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

How Google is Killing Organic Search

blog.tutorspree.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 220 posts

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#111

Post by saalweachter »

leoc wrote: post #99
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;…

I'm pretty sure Google Maps predates both Google+ and the Zagat acquisition by a large margin.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#112

Post by _jmar777 »

This feels somewhat disingenuous. Naturally a site making it's money off of ads is going to give them an above-the-fold and prominent position. Just scroll down... the value add is in the qualify of the organic results (which is still there), not in the absence of scrolling.

If you think the ratio is off, then write an article about it... but this is hardly "killing organic search".

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#113

Post by dennisgorelik »

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?)

Why use Google Analytics, when there is Google Chrome browser?

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#114

Post by zokier »

I just tested this myself, and got 43.8% of organic results (I'm counting the image result preview as organic results), 18.9% of google UI (the bars on top), and 35,2% whitespace. They do not sum to 100% because I just roughly measured stuff at photoshop. Zero ads or curated content on either search, logged in with my personal google profile.

I guess adblock and not living in US has some advantages.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#116

Post by jcampbell1 »

AJ007 wrote: post #70
jcampbell1 wrote: post #22

The auction model for ads basically ruins internet searches in transactional categories. If you want to win at the "italian restaurant" search game, you have to bid the highest for the ad, which means you must have the highest margin. The best way to win is to open a restaurant with ridiculously high margins (over priced wine and cheap ingredients). Want the "cheapest car insurance"? Google is zero help. It sends you…

I am happy to see other people finally pointing this one out. I will refine your hypothesis a little. a) It isn't companies with the highest margin who win, but the ones which are able and willing to devote the greatest percentage of revenue to performance driven advertising. If the company has a slim margin to begin with, they will never even be able to start in the "race." b) Education is a better example than car…

It is worth pointing out that Google is internally very aware of this situation. They have attempted to do what is best for users on several high value searches such as "Mortgage Refinance". At one point they had a fixed fee comparison widget, that would actually suggest banks with the lowest rates.

Unfortunately all these attempts were killed, because it is so much more valuable to sell an ad to a shady comparison site, than to run a transparent one.

I also don't think their business model is in any sort of crisis. Google gives people great search results consistently. It takes crazy logic to see good Google search results consistently everyday, and then not trust Google's results for a high value query.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#117

Post by npsimons »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #22

The auction model for ads basically ruins internet searches in transactional categories. If you want to win at the "italian restaurant" search game, you have to bid the highest for the ad, which means you must have the highest margin. The best way to win is to open a restaurant with ridiculously high margins (over priced wine and cheap ingredients). Want the "cheapest car insurance"? Google is zero help. It sends you…

A thousand times this; when I tell people I prefer buying from companies who aren't blowing my money on superbowl ads, they just don't get it. The ads aren't for you, the existing customer - they're to get new customers. There's a reason I like Vanguard and USAA.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#118

Post by npsimons »

narrator wrote: post #108
jcampbell1 wrote: post #22

The auction model for ads basically ruins internet searches in transactional categories. If you want to win at the "italian restaurant" search game, you have to bid the highest for the ad, which means you must have the highest margin. The best way to win is to open a restaurant with ridiculously high margins (over priced wine and cheap ingredients). Want the "cheapest car insurance"? Google is zero help. It sends you…

What's funny is how different using Consumer Reports online experience is. What? There's no free content? I have to pay a monthly fee to read content and it's not trivial. Best investment I ever made. Especially when buying new appliances. Ha.. It's kind of pathetic that I flinched at spending a few bucks a month for good content. If you're getting information for free your information likely has a cost you're just p…

If I see a hype filled story show up in the freebie investment news it usually means the stock is about to take a short term down turn.

Good time to short it.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#120

Post by bdegman »

zalew wrote: post #90
hnriot wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you expect it to show you? It seems like a decent result to me. Possibly google doesn't know any sushi restaurants near you in Warsaw.

pointless zip-code form.

It's not pointless if you are looking for a place to eat sushi. You're performing a hypothetical search for something that you aren't actually looking for and then calling the results pointless.
Post reply on HN