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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

#431

Post by jamesmccann »

Ruthalas wrote: post #406
prawn wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stick with Google but increasingly try to tweak my searches to hit forums. They're just that much less likely to be made-for-AdSense content by a copywriter paraphrasing other information from the web.

Do you have any tips for this sort of search tailoring? It's something I try for, but I've yet to find any particularly good keywords to leverage.

Usually I add "reddit" to the search phrase and try to find threads / user-generated and hopefully more organic content this way.

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

#432

Post by icemelt8 »

eof wrote: post #314
bogwog wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This world we live in is terrifying.

The world our ancestors lived in was too. We traded one hell for another.

Its just data collection not hell. Hell means survival problems, no food or water or war.

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

#433

Post by Traubenfuchs »

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 would expect the target groups "allows Avast bloatware on his computer" and "uses DuckDuck Go" are completely disjunct. Makes me wonder how valuable their data really is.

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

#434

Post by dragonwriter »

sli wrote: post #109
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…

On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct. They can be (and almost certainly are) gamed. Users that don't click through open themselves up to carrying on being misinformed.

> On top of all that, Google's snippets aren't curated and therefore, aren't always correct.

The “therefore” is misplaced; curated snippets aren't always correct, either.

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

#435

Post by pyrale »

njharman wrote: post #380
zymhan wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Laws everywhere are pretty much saying your take is wrong. There is no such thing as an implicit contract, and your take on it is plain victim blaming.

It is very surprising to read this on a board where many people write code: if a dev found unlicensed code, they would certainly not think it is public domain.

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

#436

Post by dragonwriter »

buboard wrote: post #204
concert-gilled wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The websites that the results aren't curated either. Clicking through to the site could provide the same incorrect information.

sometimes the blurb just has an answer to a different question. Websites are curated, unless its spam.

> Websites are curated, unless its spam.

Yes, but even when they are curated the curators are usually unreliable and sometimes malicious.

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

#437

Post by dragonwriter »

antonvs wrote: post #376
dragonwriter wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Google (and virtually every other search engine) has always included content with links, what's different now (but not unique to Google, though they are perhaps the most advanced at it) is that now it algorithmically synthesizes content instead of merely aggregating it.

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

#438

Post by computator »

drivebycomment wrote: post #400
glangdale wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unl…

I had no idea what Yices is. So I Googled it - the first link is SRI's Yices SMT solver. I tried "yices alarm" "yices signals" "yices timeout", and all of them showed only links related to Yices in the first result page (various manual pages, types, etc). So my attempt at reproducing your experience has failed.

The top Google hit for "yices alarm" is currently the exact Hacker News comment you've replied to. I wonder if Google adapted its search results based on that very comment? Maybe their algorithms shrewdly give more weight to fixing search results when the context mentions Google ("I googled for...", "Google didn't work when...", etc.) and the site is high profile (like HN). That would be very crafty.

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

#439

Post by lordgrenville »

Any DDG users notice how it does the same thing with the top StackOverflow answer? From the user's perspective it's fantastic, but I assume it's legally at least a grey area. Considering how aggressively SO is monetising now they'll probably come after them before long. (Of course, DDG's userbase is pretty small, but probably a not insignificant share of developers.)

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

#440

Post by Silhouette »

milesskorpen wrote: post #312
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.

It's a faustian bargin. Google is so powerful you can't do without them, but they're also inexorably eating your future.

Google is so powerful you can't do without them

I wonder how true that assumption really is any more. The quality of traffic Google drives to sites I operate is very low compared to all other major sources, with much less engagement by any metric you like, notably including conversions. The only reliable exception is when we're running marketing campaigns in other places, which often result in spikes in both direct visitors landing on our homepage and search engine visitors arriving at our general landing pages.

There is this conventional wisdom that SEO, and in particular playing by Google's rules to rank highly in its results pages, is the only way you can run a viable commercial site these days. Our experience has been exactly the opposite: our SEO is actually quite effective, in that we do rank very highly for many relevant search terms, but it makes a relatively small contribution to anything that matters. And really, when I write "SEO" here, I'm only talking about general good practices like being fast, having a good information architecture and working well on different devices. We don't change the structure of our pages just because Google's latest blog post says X or Y is now considered a "best practice" or anything like that.

Of course I have no way to know how representative our experience is. YMMV.

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