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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

#271

Post by aviraldg »

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…

Feel free to add them to your robots.txt; they won't scrape you then (but they won't index or rank you either)

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

#272

Post by rhizome »

sli wrote: post #109
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…

On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. They can be (and almost certainly are) gamed. Users that don't click through open themselves up to carrying on being misinformed.

This is especially true where the answer is time-bound, which happens a lot in technical topics. Many times the snippet is for an earlier version of the language (but still with a high PageRank), or the Operating System (especially Android settings), and the most annoying at all: an ancient answer in an undated blog post.

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

#273

Post by reaperducer »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #187
sli wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. They can be (and almost certainly are) gamed. Users that don't click through open themselves up to carrying on being misinformed.

I've found them to be incorrect so often on things when I would click through to the actual page or find a better link. I don't trust just the blurb for any answers any more.

I don't trust just the blurb for any answers any more.

I don't, either.

A site I used to own had a discussion forum on it. It contained a message along the lines of "Real Estate Agent X is a great guy. Real Estate Agent Y is a complete sleazebag."

The blurb that Google displayed for it was "Real Estate Agent X... is a sleazebag." And that was the first result for anyone who searched for that agent's name.

As you can imagine, I received many angry e-mails, phone calls, and legal threats. No, you can't explain to angry people that it's "just" an algorithm that told the world that they're a sleazebag.

I ended up editing the post so that Google would display a different version after its next scrape.

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

#274

Post by cromwellian »

The dream of AI is to build a StarTrek like computer that can read and understand all human knowledge and answer questions about it, synthesizing answers.

Web Search for factual answers is a stop gap on that road, but distributed knowledge databases are inexorably going to be centralized, melded, and transformed.

The 90s “content is king” business models just aren’t sustainable if what you’re publishing is static mostly factual content.

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

#275

Post by kaybe »

notafraudster wrote: post #117
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 agree here. For the median search I make, having to click on a website is a failure. If I search "John McCain age at death", why would I click on a website? This seems trivial, but it is frustrating for even more technical issues. If I search "Non-standard evaluation in left-hand side of mutate command R", it's a bit weird that I'm expected to click the first StackExchange rather than getting a canonical answer exc…

Maybe Wikipedia could do with a fact-pulling tool that answers small questions like this?

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

#276

Post by goatinaboat »

akersten wrote: post #269
goatinaboat wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Google and similar companies should be 100% responsible for anything published on their platforms. No more “safe harbour”. They have chosen to take positions in many issues, that makes them more like newspapers than phone companies.

Positions like what? And no, banning radicals from their platform for violating their terms of service is not a position. Even if they were responsible, it's still legal to lie. You don't see pseudoscience websites being taken down because they are objectively false either.

It’s OK for the NYT to attempt to “prevent another Trump situation”. They have an editor and that person is legally responsible for what they publish. They don’t even pretend to be non-partisan. But Google takes a position then hides behind “common carrier” status. It’s not reasonable that they can pick and choose. Either they’re the phone company or they’re a publisher. It’s their right to be either of course, but they must choose.

Similarly for Twitter.

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

#277

Post by root_axis »

goatinaboat wrote: post #264
root_axis wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not like either. If anything they're like a phone book for URLs instead of phone numbers.

Except this is a phone book that sorts not alphabetically (no pun intended) but according to its own interests. No phone company ever did that.

Of course it doesn't sort the internet alphabetically, that'd make no sense and be a bad user experience as well as optimize for URLS starting with A.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

reaperducer wrote: post #267
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…

No, more people don't click, because they've taken the answer from your website and displayed it right in their search results. It's for this reason that's I've stopped embedding micro data in the HTML I write. Micro data only serves Google. Not my clients. Not my sites. Just Google. Every month or so I get an e-mail from a Google bot warning me that my site's micro data is incomplete. Tough. If Google wants to use m…

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by akersten »

goatinaboat wrote: post #276
akersten wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Positions like what? And no, banning radicals from their platform for violating their terms of service is not a position. Even if they were responsible, it's still legal to lie. You don't see pseudoscience websites being taken down because they are objectively false either.

It’s OK for the NYT to attempt to “prevent another Trump situation”. They have an editor and that person is legally responsible for what they publish. They don’t even pretend to be non-partisan. But Google takes a position then hides behind “common carrier” status. It’s not reasonable that they can pick and choose. Either they’re the phone company or they’re a publisher. It’s their right to be either of course, but t…

Common carrier and safe harbor are 100% separate and distinct concepts. The same way that a forum could have a theme ("political party X posts only") and still be allowed to remove illegal content is Safe Harbor (both curation at their discretion and no responsibility for illegal posts) - and I don't see how one could be against that - and Google is nowhere near that, whatever "positions" you envision them to have taken.

Google and other tech never claimed to be common carriers, and even internet service providers have been cleared of that status - barely anyone is legally required to transmit without discretion (it's pretty much just phone companies). So why make it about Google and Twitter, and start with ISPs?

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

#280

Post by mrtksn »

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…

If I recall correctly content(news especially) publishers and some Europeans were very angry about that. I think the consensus was that these businesses don't understand the internet.
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