothing like search portals of old, nor is this a departure from the different search result widgets they've had for a decade now. This feels like a feature that the OS should have bu…

Agree. What Google did replaced plenty of functionalities that are available on desktop (math, spell-check, dictionary). But their recent card-based solution to a lot of searches seems to show that they're trying to keep users on Google-owned properties. Try searching for a movie review. You'll notice that everything that pertains to the movie is shown on top and on the right. Clicking on actors lead to yet another g…

> But they're doing this at the expense of the sites they took the data from

That would be Freebase, which is what it's for.

I'm not really seeing your point for that example, though. Maybe for something simpler it would be true, but if I'm looking for a movie review, the information in the top right isn't sufficient for anything besides seeing a wikipedia summary, a screenshot, and some of the actors in it. Anything deeper would require clicks into the actual content, which is actually an apt analog to a simple timer not replacing anything of substance.

Re: Google timer

#66

Interesting side effect. There's this web site: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/1hour/ which comes up top of the google search results for "timer for 1 hour" for me. Now there is absolutely no way they can compete with Google's own offering from an SEO perspective. While this example is trivial to some extent, does it set a precedent that while you can advertise and compete with Google, they can always have the…

Lesson: don't put to much stock into a product that can be replaced by a few lines of code on a search result page.

That's exactly my point. What if it wasn't a few lines of code, but something with a hefty investment in, then Google comes in with their own and just puts them top of the list because they can. Users don't get the choice because Google prioritise their own.

Re: Google timer

#68
post #43

Yet again I am reminded that my google is not necessarily the same as 'your' google Just like how "define: something" doesn't show a dictionary definiton for me anymore, a functionality i used all the time. And now can't be sure whether was actually removed, or just removed for me!

Ha, yeah.

When I'm in the US, I deliberately navigate to a European Google site (usually google.co.uk) in order to get their onebox flight schedule search results. I really enjoy seeing a full timetable of published flights for the week when I do a search for "[flights lhr fra]". Doing the same search in the US, and seeing the new Google Flights ad instead of the old timetable onebox, is infuriating.

Re: Google timer

#69

Interesting side effect. There's this web site: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/timer/1hour/ which comes up top of the google search results for "timer for 1 hour" for me. Now there is absolutely no way they can compete with Google's own offering from an SEO perspective. While this example is trivial to some extent, does it set a precedent that while you can advertise and compete with Google, they can always have the…

I used to do a Google search for [mlb standings] and click through to the top search result. Now I just look at the onebox Major League Baseball standings results instead.

I've also noticed the results of a search for [Olympic medal count] steadily improve every two years so that I no longer need to click through to any search results to see the data I want.

Re: Google timer

#70
post #43

Yet again I am reminded that my google is not necessarily the same as 'your' google Just like how "define: something" doesn't show a dictionary definiton for me anymore, a functionality i used all the time. And now can't be sure whether was actually removed, or just removed for me!

quick tip : google.com/ncr for no country redirect.
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