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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

#411

Post by arcturus17 »

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…

> Google has a policy against scraping their results, but their whole business model is predicated off scraping other sites and making money off the content

Yea a couple days ago I was checking the Places API, which they’ve built off user-generated content and scraping Yelp and others. They charge $17 / 1000 calls for certain items and don’t you dare cache anything for too long.

Great way to build a business: get data for free, wall it off and put a hefty price tag on it, then put your best lawyers around the moat for good measure!

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

#412

Post by quickthrower2 »

tommoor wrote: post #122

My main takeaway from this was where the hell are they getting that data? A little digging… apparently if you install Avast antivirus they're tracking all of this and selling /providing to Jumpshot - wow. > Baker said Jumpshot’s data comes from 100 million devices worldwide, whose users have downloaded free security software from partner Avast. The devices include smartphones, laptops and tablets. https://marketingla…

I'm sticking with my "don't install antivirus" policy. My exception is Malwarebytes which I don't consider a regular AV.

Even my fave from 10 years ago AVG seems user hostile (try turning it off, it's not easy!). I'd hate to see what the other's are doing.

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

#413

Post by wutbrodo »

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…

> Micro data only serves Google. Not my clients. Not my sites. Just Google.

Well it also serves Google's users, to be clear. Though I should also be clear that I don't think that justifies it, since I think it's bad for the ecosystem in more subtle ways than are expressed in immediate user satisfaction.

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

#414

Post by didibus »

eitland wrote: post #399
njharman wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Nah. Take it easy here, there is a long way between indexing and showing the most relevant hit and outright lifting big parts out of the site and use them on their own property: It is more like if the guide that used to send visitors to your property has set up their own boot on the best spot on the sidewalk next to you and are raking in money because of the useless (often, in the last few years) ads they have plaste…

I think of it more as if you put a banner with content somewhere in the public, and I take a photo of it, what can I later do with that photo?

And for that, it's a question of copyright. It turns out, in the US, if something is publicly available it does not make the copyright a part of the public domain. Thus the original author still retains copyright unless explicitly stated otherwise.

There is an exception to this though, which is called fair use. And for that, I'd recommend reading this: https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/411058/ Book snippets by Google searched were deemed fair use.

So the question remains, would website snippet similarly count as fair use? What will the federal courts rule be? And when it comes to fair use, that's the only way to know if it is or not.

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

#415

Post by doh »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #412
tommoor wrote: post #122

My main takeaway from this was where the hell are they getting that data? A little digging… apparently if you install Avast antivirus they're tracking all of this and selling /providing to Jumpshot - wow. > Baker said Jumpshot’s data comes from 100 million devices worldwide, whose users have downloaded free security software from partner Avast. The devices include smartphones, laptops and tablets. https://marketingla…

I'm sticking with my "don't install antivirus" policy. My exception is Malwarebytes which I don't consider a regular AV. Even my fave from 10 years ago AVG seems user hostile (try turning it off, it's not easy!). I'd hate to see what the other's are doing.

Avast acquired AVG back in 2016. So yes, all that data ends up in the same company.

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

#416

Post by cannedslime »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #335
cannedslime wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of an impossible to implement link tax, how about we just made it illegal for search engines to provide these kinds of "pirate" snippets without an opt-in... Either show meta desc, or don't show it at all. Adjust results by relevancy and pagerank (as they used to do) and everyone is happy.

There's nothing impossible to implement about it, but the marketing from the opposition has been really strong. It isn't even a link tax, for example, but it's detractors have pretty successfully rebranded it.

No you are right, its going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience! I give you that link tax is misleading its more like a snippet tax, right?

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

#417

Post by pyrale »

throwawayjava wrote: post #359
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…

It does help your clients. I mean, maybe not yours specifically. But snippets are great for users in the typical case.

These users are no longer his clients.

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

#419

Post by epiphanitus »

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…

Speaking of scraping, does anyone know where one can get a hold of full text news articles/press releases for nlp research? Most APIs that I have found only offer partial texts.

I know that Aylien has an API for this but it's out of my price range.

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

#420

Post by SahAssar »

jefftk wrote: post #366
henryfjordan wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got one of those emails for the first time about my personal site that's basically my resume. Apparently my text is small on mobile (it's not...) and some other crap I don't get why google thinks it's acceptable to critique my site without prompting. It honestly just feels rude. They want me to do a whole bunch of micro-optimizations on a site that already works fine because it doesn't fit their standard of "h…

I was curious what it was complaining about, since https://henryfjordan.com looks great to me. I tried to run it through Google's "Mobile Friendly Test" but fetching failed [1] because your robots.txt has: User-agent: * Disallow: / This would explain why you've gotten zero clicks from Google (or I would guess anyone else's) search results! On the other hand, it's surprising that you would get a notification if you ha…

Google seems to see robots.txt as "more what you call guidelines, than actual rules". Sites that block googlebot or all bots with robots.txt still turn up in google searches, just without a description, and are obviously still indexed.
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