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Google’s top search result is Google

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Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#161

Post by throw_m239339 »

rydre wrote: post #21

The problem is that website are commodities. The future for original high quality websites is that they should not allow search engines to crawl their content and slowly become a brand which people trust. Stop relying on search for traffic. Be an app, websites for marketing only. Alternative new search engines are needed that allow for embedding/iframe/integration of global web search results in any 3rd party website…

The future is certainly Google as a frontpage for basically everything, from search to maps to shopping to whatever is thing still independent from Google today. That's inevitable if Google is allowed to continue like that. Google needs to be broken up.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#162

Post by _jal »

athenot wrote: post #73
chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

The thing is, increasingly I'm catching it returning wrong answers. A few days I was looking up the approximate weight of a cup of flour to do a recipe conversion, and the "helpful answer" was pulled from some random site and was about 15% off-base compared to the median from a handful of other sites, including from flour companies. I've observed similar bad results when looking up information about medications… I fe…

I mainly use DDG, but when I look at a google page, it is just gross. We've gone well beyond contempt for the consumer, deep in to plain-old tacky.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#163

Post by pwinnski »

Search engines seem like they're subject to quantum mechanics, in that they're the observer that affects the state of the internet.

An internet without search engines was an internet without SEO, and without vast fortunes being spent on manipulating content to sell garbage. Launching "Backrub" in that environment must have seemed like an unalloyed good, but the very act of launching it turned out to have a profoundly negative impact on the web as a whole.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#164

Post by pwinnski »

pwinnski wrote: post #163

Search engines seem like they're subject to quantum mechanics, in that they're the observer that affects the state of the internet. An internet without search engines was an internet without SEO, and without vast fortunes being spent on manipulating content to sell garbage. Launching "Backrub" in that environment must have seemed like an unalloyed good, but the very act of launching it turned out to have a profoundly…

I guess I mean this as a semi-defense of Google, even though I don't like them and use DDG personally.

When doing a search on travel, what are the odds you get not-garbage in your results? Compare, say, 2000 to 2020. I can see a scenario in which Google was committed to providing open results, but those open results slowly became garbage, and they felt compelled to launch their own tool to ensure good results.

And sure, it puts profit in their pocket too, of course.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#165

Post by boogies »

gfxgirl wrote: post #152
boogies wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. This is patently false, and probably a reflection of the Google bubble you live in. DeepL is pretty objectively superior to Google, as evaluated by journalists who natively speak the languages it translates in the articles linked on their website. You can find plenty of in depth reviews online, and every one I've read has…

Google's flight service is not a booking service. It's flight search. It just redirects you to the airline in question. Personally I love it. It's so much faster than all the competitors. Further it not covered in ads. I just went to SkyScanner and there's an ad for fried chicken. Seriously WTF!

Edited to remove “booking”. But as "“a partnership with Google is required” to appear in Google Flights", (and it hides the best flights, likely because of lack of such a “partnership”), I would consider the entire service an infomercial-like advertisement.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#166

Post by ViViDboarder »

gfxgirl wrote: post #150
ViViDboarder wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. We can see that in the future for the examples from the article too. When Google started promoting Google Flights and Hotels over other sites, they did not offer close to the best information. In fact, as the article claims, they still don’t. Yet despite that competitors are losing traffic and going out of business (eg. Hipmunk). It’s not hard to see where this leads over time. The competitors struggle to st…

not my experience. The experience at Google Fllghts is 100x better than any other flight search service. It's like the difference between Google Maps when it shipped and Mapquest. Mapquest was instantly a joke with its server side rendered pages. Google Flights is fast. Every other site is slow.

If you read the article they highlight the fact that they omit routes and prices at times that can be found on IATA.

For me, speed is one factor of product quality, but result integrity is the thing that I care the most about.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#167

Post by segfaultbuserr »

josefresco wrote: post #154
jforman wrote: post #35

When I worked at Bing almost 20 years ago, the #1 search term was "Google". So maybe this is reasonable :) (#2 was "Gogle")

I wonder that the numbers look like now. I could see someone searching "MSN" for "Google" because MSN was set to their home page, or the default search. I wonder if those practices are still widespread enough to create this same effect. Given that Chrome is the new IE, I wonder how long (or ever) until they see competitors' brands in their popular search terms.

Don't underestimate the technical illiteracy here. A significant number of people don't really understand how the address bar or an URL works in a web browser. Use web searching as a substitute of typing an URL is common, and some can't distinguish the "search" function of an address bar and the "enter an URL" function of an address bar. Searching "Google" in the address bar to access Google in Google Chrome is not unusual (sometimes you'll get a search result of 'Google' at Google, sometimes you'll be autocompleted and get a Google homepage, users don't notice the difference). This is also the underlying basis of Google's idea of abolishing the address bar - some users don't understand it, a Walled Garden is "better".

I'm not saying that I support Google's idea, just to point out a phenomenon that exists.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#168

Post by onion2k »

chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well.

You: I wish people would build products that successfully compete with Google.

Also you: It's fine if Google do things that stop their competitors successfully competing with Google.

This is literally exactly the reason why anti-trust laws exist - to stop a company who are successful in one area (search, advertising) unfairly dominating other areas (maps, translation) by suppressing their competition. For all you know there might be a map provider that you'd prefer - but while Google leverage their advantage running the premier search engine to put themselves at the top of every geographic search you're never going to find out.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#169

Post by rydre »

mrkramer wrote: post #114
rydre wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> *I don't entirely understand your search engine idea Does google allow for iframeing or customizing it's search results? No. A new search engine that has a API/plugin for 3rd party websites so that websites can integrate a global search engine into the website like google integrates websites' content into its instant answers. There is room for innovation here when 3rd party websites get creative in displaying globa…

Ah ok I got it. I like your idea it is similar to my. Currently what you can do as a website owner is to use Google Adsense ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AdSense ) and then you are kind of sharing revenue with Google but only when someone visits and clicks Google Ad on your website.

> Currently what you can do as a website owner is to use Google Adsense

Nooo! This is not what I meant. I mean that embedding a search engine to your website without the user moving back to Google. So every website has a search engine for the entire internet. Not just Google. I want search to be kind of affiliate revenue to Amazon. So the developer embeds a search engine on the search page of a news website they get commission off the ads in a search result if the user decide to use search on the news paper's website. A search engine like Google for global search not just site-limited search.

Like do what Google is doing to websites but in reverse. Commoditize search. It'll require something more to get it right/product market fit but it's possible if you be creative.

Google is not the end product, its a compliment to websites. Websites need to commoditize Google instead of it being the other way around.

Re: Google’s top search result is Google

#170

Post by Mirioron »

onion2k wrote: post #168
chimen wrote: post #23

Many of them save me extra clicks which is convenient. Google translate, maps and search has no competitors that even come close in terms of quality. I will get mad when those products have better alternatives but it's not the case. Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. One thing that pisses me off is the AMP ordeal bu…

Build better alternatives and I'm on board. In the end, Google is a business - I would promote my own shit on the first vertical as well. You: I wish people would build products that successfully compete with Google. Also you: It's fine if Google do things that stop their competitors successfully competing with Google. This is literally exactly the reason why anti-trust laws exist - to stop a company who are successf…

But if Google search didn't send me to Google maps when I was looking for maps then I would explicitly go to Google maps. In that case there would be no chance for any competitor to do better.
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