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

121–130 of 220 posts

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#121

Post by leoc »

saalweachter wrote: post #111
leoc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Of course it does, but what's your point here? I said that the carousel is space given over to results from non-Web search, not just space given over to local results. The fact that there was already a chunk of the results page given over to non-Web search results doesn't alter the fact that the carousel is a new, further large chunk of space handed over to non-Web search results.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#122

Post by notatoad »

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…

Internet searches in many categories have always been useless. Searching for a restaurant or car insurance has never ever returned anything useful on any search engine, ever. it's not as though google used to have incredibly relevant results for a search term like "cheapest car insurance" and now it's been replaced by ads. The only thing a search like that has ever gotten you is the websites of the insurance companies who are well established brands.

The categories where google is pushing a lot of ads or supplementary features like knowledge graph are the categories where organic results are not a good experience. 9 times out of 10, when i search for something on google i get a traditional SERP with little to no advertising. If you're searching for something that doesn't necessarily lend itself to a web search, google should be trying to find some way to make that useful to somebody, whether that is a feature that gives you better results or an admission that their organic results for that query are useless, so here have some ads instead.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#123

Post by notsosmart »

programminggeek wrote: post #14

What you don't understand is Google's been doing this for almost a decade now. It's about profit optimization while not pissing off your users, or sometimes helping them even. A paid result can be a useful thing and might even be better than an organic result in many cases, but both have their pitfalls and it's not surprising for them to keep going this route more and more. Google is a company, not a nonprofit. They…

Not surprised, but they have 65% share of search in the US, so it's a disturbing trend for high quality sites ranking organically.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#124

Post by diminish »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #116
AJ007 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

for some keywords search ads, are also a free service to users if you make a Copernican turn in your perception. the problem for end users for ads is the auction mechanism. it may seem that from quarter to quarter GOOG has to report better earnings and more ad placements seem to be an easy way to achieve increased revenue, albeit jeopardizing their main organic search experience.

at my zombie startup, "Vadlue" (http://www.vadlue.com/node/en/contact), we tried to strip ads out of search results and them searchable, browseable etc. maybe future lies in not making ads look more annoying by mixing them inside content, but making 'some content' behave like ads.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#128

Post by Wilya »

bdegman wrote: post #120
zalew wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google can pinpoint your location very accurately, and they are usually quite agressive in promoting local results (including for tech queries, which is a pretty bad idea), yet they ask people in Poland: "In which US city are you ?".

I find that quite funny, to be honest.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#129

Post by jonknee »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #77
sanderjd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm the weirdo, but I think that's an extremely useful results page. What are you looking for when you search for "sushi" besides (more likely) nearby sushi restaurants or (less likely) information about what sushi is. The screen real estate seems to reflect those two possibilities in what seems to me to be a sensible proportion.

It used to be, when you clicked a link on Google, you left Google to go elsewhere. Now, you search for something like sushi, then go to Google Maps, then see the phone number, then call. I'm not _necessarily_ saying this is bad or unwanted, but it's a vast philosophical and product shift for Google. And it has implications for the trustworthiness and long-term usefulness of Google. I do not welcome a future where Goo…

Or you can go to the restaurant's website through the link either on the SERP or Maps page... 8/10 though I don't want to see what Wordpress template a restaurant is using this week, I just want to know if it's open, what other people think about it and how to get there.

I find this SERP to be vastly more useful than how it used to be. Restaurant owners should too, I no longer will skip visiting your place because your website sucks or is not mobile friendly.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#130

Post by hobs »

notatoad wrote: post #122
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…

Internet searches in many categories have always been useless. Searching for a restaurant or car insurance has never ever returned anything useful on any search engine, ever. it's not as though google used to have incredibly relevant results for a search term like "cheapest car insurance" and now it's been replaced by ads. The only thing a search like that has ever gotten you is the websites of the insurance companie…

In regards to your first paragraph, you are completely right because the product has always not been the consumer of the search.

I dont if it would be possible for a subscription based search service to exist, but as long as they are selling to advertisers and not to the people there is very little incentive for this to change imo.

Post reply on HN