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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

#41

Post by inetknght »

hammock wrote: post #32
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…

>The one weird case here is AMP. If you have been to a local news site recently, you might agree that they are similarly "scummy," overrun with banners, popups and native ads.

Try a local news site with Firefox's Reader Mode. If it's still garbage then the local news site isn't worth any more time whatsoever. Keep a running mental list of what sites not to click on. They're typically in the top 1-10 links of search results.

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

#42

Post by fromthestart »

I didn't see it defined on the page, so I'm wondering, do zero click searches count frustrated users giving up because the first two pages are entirely full of SEO optimized commercial websites when searches are made for informational content?

Try searching anything related to researching foundation repair. You get pages upon pages of foundation repair services and biased one pager summaries about certain procedures.

Long gone are the days when search queries retrieved educational content - when was the last time you saw results for engineering toolbox, or hyperphysics, or anything other than ads, commercial services, and stack overflow for software related questions?

SEO killed search and Google is complicit. I think this has massive ramifications for society - the sources of information are shallower, and people are increasingly unable to notice differentiate objective knowledge sources from commercial websites. The people who are interested in generating and curating true knowledge repositories are probably not interested in paying for SEO, so their efforts are effectively hidden from what amounts to the gateway to the internet.

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

#43

Post by buboard »

Just remove your microdata and other site-specific metadata. HTML was fine to begin with, its not our problem if facebook or google can't read a tag properly. Everyone forgives the transgressions that google does because "it's Google", but when Elsevier does the same thing (appropriating and locking other people's IP for huge profits), they 're starting riots.

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

#44

Post by padobson »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #31
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…

If I want exchange rates I type xe.com in the address bar

And I like Dave Ramsey's mortgage calculator: https://www.daveramsey.com/mortgage-calculator

Or retirement calculator: https://www.daveramsey.com/smartvestor/investment-calculator

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

#45

Post by yeezul »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #31
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…

If I want exchange rates I type xe.com in the address bar

This example proves his point exactly.

I'd rather just type CAD to USD.. or BTC to USD, or any other combination in my address bar than type xe.com, load a bunch of libraries, including Facebook connect. Ghostly reports 6 trackers blocked.

Furthermore, it took 3.45 seconds to load xe.com in Incognito, while google only took 1.1

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

#46

Post by oceanstone »

bduerst wrote: post #36
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…

>with seemingly no opt out (on the consumer or publisher side) I though AMP was opt-in for publishers? As in you have to write the front-end spec and pick a CDN to cache with.

Yep, it's opt in for publishers. For users, the only way to opt out currently is to view in desktop mode.

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

#47

Post by dageshi »

This will likely backfire in the long term. People writing content will shy away from writing articles on subjects or which answer questions that google will simply steal and display. Eventually the existing sources will become out of date and google will begin to serve inaccurate information.

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

#48

Post by bitL »

ergothus wrote: post #16
scott_s wrote: post #4

The presumption here, as I understand is, is that a zero-click search happened because Google used one of their inline apps to answer a question. (For example, if I search "population of new york city", I get a big and bold answer along with a graph that shows NYC's population over time, as well as LA and Chicago.) But I'm not convinced that's necessarily true. I frequently search for things to get a general idea of…

I've also had several fights with google over my refinements. If I search for 2 words, odds are stupidly high that most of the results will NOT include one of my two words. Thanks Google, for deciding I didn't really mean to type that. I follow up with added quotes, etc to enforce what I actually typed, so there will be a lot of Google-induced churn. Google has focused so highly on the peak that more and more searche…

DuckDuckGo is lately behaving the same way... Time to find another alternative I guess.

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

#49

Post by patrioticaction »

gscott wrote: post #17
encoderer wrote: post #12

There was a time you could build a meaningful business largely on SEO. (See: Yelp, Zillow). No longer.

Especially now that organic results often don't even show up without scrolling down. I miss the good old days when being the #1 search result meant something!

And also because they've slowly made sponsored results look like organic results to align better with their becoming evil OKRs: https://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-goog...

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

#50

Post by jasode »

puranjay wrote: post #29
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 understand your stand, but what Google did with its featured snippets is essentially a form of bait and switch. It encouraged entrepreneurs and creators to create content that could answer specific queries with the promise that Google will drive traffic to their sites. Now Google is using the same content and depriving them of the traffic. That's pretty scummy in my opinion.

>Now Google is using the same content and depriving them of the traffic.

I found some instructions[1] that says a website can opt out of Google's Featured Snippets with special HTML code:
Are there any cases of websites deliberately opting out of snippets and therefore seeing their referral links (and ad revenue) increase?

[1] https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/27/google-featured-sni...

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