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In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

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Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#311

Post by _cs2017_ »

gonehome wrote: post #63
BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

Product vs Product -- I hate those generic websites that compare everything to everything. I am absolutely sure that Google can detect and downrank them. Why doesn't it? Maybe most users like those links, and Google is happy to oblige by keeping them at the top? In that case, I suppose, I should blame the mass market taste rather than Google.

I think the future of search is in finding trusted results, such as those upvoted by reddit or HN or SO, assuming the upvoting system is robust enough to withstand spambots etc. The question is whether a big enough fraction of the population actually care to get good search results.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#312

Post by cj »

neolog wrote: post #284
thephyber wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has always respected robots.txt and has well documented how to restrict crawling. I don’t see it as anticompetitive so much as copyright violations. The fact that Google makes advert revenue using this strategy just contributes to damages. Anticompetitive would likely require Alphabet (and potentially other companies) from preventing users from accessing the original web page (which might be possible but more…

IIRC you can't copyright facts

You can absolutely copyright the packaging of facts (see any textbook ever printed).

Google often has entire paragraphs ripped from the underlying page in their knowledge graph. Would it be copyright infringement if Google displayed paragraphs of text from copyrighted textbook? If so, is there a difference between doing that and doing the same with, say, "facts" from a blog post?

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#313

Post by vimax »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

It sure has made switching to duck duck go easier

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#315

Post by meetups323 »

dundarious wrote: post #143
gonehome wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

I have a cat that is always ravenous for anything edible, even if it's not exactly typical cat fare, e.g., my leftover salad, berries, etc. Trying to search for "can cats eat X" after he manages to get a few sneaky morsels is almost pointless. There are so many spammy sites for every value of X, and I have no idea if it's a sophisticated problem to systematically exclude this type of useless content, but Google's top…

Bing is the clear winner here, "Can cats eat asparagus" produces a nice H2 "Yes" followed by "According to 2 sources", then two side by side paragraphs with the "yes they can" and surrounding context right at the top of the results page.

I'm honestly such a huge fan of the Bing widgets, every time I see a someone google search for something basic and need to dredge through all of the AdWords laden blogspam, while I know bing has a good widget in your face widget with the answer, I can't help but feel confused at all the "Bing bad Google good" rhetoric.

Some of my favorites:

Annual Weather charts: See chart with monthly breakdown of temperature & rainfall for any location along with record temps, days of rain, and configurable units; Google has something similar but it presents the first few rows of a table first, with a separate tab for charts, and then the charts don't have nearly as much data (avg hi/lo, inches of rain, hours of daylight (bing doesnt have hours of daylight, so +1 to google for that))

Random animal fact cards: Try Binging something like "marsupial", you get a beautiful hand-crafted info card. There isn't one for every animal, but it's clear thought goes into creating them and they always make me happy to see for whatever reason.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#317

Post by datavirtue »

dmart wrote: post #235
ratww wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is Content Marketing. People use SEO tools to gauge how good a blog post is going to rank, and the current sweet spot seems to be around 1000 words, so they end up filling it with fluff. Some of those are even machine generated. The answer to the "can cats eat X", of course, can't be at the beginning or at the end. The reason is that the user must stay a long time and read the text, otherwise Google punishe…

I don't believe for a second that Google's algorithms are unable to identify and remove content marketing blogspam from the results. It must be profitable somehow for the majority of search results to be utterly useless.

The sites are all packed with google ad spam. Why would they not promote them. Google benefits when people click fake download buttons too.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#319

Post by datavirtue »

zip1234 wrote: post #159
typon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For pretty much any product or review related search I just do " reddit" and then scour the somewhat up voted posts for information. Have to deal with tons of dead links though for any post older than a couple of years. The Web really seems like it's an awful place. The original dream of hyper links is really dead. It's all about jumping from walled garden to walled garden through tricks and luck.

and reddit has gotten much less useful with all their push for login and using their app...

Yeah. I had decent karma or whatever on a ten year old account and got banned for not having an email address. Shrug. Pretty much killed my reddit habit.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#320

Post by pkamb »

typon wrote: post #124
gonehome wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

For pretty much any product or review related search I just do " reddit" and then scour the somewhat up voted posts for information. Have to deal with tons of dead links though for any post older than a couple of years. The Web really seems like it's an awful place. The original dream of hyper links is really dead. It's all about jumping from walled garden to walled garden through tricks and luck.

1. Search " reddit" 2. AMP page loads 3. "See Reddit in... App or Browser?" banner w/ grayed out page. Tap Browser. 4. Click through the AMP page to the real Reddit page. 5. Second "See Reddit in... App or Browser?" banner w/ grayed out page. Tap Browser. 6. Fail to read the majority of comments, which are hidden by New Reddit. 6. Manually edit URL bar to replace "www." with "old." 7. Read the comments.
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