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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

#511

Post by [deleted] »

tylerl wrote: post #488
areyousure wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that requires that Googlebot be allowed to crawl the page in robots.txt in the first place. How do you tell Googlebot to not crawl your site and to not index it either? Previously, one could use the undocumented "Noindex" directive in robots.txt, but this will be disabled soon: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/07/a-note-on-unsuppor...

The bot doesn't need to crawl your site for it to be indexed; it crawls other sites that link to yours. You can specify your index preferences in Webmaster Tools. Don't know if there's a domain-wide off switch in there, but there probably is.

[deleted]

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

#512

Post by dplgk »

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…

Why is this is not copyright infringement?

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

#513

Post by jodrellblank »

cortesoft wrote: post #310
jodrellblank wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be nice, wouldn't it? Maybe they wouldn't be allowed to buy two, because in "a perfect world", a place to live is a necessity, not a profit vector. Keeping housing supply limited to boost house prices, to appeal to house-owning voters and wealthy landlords, to extract six figures of money from normal people over decades, is nothing like "perfect".

Some houses are still going to be more desirable than others... how do we determine who gets which?

This sounds a lot more like inviting a trolling argument than any kind of genuine inquiry.

Here I say "landlord epxloitation, profiteering from necessities, houses left unlived in as investment vehicles for the international super rich, NIMBYism and entrenched residents voting against housing stock, AirBNB, broken zoning incentives" and then you say "FREE MARKET it's rich people's right to buy up everything and if you disagree you're dumb, free market is best market". And then we disagree to agree and both leave unhappy. Is that an approximately good summary?

We don't need to determine who gets which for this comment chain, we only need to question whether a 30 year mortgage should be the default way for a normal person to keep the rain off their bed, someone who isn't thinking of a beach condo in Malibu or a NYC penthouse, whether that is the best possible "perfect" world. I think it isn't.

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

#514

Post by bartimus »

tremon wrote: post #475
bartimus wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still on the fence somewhat. Searching for "best car engine oil" has certain brands displayed straight on the featured snippet. Who cares about the click if Google found your customer for you and got your message through for free?

In the end, Google should care. If a search for "best car engine oil" got your product featured, that means you won a sale. But assuming the sale happens completely offline, Google lost its opportunity to inform you of the search, and of the succesful search->sale conversion. That means your marketing department can no longer justify investing money in Google SEO, which means less optimization towards Google's crawle…

Increased profits from unknown sources VS decreased profits from known sources. The gained marketing intelligence may come at the cost of the bottom line.

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

#515

Post by SahAssar »

tylerl wrote: post #488
areyousure wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that requires that Googlebot be allowed to crawl the page in robots.txt in the first place. How do you tell Googlebot to not crawl your site and to not index it either? Previously, one could use the undocumented "Noindex" directive in robots.txt, but this will be disabled soon: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/07/a-note-on-unsuppor...

The bot doesn't need to crawl your site for it to be indexed; it crawls other sites that link to yours. You can specify your index preferences in Webmaster Tools. Don't know if there's a domain-wide off switch in there, but there probably is.

Using Webmaster Tools is not a good option since it requires you register with the exact company you are probably trying to not interact with.

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

#516

Post by SahAssar »

dorgo wrote: post #425
SahAssar wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>"more what you call guidelines, than actual rules" they can index without scraping. It is enough that other websites have links to you site. So the google bot follows the rules in robots.txt to the letter. "no-index" is the way to stay away from google.

They can't read my no-index if they obey my robots.txt. Do they break the robots.txt to be able to read my no-index or do they assume my "Disallow: /" means I'm fine with them indexing/linking?

Without the noindex part of robots.txt (which google decided to ignore not so long ago) this is not solvable.

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

#517

Post by palunon »

weinzierl wrote: post #59

What does "Zero-Click Searches" mean exactly? I know that when I search for "1 pound in eur" Google will tell me the answer right away, but these kind of searches can't possible account for 50%. What else am I missing?

I've seen people use Google as a calculator... If you start using it like that, you can make a lot of "searches" very quickly...

Add in conversions, zip codes, song lyrics, etc, and I guess you start having a good percentage of searches...

Also, do Google image search where you click on an image and don't go through to the actual site count ?

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

#518

Post by lern_too_spel »

bduerst wrote: post #508
lern_too_spel wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pick a CDN to cache with. Every link aggregator that indexes your AMP page will cache it, including Bing and Baidu. That's what makes safe prerendering possible.

I was referring to the registered CDNs so you could get the icon in search results.

That's what I was referring to as well. They cache your page automatically to enable safe prerendering. Here's how they work: https://medium.com/@pbakaus/why-amp-caches-exist-cd7938da245...

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

#519

Post by mips_avatar »

acheofgrass wrote: post #510
mips_avatar wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t trust the avast data. According to Microsoft bing has 9% market share. While avast data shows it as 1.4%. https://mobile.twitter.com/MSFTAdvertising/status/8982080475...

You trust Microsoft's number here? 33% market share in the US? I

I trust Microsoft and avast to not lie about facts as they can get in big trouble for that. Rather I don’t believe this data from avast is indicative of the market broadly.
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