Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

sparktoro.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 531 posts

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#11

Post by 8ytecoder »

laputan_machine wrote: post #3

I don't think I understand this concept. If I search for something using Google, and don't click on a link, doesn't that mean my search was fruitless? What else do we mean by 'zero-click searches'? Edit: Unless it's the simple '6 x 10' or 'What is the time in London', in which case, are we surprised these queries are handled by $SearchEngine? DDG does the same thing (albeit, uses a third party website and gives credi…

Example query - “Leonardo DiCaprio‘s net worth”. While previously this would have resulted in a click to the top website that put in the effort to compile this information, now google would highlight that exact sentence with the answer right there. The site loses a click through and any potential revenue.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#13

Post by rabidrat »

laputan_machine wrote: post #3

I don't think I understand this concept. If I search for something using Google, and don't click on a link, doesn't that mean my search was fruitless? What else do we mean by 'zero-click searches'? Edit: Unless it's the simple '6 x 10' or 'What is the time in London', in which case, are we surprised these queries are handled by $SearchEngine? DDG does the same thing (albeit, uses a third party website and gives credi…

How many times does your first search query result in a page you want to click on? It usually takes me a couple of tries for anything interesting I'm looking for.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#14

Post by dna_polymerase »

As bad as this sounds, I got to say I'm not even mad. The instant answers Google provides seem to come from websites that are mostly unusable, bloated with tracking and other BS that increase load times, and even worse SEO-content (that stuff that repeats words just to have more "relevant" keywords). I don't feel too bad about those pages losing traffic.

Longform content, interactive content, blogs, videos, forums and social networks (generally pages you might want to spend more time on) seem to be mostly unaffected.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#15

Post by cletus »

So a common trope in the startup world is the difference between a feature and a company, the idea being that lots of features are masquerading as companies. This inevitably leads to them being shocked--SHOCKED--when some bigger player adds that feature, eating their lunch.

I feel the same way about a lot of outbound sites on Google. There are a bunch of things I just don't want to go to another site for. Off the top of my head:

- Exchange rates. Although this one I find infuriating because Google doesn't know how to correctly round off exchange rates (as in, there's a standard). This manifests as, say, showing 2 decimal places for AUD/USD when they should be showing 4.

- Calculator

- Mortgage calculator

- Song lyrics

That sort of thing. If you go to any sites that provide these sorts of things they're typically "scummy". Lots of ads, lots of Javascript, lots of dark patterns to make you load more page views (eg a mortgage calculator that'll mysteriously take 3 steps/page loads to calculate).

I'm glad these are in search results, typically in significantly better versions. And I don't think anyone who runs a site built around a basic formula for interest calculations has any right to complain about it.

Of course this will be painted as "where does it end?" but not every surface is a slippery slope.

Just look at the likes of Yelp who complains about Google "stealing" their content. Well, Yelp is about one of the scummiest businesses out there. So I won't feel sorry for them, not now, not ever.

The one weird case here is AMP. Like I get Google's motivations here. Many companies develop terrible mobile sites that run badly or not at all and AMP IS much faster, generally speaking. Yet still it seems so heavyhanded with seemingly no opt out (on the consumer or publisher side). I don't really understand why Google wants to die on this particular hill.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#16

Post by ergothus »

scott_s wrote: post #4

The presumption here, as I understand is, is that a zero-click search happened because Google used one of their inline apps to answer a question. (For example, if I search "population of new york city", I get a big and bold answer along with a graph that shows NYC's population over time, as well as LA and Chicago.) But I'm not convinced that's necessarily true. I frequently search for things to get a general idea of…

I've also had several fights with google over my refinements.

If I search for 2 words, odds are stupidly high that most of the results will NOT include one of my two words. Thanks Google, for deciding I didn't really mean to type that.

I follow up with added quotes, etc to enforce what I actually typed, so there will be a lot of Google-induced churn.

Google has focused so highly on the peak that more and more searches - certainly the majority of mine - have been relegated to the long tail.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#17

Post by gscott »

encoderer wrote: post #12

There was a time you could build a meaningful business largely on SEO. (See: Yelp, Zillow). No longer.

Especially now that organic results often don't even show up without scrolling down. I miss the good old days when being the #1 search result meant something!

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#18

Post by jasode »

As another poster mentioned, it seems logical that some reduction in click-thru-rate happens because of Google's "Featured Snippets"[0]. The Google search results page shows an extract of a web page that likely answers the web surfer's query. We don't know what % of zero clicks was caused by the snippets info box.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+search+"featured+snip...

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#19

Post by WhoBeI »

laputan_machine wrote: post #3

I don't think I understand this concept. If I search for something using Google, and don't click on a link, doesn't that mean my search was fruitless? What else do we mean by 'zero-click searches'? Edit: Unless it's the simple '6 x 10' or 'What is the time in London', in which case, are we surprised these queries are handled by $SearchEngine? DDG does the same thing (albeit, uses a third party website and gives credi…

sidebar wikipedia entries and such I suppose, those little collapse thingies that gives you a short answer, AMP cached stuff..

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#20

Post by buboard »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

This is the subtle truth that I've seen a few folks on Twitter talking about for the past year or so: That Google has slowly but steadily reduced both the outbound clicks to other websites, but also the portion of their revenue that's based on ads hosted by other websites, while bringing both the "results" and the ad placements in-house, where they no longer have to pay out a share to site owners. Whereas Google was…

Anecdotally, i am noticing a steady decline in adsense RPMs for the exact same audience over past 2 years, and adsense is now most of the time not filling the ad slot.

Also, it has gotten very hard to rank in google for new sites. SEO blackhat tactics rule, and even local businesses use them. Google went from win win to win-get lost.

Sadly, now that webmasters need it the most, investments in alternatives to search and advertising have dried up. There is almost nothing except G.

Post reply on HN