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Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

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Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#191

Post by didibus »

puranjay wrote: post #29
cletus wrote: post #15

So 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…

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.

Not from a user search perspective. That's an awesome search feature. And for all the website that aren't trying to monetize, like my personal blog, or wikipedia, it also isn't a problem, and a great feature to have, which might be argued serves the greater good and improves the internet by making finding free flow of information easier.

I think we need to go back a little and think. When the internet started, if you wanted to monetize your website, and attract users, what would you do? There were no search engines. Nowadays, people claim they're at the mercy of Google, but it's more that their very existence and business model was enabled and made viable by Google. Since it seems, without Google, no one would find them and visit their website. In that sense, I find it hard to say Google is taking things away, it seems more like Google is giving and giving, sometimes, it gives less, and sometimes it gives more.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#192

Post by tkjef »

cletus wrote: post #15

So 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…

check out the mortgage calculator i made: https://www.mortgagecalculator.io/

no dark patterns, loads quickly, uses fathom for analytics so no tracking. There are affiliate links to LendingTree, but they're just text links and i tried to be non-obtrusive to the ux.

also, have an android app that just hit 5,000 installs since being launched in mid-April: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.mortgagecal...

currently ranking #3 for 'mortgage calculator' on google play. pretty proud of that! beating out Zillow and Quicken's mortgage calculators.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#193

Post by Endy »

SllX wrote: post #129
puranjay wrote: post #29

Earlier 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.

A bait and switch would imply more of an implicit contract than there ever was along the way. In the 90s, people were making websites because they wanted to make websites, and some of them were informational, and some of them were just whatever cool thing somebody decided to publish. Keeping track of your favorite sites was harder, but eventually browsers added bookmarks and it became a bit easier. Okay, now how do y…

I miss having a good index site. Yahoo's gone, DMOZ shut down. We need a good human-curated index that's not bound to ad spend or SEO nonsense. I don't want to know about "long-tail keywords", I want to know if the site has good content that serves eithet a need or an interest. Now, if it so happens that websites with valuable content also have SEO valuable, that means the search engine algorithm is optimized correctly. But we need humans.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#194

Post by timbowhite »

jasode wrote: post #166
timbowhite wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

>I deliberately opted out of snippets Appreciate your datapoint. Also btw, when I "view source" the HTML of tld-list.com, I notice it has "nosnippet" inside a comment: --> Does google crawler parse and obey "nosnippet" embedded in HTML comments?

No I don't think so. Thanks for pointing that out.

IIRC, I eventually removed nosnippet because it caused google to not display microdata in SERP (see the "$25.99 to $99.80" in the above screenshot) that were desirable for my traffic. I instead replaced nosnippet with:

``` ```

And this seemed to have the same effect as nosnippet, but with the added benefit of my microdata still being displayed in SERP.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#195

Post by judge2020 »

iClaudiusX wrote: post #73
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

This is the subtle truth that I've seen a few folks on Twitter talking about for the past year or so: That Google has slowly but steadily reduced both the outbound clicks to other websites, but also the portion of their revenue that's based on ads hosted by other websites, while bringing both the "results" and the ad placements in-house, where they no longer have to pay out a share to site owners. Whereas Google was…

The increasing sprawl of non-search widgets invading the search result page reminds me of the AOL years where "the web" was funneled through a narrow portal controlled by one entity. Having to scroll down past ads, unrelated news, unrelated youtube videos, and ever more of these info boxes has pushed the actual content I'm looking for out to the second page. It's made it much easier to use ddg as default and use the…

And the downfall of AOL was Google because Google had a better product. In order for google to fall, you need a product that's better (or more of what people want; you need to give them a reason to change their search engine).

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#196

Post by OrgNet »

cyrusshepard wrote: post #86

I 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…

that is correct and should be considered copyright infringement... I am so tired of the double standard in the US of people VS corporations... Corporations are considered better people then real people.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#197

Post by gambiting »

nradov wrote: post #169
rchaud wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet if you type in a mortgage-related query, the first few entries Google will show you are ads. Not the calculator you're looking for. Even then, mortgages aren't something Google can realistically calculate because lenders don't structure loans that simply. There is a fixed rate period, and a variable period after that. First-time searchers may get suckered in by a personal finance site that relies on ads just…

The majority of US home mortgages are 30 year fixed rate with no variable period.

The majority of UK home mortgages are 25 year with fixed rate for 2-4 years followed by variable rate(which if course no one ever goes on, you simply remortgage as you're about to go on the variable rate instead).

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#198

Post by joe5150 »

rubidium wrote: post #170
TeMPOraL wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect world: User: Hey Gateway, what's the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage with 3.9 APR? Gateway: Here's your calculator, already prefilled with the data taken from your query. Done. The problem with all these little sites is, besides bloat, that the "Oh, neat, they can hook me up with lenders. Let me take a look." ends up with user getting malware and/or scammed. The problem with Google is that they can hard…

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what%27s+the+monthly+p... You're dreaming of what wolfram alpha is trying to build. Edit: funnily enough, they parsed the input slightly wrong but you can quickly get to your answer.

works perfectly if you put a percent sign after 3.9

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#199

Post by aeyes »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #31
cletus wrote: post #15

So 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 I want exchange rates I type xe.com in the address bar

I just type "20 usd in eur" in the address bar and get the result without even hitting the enter key.

Re: Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

#200

Post by buboard »

cyrusshepard wrote: post #86

I 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…

Funny to read in the html:

- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO

- This site is optimized with the Schema plugin

Yeah, optimized to death

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