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In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

sparktoro.com

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Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#51
post #13

This "panel" must be highly biased, right? Only Google itself knows the real answer to this question. The data in the article comes from 100 million people dumb enough to infect their devices with malware.

> Only Google itself knows the real answer to this question

This alone should be setting off alarm bells for everyone, the government should be raiding Google offices to find the necessary facts to answer these questions. Google operates as the de facto front page of the Internet, the default starting point for the vast majority of the public, and they're incredibly dodgy about the real facts about how they use that power.

It's incredible how often Google both states a "fact" that is extremely biased in their favor, and simultaneously suggest it's indisputable because only Google has data on it, and of course, Google will not share the data because it's confidential business information.

This stonewall is behind incredible lies like the idea that targeted advertising increases revenue by 50%, despite independent data finding the difference closer to 4%.

I think the issue at hand here, is that Google should be legally compelled to disclose the real answers to this question, and a lot of other questions about how their algorithms work.

> The data in the article comes from 100 million people dumb enough to infect their devices with malware

This is ironic, considering the Google Toolbar, headed by Sundar Pichai himself, is much of how Google got it's mass adaption as well as browsing data to improve their search rankings. Perhaps the difference between "malware" and "useful tool" is how successful the business behind it is. ;)

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#52

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

I'm really starting to prefer DuckDuckGo at this point. There was one time when I thought they would always live in Google's shadow, but in this brave new world of content censorship and commercialization-induced bias, I find that I get noticeably "better" results on the more neutral alternative.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#53
post #2

I would say that's about right for me. I Google things for information which I can glean from the search results more than looking for a website. Like what's the definition of a word or a quick calculation is easier than opening the calculator. There's even a metronome if you search metronome.

+1 to this. Weather, translations, timezones, quick math, sports scores (searching “nba” gives a much cleaner interface than going to nba.com), not to mention Wikipedia snippets. That easily covers >50% of my searches.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#56
post #28

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

My guess is that you're part of an unprofitable long tail. Why optimize for your use case when they can capture customers that bring more money with far less effort? I wager that most people don't perceive a decline in search results quality. At least not to an extent where they'd notice and switch to using Bing.

I'd be surprised if there was a long tail of customers. There is probably a long tail of searches for most customers.

Google giving up on difficult searches and focusing on showing promoted links, AMP sites, and "rich" result boxes is probably a sound business strategy too, and is unlikely to make users switch search engines this late in the game (Bing/DDG don't seem to do better anyway).

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#57
Google has become a really bad search engine for anything besides the most superficial information about a broad range of topics, especially ones that are commercial in nature (which it is extremely good at... go figure). I spent a while trying to find the name of a contemporary artist whose name I forgot by querying those key words along with various things about the thematic etc qualities of their work and all Google could tell me was about Claude Monet. Gave up and searched some of the same keywords on Twitter of all places and instantly found the artist I was looking for.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#59

If Google ever started including copy-pasteable code from Stack Overflow, I might never follow a link from Google again. Which I think says a lot about how Google is used now. I don't use Google to find web pages , I use it to find an answer to a pressing question. When I'm looking for something to read, I go to a content aggregator like HN or Reddit. Of course this isn't sustainable. If Google is just presenting oth…

I don’t know about Google, but I’ve gotten relevant Stack Overflow code snippets pretty regularly from DDG

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#60

It’s not all bad. I consider it a feature that Google usually pulls the right information from Wikipedia. It doesn’t harm Wikipedia, which is free anyway, but reduces their bandwidth load.

That's not strictly true. Wikipedia is crowed-sourced, and losing visitors means losing potential contributors.

You could probably make the case that someone who would rather read the snippet on Google isn't likely to contribute, but it likely has an effect on the margin.

And that's ignoring the donate banner they throw up there from time to time.

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