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For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

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Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#221

Post by bane »

XorNot wrote: post #89
ssss11 wrote: post #2

Yeah I’ve noticed this too. But also the rest of the front page is often either seo spam (like those Pinterest links which catch whatever search term you’ve used) or shopping sites. I’ve found google search to be increasingly hostile to its customers. I guess we’re not the customers. Use duckduckgo or something else.

I don't get how Pinterest hasn't been removed from existence by Google. There is literally no one who is ever searching for things that wants a Pinterest link, but the incredible persistence of Google in showing me Pinterest is amazing. Though this kind of goes to the related question: why Google don't allow you to setup your profile to nuke domains from consideration when you search, I do not know - it would complet…

There's a great chrome extension called "unpinterested" that automatically adds -site:pinterest.* to all google queries. It's improved my use of google by an east 20%.

It's so bad you'd almost think google has a stake in pinterest at this point.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#222

Post by gxs »

ipaddr wrote: post #121
gxs wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit because I was getting 2-3 30 second ads per video, 5 minute videos that is. Ended up getting an ad blocker on my iphone and deleting the app. I now have to use youtube.com and settle for 720p, but it's far and away better than the shit ads it served. Don't get me started on the relevancy of the ads.

You don't have to settle for 720p change the quality 720p is the default

I think on the mobile site 720p is the best you can do. On the app/desktop you can get 1080p.

I, at least, have never seen that 1080p option on the mobile site.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#223

Post by FpUser »

tomatofrank wrote: post #201

Last night I watched a YouTube video that had a song in the background that I hadn't heard but really liked. I pulled up Shazam but it didn't recognize the song, so I took to Google. I entered the lyric and added the search terms "lyrics" and "r&b" at the end. Google returned 4 YouTube videos to songs that didn't contain the lyric, a link to a Boyz II Men song on Genius that didn't contain the lyric (good job Google,…

I do not hold any love for Google but to be fair when I look up songs by lyrics, or lyrics by the name of the song or the combination it works just fine for me.

But they probably know that I never klick on ads unless specifically searching to buy something

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#224

Post by IX-103 »

gxs wrote: post #112
jws wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…a limit to how user-hostile a tech giant can be before it really starts to hurt their bottom line… Reading that line I just realized that google lost me as a YouTube viewer in the past two weeks. I used to follow a bunch of ~100k subscriber channels that produced content every couple of weeks on building things and how to build things. I'd generally watch one or two 10-30 minute videos a day. They've cranked the ads…

I quit because I was getting 2-3 30 second ads per video, 5 minute videos that is. Ended up getting an ad blocker on my iphone and deleting the app. I now have to use youtube.com and settle for 720p, but it's far and away better than the shit ads it served. Don't get me started on the relevancy of the ads.

You may have been in the heavy ads group from some sort of A/B experiment on how the number of ads they show affects engagement. YouTube runs these sorts of experiments all the time to improve "metrics". I've heard that there's even a long-running "control group" that doesn't get ads on YouTube.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#225

Post by physicles »

elliekelly wrote: post #97
enumjorge wrote: post #36

The Facebook stock debacle from yesterday makes me think that maybe there is a limit to how user-hostile a tech giant can be before it really starts to hurt their bottom line. For a while it seemed like companies like FB had captured enough of the market that they seemed impervious to backlash from their many controversies, too big to fail in a way. It’s too early to tell if this is the beginning of FB’s demise, but…

The top reply to the linked tweet shocked me: > further evidence to long $GOOG tbh

Our lives will suck but at least we’ll be swimming in money!

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#226

Post by lolinder »

jacquesm wrote: post #217
hartem_ wrote: post #216

The not so happy thing about this is that at this point the entire web is somewhat flawed. Too many sites have produced too much junk content just to game Google. A fundamentally new approach is needed to identify and surface “organic” (whatever that may mean) results. So I suspect (albeit with no data to show for it) that even if we just switched all ads off we still wouldn't be happy with the results that we see. G…

Millionshort is an attempt at fixing this. https://millionshort.com/

The problem is that even the small sites are playing the same SEO game. If you remove the top X, you might just end up cutting out what you're looking for and still end up with a bunch of SEO'd results.

Re: For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads

#228

Post by krackers »

brightly-salty wrote: post #177
krackers wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very strange then, it almost feels like I've been shadow-banned from a service I haven't even used yet considering that I tried to request an invite with 3 different email domains (to rule out any domain whitelist) on 2 different platforms (to rule out any typeform website issues), waiting at least 3 weeks in between (to rule out any rate-limiting). There doesn't even appear to be any contact email aside from the dis…

I’ve had a similar experience but heard back from the Founder that many of the invites from before January 8th didn’t go through, and that he manually approves a new batch every few weeks now

>heard back from the Founder that many of the invites from before January 8th didn’t go through

That makes this situation even weirder. Why not just re-send them, considering that they should have the collected email address sitting right there? If it's a typeform issue, then some sort of message on their site would have been nice. I mean it's one thing if this was a free product, but the fact that they are planning to provide a paid search engine but can't manage the task of sending email invites and don't have any contact address* just ruins any enthusiasm I had of being a customer.

* I realize the founder has his email listed in the FAQ page, but emailing the founder for an issue like this seems quite gauche. And besides I did try reaching out on social media but didn't get any response.

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