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Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

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

#111

Post by nullwasamistake »

cletus wrote: post #15

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…

It's not the same as copying the "feature", in many cases Google straight up takes your content and puts it on their homepage. The difference between a product and a feature is nothing. Every app made is just a bunch of features put together. AWS S3 is a great example, it's just like Dropbox for nerds.

A lyrics website recently put fake lyrics on their site to prove Google was copying, and sure enough the fake lyrics showed up a couple weeks later.

Google isn't just taking content from "evil" companies like Yelp, they're doing it to everybody.

Job search, shopping, song lyrics, news, and who knows what else, is all being somewhat blatantly lifted. And nobody can stop it because blocking Google is a death knell to any site

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

#112

Post by ilikehurdles »

bitL wrote: post #48
ergothus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 searche…

DuckDuckGo is lately behaving the same way... Time to find another alternative I guess.

It is. At least google still provides "verbatim" mode, which is annoying to enable and still doesn't work some of the time, but DDG has no alternative. So if I search for "mispselling" for example, with double-quotes around it, 0% of the results contain my word and DDG doesn't even mention that it altered my search term. I know this is a bad example, but I've encountered it in the past with legitimate searches where I need results for some acronym or product whose name is close to another common word.

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

#113

Post by mruts »

I guess this isn’t related, but am I the only one who feels like Google search results are going down hill. Maybe 5 years ago I could find a lot of information from small and big sites. Nowadays, it feels like half the Google is just literally ignoring some of my search terms. And the other half they are explicitly ignoring them by crossing out words because they assume I search the same things as everyone else?

I dunno, maybe my queries are getting more complex? But I’m getting a strong feeling that Google is becoming less and less useful as an indexer if the web.

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

#114

Post by minor3rd »

sli wrote: post #109
cyrusshepard wrote: post #86

I think what folks are missing is that a lot of these "zero-click" searches happen as a result of Google scraping your website, and displaying the results as a "featured snippet." Yes, they link to you below the featured snippet. No, more people don't click, because they've taken the answer from your website and displayed it right in their search results. For example: If I'm searching for "best nail for cedar wood" G…

On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. They can be (and almost certainly are) gamed. Users that don't click through open themselves up to carrying on being misinformed.

People on the web take the risk of being misinformed, clicking or not.

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

#115

Post by concert-gilled »

jwilliams wrote: post #72
cletus wrote: post #15

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…

> Although this one I find infuriating because Google doesn't know how to correctly round off exchange rates I generally search for "1000 USD in AUD" as a workaround.

Both cases showed 2 decimal places for me.

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

#116

Post by concert-gilled »

sli wrote: post #109
cyrusshepard wrote: post #86

I think what folks are missing is that a lot of these "zero-click" searches happen as a result of Google scraping your website, and displaying the results as a "featured snippet." Yes, they link to you below the featured snippet. No, more people don't click, because they've taken the answer from your website and displayed it right in their search results. For example: If I'm searching for "best nail for cedar wood" G…

On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. They can be (and almost certainly are) gamed. Users that don't click through open themselves up to carrying on being misinformed.

The websites that the results aren't curated either. Clicking through to the site could provide the same incorrect information.

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

#117

Post by notafraudster »

cletus wrote: post #15

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…

I agree here. For the median search I make, having to click on a website is a failure. If I search "John McCain age at death", why would I click on a website? This seems trivial, but it is frustrating for even more technical issues. If I search "Non-standard evaluation in left-hand side of mutate command R", it's a bit weird that I'm expected to click the first StackExchange rather than getting a canonical answer excerpted. Ditto when I search "Analytic standard error of a regularized regression". These are basically true/false questions, and it's a win for Google if they give me the answer.

I do emphathize with the companies being scooped by Google, and so I have concern that they are viable economically and that Google compensates them for getting the info from them.

But in the mean time, it's a success for me when my search gives me the answer immediately instead of two or three rounds of indirection.

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

#118

Post by noobermin »

cletus wrote: post #15

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…

As if Google is not the scummiest service out there. Just because it hides its tracking and doesn't quite use dark patterns but manipulates much the same doesn't mean it isn't any better.

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

#119

Post by ac29 »

For those who skipped the article, this data is exclusively from users who installed Avast "security" products, which apparently are sufficiently invasive that they get this sort of data and sell it to third parties.

The article thinks this dataset is close enough to representative to present their conclusions as more or less facts. I'm not sure I'd make the same conclusion.

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

#120

Post by noobermin »

wongarsu wrote: post #76
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, simple math isn't, but think about your currency conversion, your weather lookup, or your sports schedule. Where did Google get the data for those things? Does whoever provided that data have expenses, and did Google compensate them in any way for those expenses or did Google lift the data for free with GoogleBot?

A good comparison here is WolframAlpha, which can also answer all those queries (I was a bit surprised that the Texas Rangers example worked, but it does [1]). Most of their data comes from a curated list of primary sources, not Wikipedia or random websites. 1: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=texas+rangers+next+gam...

Curated might be better, Google has been wrong in their answers in the past.
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