Good. I recently got dropped into the new design, and for the life of me I can't figure out which ones are ads and which are not. Either I've never gotten an ad with the new design, or they blend in so much that I can't tell.
Google backtracks on search results design
251–260 of 356 posts
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I hear people complain about Google and that they'll switch to a competitor, I'm reminded of the "Delete Facebook" memes that happened, only to have FB reach a new user record every subsequent month. Don't be deluded by the HN bubble. I like DDG and am glad it exists, but it's usage in a year is probably what Google gets in a few minutes, and I'm willing to bet that ratio hasn't really improved significantly…
For anyone actually curious about the numbers: Google traffic is about 4 million searches per minute, which comes to 6 billion searches per day. DDG traffic is about 50 million searches per day, so about 1%. It looks like DDG traffic has been doubling every 1.5-2 years or so for the past decade. I presume that Google's traffic is relatively constant at this point. https://duckduckgo.com/traffic
> I presume that Google's traffic is relatively constant at this point.
Probably a poor assumption. The total number of internet users is still growing significantly.
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#253When will we realize that adwords and everything it inspired was a wrong turn for the internet? I’d much rather pay a monthly fee to get the services I want. I understand that Google and Facebook have gone too far down this path, and they will say such a service is not as profitable, but ultimately their business model seems unsustainable. People search for the truth, and while you can sell anybody anything, the trut…
As long as you realize the web without ads is a much smaller and less commercial one. That may be fine with you. But a lot of things hundreds of millions of people use every day would have to go away. Subscriptions can't replace ads, as individuals don't have nearly as much discretionary money to spend as companies have in their advertising budgets. We've already given them that money when we bought our groceries, an…
99% of all web pages are noise, solely created to extract as much as possible out of ads and trackers. The internet would be a smaller but far far better place without them.
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#254Duckduckgo shows favicons in search results as well but nobody complains about it. People should be focusing on how to make Google ads stand out more and not the use of favicons.
Not only that, DDG shows "ads" marker on the far right, making it more difficult to distinguish ads.
Also, they sometimes put ads in-between organic results - e.g. show maps first, then show ads, then organic results.
DDG and Bing have ads favicon that's in very thin fonts, making it much less legible than Google's black, bold font.
There are many valid reasons to switch from Google to DDG, but ads being less clearly marked on Google is not a valid reason, since Google is objectively far more clearer in marking ads than DDG or Bing.
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#255This may be a major event in Google's history - the point where they overdid ads and started to be perceived as a inferior service. This is sometimes called "pulling a Myspace". Myspace was once the top social network. They looked unchallengeable. Then they got greedy. Myspace kept upping their ad content until usage dropped. Instead of backing off the ads, they upped the ad content even more to maintain revenue. Usa…
Nothing like this is going to happen. Google Search is leaps and bounds ahead beyond anything else. And Google Assistant on top of this makes it even more effective. This was a mistake by Google and they heard the feedback and corrected it. MySpace analogy doesn't make sense since there is no Facebook, which was a competent social network, here. Search is a massive investment and you don't just have random companies…
As the web contracts, becomes more silo'd and locked behind paywalls and app gardens, the volume of searchable data is also retracting. Add in that most of Google's users never go past the first page, or the 6th result, and I think Google's search is vulnerable.
Now, add in all the great features and functions they have built over the last 10+ years (maps, travel, etc) and they will probably always maintain an advantage. They are after all a verb...
But the actual search results, IMHO are most definitely within reach for a competitor or 3 to tackle.
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I view Google Contributor as a bad product offering, as it doesn't give me any guarantee. Matt Cutts wrote that it works like if I would be bidding with an empty ad, but Google ad system works by CPC, so actually the product should be free in theory :) Google exactly knows my long term value, so it could ask for that amount of money. Also it's for AdSense / DoubleClick, not for Google.com, where ads matter the most.
So my bid just drives up the prices advertisers need to bid to show me ads? Sounds like a win for a company that sells ads. Asking for your "long term value" is interesting, although for users who run ad blockers and therefore never click an ad, isn't their value super low anyway? Imagine Google asking for $50/yr to not show ads, installing an ad blocker, then a year later seeing Google ask $5/yr as your value plumme…
Don't worry, Google is not that stupid :)
It could just use my interests to predict how much I'm willing to pay for getting rid of ads.
Or even the type and number of devices that I'm using Google on should be a good enough predictor, or just the country (which is the case for Youtube Premium).
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#257Can you also tell Google to fix the image search page? The new design is stupid. I prefer the previous design. The new design splits the page vertically, when you click on a picture. And its purpose, which is quite confusing, is to follow a second track of searches related to that picture. But that just makes the usage confusing. I want to click on the picture in order to see it in magnification mode, to have it fill…
What's much worse is they removed the precise and custom image size search. It's now impossible to search for a 32x32 icon or a 3200x1800 wallpaper. This dumbing down and feature removal is sad and silly.
FYI you can still access these options (and more) with the Google Advanced Image Search: https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
edit: Oh, it no longer has "custom" under the sizes. Hmm.
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#258I go to bing.com and honestly it is more egregious. I couldn't tell which were the Ads and which were the search results.
As a Google employee, I am not a fan of the new design and can appreciate consumers' dissatisfaction with it and will be happy if it is reverted.
But, I can't help feel like there is a double standard, here.
For instance, Google didn't even opt to bid on the recent giant contract to be the cloud provider for the U.S. Government.
Microsoft beat out Amazon for this and there wasn't a peep about it.
It seems to me that Google is unfairly targeted in this space for some reason. It makes me question the motivation of some of those pushing this agenda.
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That said, it is absolutely theft for Google to source data from your site, then use that to add value to their site, without giving you any click-through traffic. Would you be OK, if Google didn't show images from your site on their site? If so, I believe a simple robots.txt statement should be sufficient. > This would mean that you would get paid to have good SEO, or to be a central hub. The websites that compris…
> I don't really get the logic by which someone letting people find you, should pay for that privilege. Images ends up being more of a media platform than search engine. I'm rarely looking for a site. Doesn't seem too weird that they could pay for some of the content
I don't really understand. Are you saying Google is creating a media platform based on image search and they should somehow find a way to pay for the images in it?
If you want to use an image that is not free, you should go pay for it, no? You have a link for the site. You can even go visit the site as a courtesy for free images. Are you saying Google should be paying for the images?
If you want to be mad at someone, look at getty - they take² people's images and charge for them, even managing to file DMCA takedowns on the author[1]. As a consolation, at least they host the images themselves.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180039
² Quick skim says they may merely let other people do the uploading of effectively stolen images.
Re: Google backtracks on search results design
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what I keep hearing about DuckDuckGo and I'd really like this to be true for myself and my search engine usage. Unfortunately, however, having used DuckDuckGo for the last few weeks my experience has been quite the opposite (described here in some more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22106837 ), especially when it comes to programming-related queries.
It would be nice to conduct these experiments while actually saving the searches (and results) for further study & ideas from the community on how to improve them. I hear a lot of anecdotes about search working/not working but concrete examples remain elusive.
Intriguing idea. It'd be interesting to get DuckDuckGo involved in such a project because it's in their interest to improve search query matches.
Maybe, a browser plugin that allows you to easily report less than optimal or even irrelevant search results to DuckDuckGo (including a comparison with other search engine in case those yield more appropriate results) would be quite useful.
This obviously has privacy implications, though.