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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

#351

Post by missedthecue »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #256

I'm confused by the top comment using this headline to complain about the quality of results. The quality of results is obviously irrelevant to the fact that most searches do not result in clicks. Google specifically tries to answer your question on the result page: "nifarious" - oh, it's spelled "nefarious" "1000 USD in CHF" - aha, about 1000 swiss francs 4 tablespoons in cups - 1/4 cup "how old is taylor swift" - 3…

This is what I was going to comment. Aside from all the tools like weather, converters, timers, etc..., google has even gotten good at pulling content out of articles so you don't need to click. It displays it in the search results.

For instance, searching something like "what is the most common car color" shows me an exerpt of the answer from a article on automobilemag.com without having to click and read the whole thing.

5-7 years ago, I would've had to click and skim through an article.

Moreover, Google compiles independent lists of their own. Searching "what animals mate for life" or "movies tomorrow cruise has been in" will pull up an interactive list. No click-through required.

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

#352

Post by mook »

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 other answers are probably the actual reason, but it's amusing to me to think that it's because giving you incorrect results drives up engagement on the search because you keep going back… it's also obviously the wedding metric to use in this case, but that has never stopped people before.

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

#353

Post by anitil »

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…

> Google exists as a tool to search Reddit

I didn't realize that I'd migrated over to this. All my searches now are 'xxx reddit' or 'xxx stackoverflow'

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

#354

Post by nwienert »

ChefboyOG wrote: post #345
nwienert wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a common thread in every one of the good sources of search information: user curated content. Usually: voted on/curated by members who are specialized in some way (reddit, so, hn, wikipedia to a degree). The fallbacks are editorial sites. If you make a search engine that focused on indexing user-curated sites + results outside of that that are themselves curated/voted-on by your search engine users (ie, you a…

This is the essence of what Google implements. Links between sites are a form of user curation, user behavior (clicks, read throughs, bounce rate, etc.) are like inferred votes. The problem is, everything is gameable. Marketers abuse reddit as well, it just isn't quite as profitable as ranking #1 on Google. If a major search engine implemented a voting model, it too would spring an entire industry of "optimizing" for…

It's nothing like what Google implements.

Which is easier: enforcing one account per person and then identifying bad-voters, or not doing that and having N pages, and N*M page links?

Further, you'd now have direct access to customizing results per-user. Use my votes.

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

#355

Post by D13Fd »

anitil wrote: post #353
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…

> Google exists as a tool to search Reddit I didn't realize that I'd migrated over to this. All my searches now are 'xxx reddit' or 'xxx stackoverflow'

I tend to do that too. But for product reviews, I am certain that the fake review problem will hit Reddit soon, if it hasn't already. This technique is way too common, and manufacturers are going to start including Reddit in their fake-review spam just like they do with Amazon reviews.

It's only a matter of time.

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

#356

Post by D13Fd »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #52
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…

I'm really starting to prefer DuckDuckGo at this point. There was one time when I thought they would always live in Google's shadow, but in this brave new world of content censorship and commercialization-induced bias, I find that I get noticeably "better" results on the more neutral alternative.

I wish DuckDuckGo actually found the stuff I'm looking for. I've given it a solid try a few times and it's just not as good, and I can't justify spending twice as long as I need to on a search.

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

#357

Post by hunter-gatherer »

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…

Indeed. Everything now is "the best in ". Shit had gotten ridiculous.

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

#358

Post by tannhaeuser »

Retric wrote: post #310
lordgrenville wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe for a second that Google's algorithms are unable to identify and remove content marketing blogspam. Easy for me to believe. They have to use some formula, and as soon as they change it, well, there's a massive industry dedicated to getting around it. If their algorithm is just "filter out what's useless", that's AGI.

Then what’s the point of using Google? In terms of AGI, we have that if Google where to say employ people to look at say the top million searches and heavily penalize junk they could make real headway. Personally, I swapped to DuckDuckGo in 2019 and have been consistently happier but Bing or whatnot is probably equally valid at this point.

I've used DDG for years now. They give me the exact same results that Google does, all the time. And why wouldn't they when they're indexing the same web sites. Full-text search isn't rocket science, after all, and it's not like new websites with quality content have surfaced lately given the incentives. I don't even bother to cross-check Google's result anymore, something I occasionally used to do maybe two years ago.

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

#359

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

D13Fd wrote: post #355
anitil wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google exists as a tool to search Reddit I didn't realize that I'd migrated over to this. All my searches now are 'xxx reddit' or 'xxx stackoverflow'

I tend to do that too. But for product reviews, I am certain that the fake review problem will hit Reddit soon, if it hasn't already. This technique is way too common, and manufacturers are going to start including Reddit in their fake-review spam just like they do with Amazon reviews. It's only a matter of time.

Something that might help is that reddit has voting, so astroturfing requires fooling users which lots of blogspam wouldn't.

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

#360

Post by Gustomaximus »

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…

I think 2 changes would really help to improve:

1) Bring in tabbed search result like Cuil search used to have. Easily lets you go to similar/variant topics from UX POV and must be a good way for a search engine to learn what people want more.

2) Add a 'dont show this site' option. So they can easily see when people get annoyed with a result and use that as a ranking signal against search terms. E.g. if people press that for a particular KW but not usually Google knows they got that result wrong and if people press it for almost everything you know its a site people dont want to see. And at a personal level its great to custom remove stuff, like when Pinterest was dominating so much a year or so ago.

Would be a great way to community curate results.

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