Article should be: Avast antivirus users click less than half of google searches. Their data isn’t representative of the market broadly. For one thing Microsoft claims bing has 9% market share, while avast pegs it as 1.4% market share. https://mobile.twitter.com/MSFTAdvertising/status/8982080475...
Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
131–140 of 531 posts
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm, I think there's scumminess on both sides, since (as GP noted) even simple sites (e.g. for lyrics) are bloated and unusable. Before: User: Hey Google, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9% APR? Google: Oh, MortgateSite would know, go there. MortgageSite: Here's your calculator. User: Okay, let me put in the numbers ... awesome, thanks! Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a…
Google could fix that if they wanted to. I remember when Google used to push content developers to be better: no paywalls, no overlays, faster response times, no scammy ads, no content farms. Those days seem to be over. Google is constantly sending me to content behind paywalls and under pop up content.
So you blame Google for paywalls and full screen ads on the pages... you demand they send you to in lieu of just hosting some content themselves? Seems like Google just can't win in that scenario.
FWIW: I agree that for a long time, the need to rank highly in Google's searches pushed content sites to be a better experience. And the equilibrium we've reached isn't as nice as it was 10 years ago. I just don't think "because Google" really captures the complexity here.
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#133And with AMP, Google is trying ti do the same with entire sites.
In the long run why will we continue to produce content for Google?
Google must stop trying to suck the hole world into itself. Google is starting to look like a black hole.
And the "it is good for consumers" or "users like it" are just offensive. It's good for Google. It may be good for users today but it's bad for content producers and in the long run it's bad for everyone.
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#134And with AMP, Google is trying to do the same with entire sites.
In the long run why will we continue to produce content for Google?
Google must stop trying to suck the hole world into itself. Google is becoming a big black hole.
And the "it is good for consumers" or "users like it" are just offensive. It's good for Google. It may be good for users today but it's bad for content producers and in the long run it's bad for everyone.
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#135The 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…
Google’s currently helping to perpetuate the myth that New York is a growing city and its population is at an all-time high of 8.623 million. In reality, it’s a dying city, and the current best estimate is 8,398,748; every bureau except Staten Island is losing population. People are fleeing New York (both the city and upstate) due to high taxes, crumbling infrastructure, bad weather, and a generally poor standard of living.
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/planning-level/nyc-popula...
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#136What does "Zero-Click Searches" mean exactly? I know that when I search for "1 pound in eur" Google will tell me the answer right away, but these kind of searches can't possible account for 50%. What else am I missing?
One example is "how to tie shoes". It scrapes the content from wikihow and displays it to you. There is no need to click through to the site to see the content. Something similar happens for recipe searches.
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#137So 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…
>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
Exactly why go to those sites when you can get the same experience without leaving Google? And its not like Google isn't serving the ads on both Google and those "scummy" websites anyway, and no one is going to out dark pattern Google.
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#138Google many years ago made an explicit decision that their mission is to inform people, not just drive them away to terrible 3rd party sites.
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand your stand, but what Google did with its featured snippets is essentially a form of bait and switch. It encouraged entrepreneurs and creators to create content that could answer specific queries with the promise that Google will drive traffic to their sites. Now Google is using the same content and depriving them of the traffic. That's pretty scummy in my opinion.
>Now Google is using the same content and depriving them of the traffic. I found some instructions[1] that says a website can opt out of Google's Featured Snippets with special HTML code: Are there any cases of websites deliberately opting out of snippets and therefore seeing their referral links (and ad revenue) increase? [1] https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/27/google-featured-sni...
I deliberately opted out of snippets for TLD List [0], a price comparison site I made for domain names.
I don't know if it's made any difference. Organic search traffic from them has slowly but steadily increased over the years.
Google now sometimes displays a snippet from my competitor's website for searches like "cheapest .io domain" [1]. The snippet seems pretty useless as it doesn't include any registrars' names/links (and my competitor's price info is quite outdated).
In these cases, since the snippet is the 1st thing users see in SERP, and doesn't provide enough info to fully answer the question, I'd wager that my competitor is ultimately receiving the majority of clicks from these snippets.
Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click
#140I 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…
Shouldn't they be liable for mis-information? Wouldn't that solve the entire problem?