How Google is Killing Organic Search • Hacker News Board

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#151

Post by jrochkind1 » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 11:13 PM UTC

nowarninglabel wrote: post #30

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 think your hypothesis is quite far off. Can you give an example of an auto insurance company that is a non-profit? I couldn't find any. Perhaps you mean a mutual insurance company? Furthermore, when I bought car insurance last month, Geico gave me the most coverage for the least amount of money (after quite a bit of research), so I also don't agree with your assertation that Google is no help in that regard. While…

> Can you give an example of an auto insurance company that is a non-profit? I couldn't find any. Perhaps you mean a mutual insurance company?

Aren't mutual's non-profit? They aren't trying to extract a profit for investors or other owners, but just need to charge enough to pay business expenses (including salaries, as well as the main expense of an insurance company, paying out claims and funding reserves to pay out claims, etc.)

USAA mentioned in some other followups is... even weirder than a mutual insurance company, but it's legal structure is effectively the same as a mutual insurance company.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#152

Post by saalweachter » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 11:13 PM UTC

akharris wrote: post #71

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…

The issue there is that the "organic" results you're talking about that show in either the map or the carousel aren't organic at all - they're google local listings. As a restaurant, you are now incentivized to a) buy ads to get traffic from the ad units b) give google data (effectively building a whole other website) through google+/local. You are very much being de-incentivized from investing in a page that is outs…

First, why do you think Google Maps doesn't crawl the web? Second, why do you think that every business either has a web page or wants a web page?

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#153

Post by pitchups » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 11:31 PM UTC

corresation wrote: post #143

narrator wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. I have an entirely different perspective of Consumer Reports (the online variant which has external site ads on it). Understand that they are entirely biased (as we all are): They take home the lucre by keeping you thinking that you need them, and that they'r…

>> Imagine how funny I thought it was when they guessed my next expiry and just used that, continuing the subscription.

They are not guessing the expiry date - I believe it is a service provided by some credit card companies, possibly to large merchants. It happened to me for several years with my Yahoo Email account - that would renew for $20 / year even though my card expired twice during that time. It stopped after I reported my card as lost/stolen - and got a replacement card, so the actual card number changed. Fastest - albeit a bit drastic - way to get out of a recurring billing if you are having trouble cancelling.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#154

Post by boomzilla » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 11:39 PM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #139

jcampbell1 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My assumption & opinion is they know exactly what they are doing. I assume every decision has firm logic & metrics to back it up. However, the very nature of the marketplace is for advertisers to squeeze as much value out of the customer as possible in order to purchase higher visibility. I don't see it as a mistake or a flaw, it is just the end reality of a set of circumstances. What makes Google's marketplace uniqu…

I wonder when (if at all) the pendulum swings back and users actively avoid clicking on the ads so much that makes Google scales back the number of ads shown. It's essentially a race to bottom and no matter how big a margins the current winners can make, it's gotta get thinner and thinner everyday.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#155

Post by tomkarlo » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 11:45 PM UTC

pitchups wrote: post #153

corresation wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I have an entirely different perspective of Consumer Reports (the online variant which has external site ads on it). Understand that they are entirely biased (as we all are): They take home the lucre by keeping you thinking that you need them, and that they'r…

>> Imagine how funny I thought it was when they guessed my next expiry and just used that, continuing the subscription. They are not guessing the expiry date - I believe it is a service provided by some credit card companies, possibly to large merchants. It happened to me for several years with my Yahoo Email account - that would renew for $20 / year even though my card expired twice during that time. It stopped afte…

It's relatively easy to update the expiry date, since the month doesn't usually change. You just add two years, try the charge, and if it doesn't go through, wait a day and try it again with the next year. This is pretty standard for services with a recurring subscription model, and they don't really need to pay an outside provider for that info (although it would be trivial for any credit agency to provide.)

That said, I'm not sure he can complain that a recurring subscription continued to, well, recur.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#156

Post by tomkarlo » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 11:47 PM UTC

akharris wrote: post #71

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…

The issue there is that the "organic" results you're talking about that show in either the map or the carousel aren't organic at all - they're google local listings. As a restaurant, you are now incentivized to a) buy ads to get traffic from the ad units b) give google data (effectively building a whole other website) through google+/local. You are very much being de-incentivized from investing in a page that is outs…

Google local listings come from a wide range of sources. It's basically the phone book.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#157

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 11:50 PM UTC

nowarninglabel wrote: post #30

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 think your hypothesis is quite far off. Can you give an example of an auto insurance company that is a non-profit? I couldn't find any. Perhaps you mean a mutual insurance company? Furthermore, when I bought car insurance last month, Geico gave me the most coverage for the least amount of money (after quite a bit of research), so I also don't agree with your assertation that Google is no help in that regard. While…

[deleted]

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#158

Post by j45 » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 12:11 AM UTC

Google is becoming like a newspaper. A connecting point between people, ideas and information.

How:

1) Google has steadily moved away from optimally presenting search results which they possess.

2) In being this connecting point, ads increasingly have taken over the space where organic results are published, much like ad space is sold first in a newspaper and articles are squeezed in around it.

Everything changes, or does it? Content is king, except finding content is a new king.

3) Google generally has the content we seek - in the form of search results. The results are squeezed around ads. This creates a cognitive cost to separate ads from results, instead of just finding what we need, which was the original promise of Google. This implies, at some point we're giving into reading the ads like they were the results?

Users have only ever been interested in search results from a search engine, not ads. In a way, good search results was a promise shared by AltaVista and Google. Being able to easily access them is what is changing.

Last year I was irritated enough to build my own search interface, focused on presenting results how I wanted to see them.

4) The cognitive cost had added up to be too much to scan Google constantly to find the one weather, or movie link I have looked at for the last 10 years, and becoming increasingly harder and harder to find.

My thoughts come back to the announced shuttering of AltaVista, in wondering whether we really ended up ahead. Google certainly has done things no one else has, getting search so good, and now finding what we want is a little more work.

5) Google is a business, and need a financial engine. As much as advertising currently seems to pay for the internet, I wonder if a day is coming where we're more willing to put our money where our mouth is.

It may take some time, for the majority of internet users to have 10+ years of online experience of doing the same searches and finding them harder to find.

What to do? I feel like brushing up my custom search interface and use it a little more.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#159

Post by ericd » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 12:31 AM UTC

jcampbell1 wrote: post #59

netcan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite like that. What advertisers can afford to pay is margin X conversion rate. If people search for cheap socks and you have high margin socks, your conversion rate will be lower. In super competitive markets, the conversion rate is usually what makes one win. For something like insurance quotes, that probably means the one with a known brand, supporting advertising in tv & radio, etc. The quality of the s…

> The lawyers will drown everyone else out. The worst lawyers will drown everyone else out, including the good lawyers. The lawyer that has a high conversion rate by promising it will cost $5000, but ends up costing $30k drowns out the lawyer who legitimately quotes $10k. I agree, for certain searches, the ads are helpful, but I stand by the notion of avoiding SERPs with tons of high value ads. The person paying for…

Yeah, from what I've seen fraudulent advertising, bait and switch, and various other shady tricks are dominant strategies in adwords advertising within some categories, and I haven't seen any obvious effort by Google to curb it. If there was some way for Google to act as a reliable Better Business Bureau replacement, that rating would be a great addition to their ranking algo.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#160

Post by corresation » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 12:43 AM UTC

tomkarlo wrote: post #155

pitchups wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Imagine how funny I thought it was when they guessed my next expiry and just used that, continuing the subscription. They are not guessing the expiry date - I believe it is a service provided by some credit card companies, possibly to large merchants. It happened to me for several years with my Yahoo Email account - that would renew for $20 / year even though my card expired twice during that time. It stopped afte…

It's relatively easy to update the expiry date, since the month doesn't usually change. You just add two years, try the charge, and if it doesn't go through, wait a day and try it again with the next year. This is pretty standard for services with a recurring subscription model, and they don't really need to pay an outside provider for that info (although it would be trivial for any credit agency to provide.) That sa…

That said, I'm not sure he can complain that a recurring subscription continued to, well, recur.

Yes, I will complain. Intrinsic in the notion that I'm not bothering to update billing information after numerous updates telling me that it will cancel if I don't is the conclusion that the service, and billings, will cease. Credit cards have expiry dates for a reason, and ultimately it is fraud that they effectively manufactured my info for me.