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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

#371

Post by glangdale »

x0 wrote: post #360
kryogen1c wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I cant tell if my questions are just getting more specific and technical, but Google search results have been getting pretty useless in the past year or so

I love how google likes to completely ignore what I'm trying to search for. I wish I could think of an example because it happens to me often, but I can't so I'll make one up. Imagine you're searching for tail lights for your car or something, but you don't know the size, so you search "Astra tail light size". This might bring up headlights. Wrong but no matter, you'd go on to google "Astra tail light size -headlight…

Absolutely. I was trying to figure out something to do with timeouts in an SMT solver called Yices, so I had search strings about signals and alarm and Yices - of course. Google decided that this was a generalized programming question and displayed a lot of stuff about signals and alarm handling that didn't relate to Yices.

How likely a search time is "Yices", ffs? Feels like something that exotic ("statistically unlikely") probably is meant to be in the results by default.

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

#373

Post by elorant »

michaelmior wrote: post #342
reaperducer wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If Google wants to go back to being a search engine While I understand the problems with Google scraping content, as a user these snippets help me find what I'm searching for faster. If that's all you're optimizing for, Google is fantastic. There are certainly good arguments to be made for other models, but for search, stealing content helps. I'm not advocating stealing content, I'm just saying that it produces mor…

How do you know that the content Google features is the best there is? If we stop clicking on sites and just rely on Google to provide us the content we'll go down a very slippery slope.

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

#374

Post by jefftk »

igravious wrote: post #285
HenryBemis wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason is the use of add-ons such as: "Google search link fix - Prevents Google and Yandex search pages from modifying search result links when you click them." I have stopped using Google a few years ago, but just in case I keep this (or similar) add-ons of my Firefox. I have no idea of the popularity of such addons, but they would also impact the tracking that Google does.

Oh my God! This is so useful! I hate that I can't right-click on a search result to copy a URL. We definitely used to be able to do this, didn't we?

Hmm, right clicking and copying works for me in Chrome and Safari. I just tried searching for "test" and the first result is marked up as:
Looking at https://caniuse.com/#feat=ping it looks like ping is supported in Chrome, Safari, and Edge, but not Firefox; are you using Firefox?

(Disclosure: I work for Google)

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

#375

Post by jefftk »

wbl wrote: post #305
igravious wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my God! This is so useful! I hate that I can't right-click on a search result to copy a URL. We definitely used to be able to do this, didn't we?

Don't like the product? Switch. While you still can.

Any search engine is going to want to know what people click on so they can make their product better. For example, I just searched for [test] on DuckDuckGo and when clicking on the first result I see DDG sending a ping back:

    https://improving.duckduckgo.com/t/lc?...
which contains which URL I clicked.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

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

#376

Post by antonvs »

dragonwriter wrote: post #368
reaperducer wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> If Google wants to go back to being a search engine instead of a content thief and aggregator A search engine is inherently a content aggregator; the functions are inseperable.

Not necessarily. Google used to be more of a link aggregator. There's a difference, as the OP proves.

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

#377

Post by singlow »

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…

I actually searched for best nail for cedar this afternoon :-P. I clicked several of the articles though...

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

#378

Post by telotortium »

mthoms wrote: post #365
telotortium wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people doing the hard work of making a dictionary deserve to serve those definitions under their own terms. This depends on the country. In the EU, this may be the case. However, the US Supreme Court rejected the "sweat of the brow" copyright doctrine in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R... . For a creative expression to be copyrightable in the US, it must have some minimum threshold…

It sounds like you're looking for legal loopholes. Which is absolutely fine for a business to do. Just don't use phrases like "from a moral standpoint..." when you really mean "from a legal standpoint..." . Moral and legal aren't the same thing.

I don't believe Google has a moral obligation to send traffic to the sites that appear in its search results, any more than a book has an obligation to be bought or borrowed from the library by the readers of a short quote from that book in another book. So, for me, it is a moral question as well.

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

#379

Post by gumby »

nixpulvis wrote: post #353
gumby wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the argument against ad blockers, and they seem reasonably popular, and accepted.

Have you not seen the problems that have popped up due to the ad blocking arms race?

Not sure. I've seen complaints by some advertising sites, but no especial problems. Can you elaborate? I'd genuinely like to know more.

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

#380

Post by njharman »

zymhan wrote: post #289
gniv wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There is an implicit contract between website publishers and search engines that it’s ok to do this. The website can set nosnippet in robots if they want to not have the snippet in search results.

So by having a website, I implicitly agree to Google's search practices? That doesn't seem right.

You put a resource on an open network and don't use any of the standard, recognized methods to indicate don't index, don't share, (nor lock it away with auth).

It's like if you put a sculpture in front yard and get upset when someone points it out in their neighborhood tour company, even worse cause yard ornaments don't have standard accepted methods of saying "don't use".

Two choices

1) use robots.txt

2) don't put it on the internet

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