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Every Google result now looks like an ad

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Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#421

Post by etcher »

Waterluvian wrote: post #336
Guest0918231 wrote: post #252

It's funny, because if you run AdSense on your website, Google has very strict guidelines about not misleading users and making a clear distinction between advertisements and your content. However, when Google shows ads on their site, they don't need to follow those rules, they blend them in as closely as possible. Also, what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? See the belo…

Maybe people who can block that ad wouldn't get any result for Expedia, which would upset Expedia a lot.

Google could keep the search result and just hide the ad.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#422

Post by searcher1 »

markosaric wrote: post #230

Many don't like Google's new design. Rather than resort to hacks, try an alternative search engine. There are many and you might even find one you like. https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.ecosia.org/ https://duckduckgo.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ https://swisscows.ch/ ...

Qwant, Ecosia, and (to an extent) DDG share the same Bing backend for web results, so if you're particularly interested in trying out alternatives, here are some others. All of these have their own search indexes.

https://yippy.com - ugly, but probably the best independent search engine outside the "big ones" and DDG

https://private.sh/ - Run by PIA as a proxy for Gigablast, small index but rapidly getting better

https://mojeek.com - UK-based, worth trying but has a spam problem

https://beta.cliqz.com - German based, their technical blog has been posted frequently on HN. Will eventually require a browser extension or their own browser to search.

https://yandex.com - Ought to be mentioned, but certainly not privacy focused.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#423

Post by aendruk »

jpindar wrote: post #354
beefield wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I am amazed that no search engine gives me easy way to blacklist domains from my results. That would make the usefulness of any of them to increase by orders of magnitude. (and if they are careful, they might be even able to use the blacklisted data to adjust their general results , not only my personal results as well) And…

Google used to have that, but of course they stopped it. There are browser addons that have he same effect though.

Reference for the curious: https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/issues/674

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#424

Post by pbhjpbhj »

neodymiumphish wrote: post #335
MadWombat wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it is not so much result quality as integration. Currently, with Google no matter what I am searching for, I just type it into my location bar and hit enter. Whether I am looking for a new bar to check out on a Friday night or what does a specific compile error mean in Haskell. So in the first case, I will get a map with bars around me and in the second case I will get a link to stackoverflow. With DDG these be…

Feels like a perfect opportunity for you to try out search engine keywords. On Chrome, it's under Search Engine > Manage Search Engines. This allows you to type (keyword) -tab- (query). For example, my work computer (on which I can only use Chrome or Edge) is force-defaulted to Google, but I have Bing set to keyword "b" and DDG keyworded to "d", so I just type: b(tab) Whatever I want to search for and it goes to Bing…

It's very easy to add new engines to, just take the query URL from any site, pop in %s in place of the query, choose a keyword (same on FF).

I have about 50 keywords.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#425

Post by hokkos »

mthoms wrote: post #166
bazonker wrote: post #5

Not sure about the facts underlying the analysis. In my search results (and it's important to remember that it's possible you get different results than another user, due to launch experiments and trials) the ads do not have icons. They say "Ad" in bold text. The "organics" results have icons.

But notice how the "Ad" text is specifically formatted (and placed) to resemble a favicon? They're blatantly trying to make the ads and organic results appear uniform to someone quickly scanning the page. As a user, I want the ads more easily distinguishable, not less.

Fortunately in french "Annonce" is longer than "Ad" and doesn't look like a favicon ! Maybe they will change it to "Pub".

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#426

Post by NeedMoreTea »

shawnz wrote: post #380
phillc73 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest beef with DDG is that they do not do worldwide results very well. Their results are overwhelmingly US centric. As an example.... I search on DDG, "buy cricket equipment near me". I am not behind a VPN and whatsmyip correctly identifies my hostname with the correct European country suffix. However, the top results on DDG for this query is "Dick's Sporting Goods". Click on that and I get a nasty "GDPR DSG So…

There is a box at the top of the results page which you can tick to get country specific results

Yeah, but it's just not very good. Set the UK tick box and it will still throw a lot of US results into the mix. Adding "UK" and "manchester" or whatever in the search does a much better job than DDG's country specific tick box. Of course even that isn't great as it'll often give a business in manchester NH, pop 100k over the city of 3m just down the motorway. Even with keywords and DDG's tick box set.

It's a minor annoyance that I've got used to, and hasn't persuaded me to go back to Google (I've used DDG as first choice for probably a little over 5 years now).

If DDG can't deliver the goods, !b (bing) is second choice, !mill (Million Short) probably third, then as appropriate, a mix of !azuk (amazon UK), !w, !ox (oxford dictionary) and a mix of others including !g as last resort. !g is so rarely better or helpful that I wonder why I still sometimes bother.

Edit: I think the real problem is with ICANN. .com should have been kept for global or multinational sites, and the USA used .co.us and .us generally for sites of national interest, as France uses .fr, Germany .de and UK .uk etc.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#427

Post by pbhjpbhj »

freehunter wrote: post #384
KingFelix wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noticed that when trying to find the most recent solution Google shows me an answer that is 10 years old. ex. Adobe updates come faster than I can update, so I run into issues, so finding the most recent answer is what I am looking for and not a similar issue from Adobe pre CC.

I find that a lot too. Trying to search for anything Rails related always shows Rails 3/4 results before Rails 5/6. If Google really knew that much about me, they should notice I always end my searching by clicking on a Rails 5/6 result (because those are the versions I use) and every time I land on a Rails 3 or 4 result I almost always click back and try again. Same with Python when I get 2.x results, with all their…

You click back.

That means you see a second helping of ads.

You still use Google.

From their perspective this is probably working perfectly.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#428

Post by undefined1 »

Guest0918231 wrote: post #252

It's funny, because if you run AdSense on your website, Google has very strict guidelines about not misleading users and making a clear distinction between advertisements and your content. However, when Google shows ads on their site, they don't need to follow those rules, they blend them in as closely as possible. Also, what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? See the belo…

The url they're using for the ad is interesting:

www.expedia.com/Expedia/Official_Site

To me (which may well be a minority view) that actually makes it feel less official, because "/Expedia/Official_Site" is the sort of tactic a scammer would use.

I'd worry about it having the unintended consequence of building people's trust in something like "/Official_Site" vs focusing on the domain name. At the very least it's muddying the waters in this respect.

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#429

Post by LoSboccacc »

gpvos wrote: post #400
LoSboccacc wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the very beginning it was intended that users would follow links, not type in URLs. so, about that 4.6 Locators are human transcribable. Users can copy Internet locators from one medium to another (such as voice to paper, or paper to keyboard) without loss or corruption of information. This process is not required to be comfortable. you can't copy a page title into a client and expect it to find the right reso…

> you can't copy a page title into a client and expect it to find the right resource, now, do you? You can type it into Google, though...

mhm https://i.imgur.com/maJi47G.png

Re: Every Google result now looks like an ad

#430

Post by a5aAqU »

Yesterday, I created a quick browser extension to put URLs back in the search results, and Google rejected it as "spam".

    > Your item did not comply with the following section of our Program Policies:
    >
    > "Spam and Placement in the Store"
There is no spam. It's just a few small JavaScript functions that put the URLs under each search result.

Clearly not spam:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-engine...

https://github.com/codeselfstudy/search_engine_show_me_urls

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