Fewer Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

Post by t0ughcritic » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 5:41 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #326

judge2020 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the downfall of AOL was Google because Google had a better product. In order for google to fall, you need a product that's better (or more of what people want; you need to give them a reason to change their search engine).

... and that product will likely repeat the cycle again, on some schedule of another. Might be the 20+ years of Google, might be the few years that Medium was only modestly annoying, might instantly go to shit. The problem is the business model breeds for this, and we end up replacing one abusive monopoly with another, until we can break that cycle. For a time it seemed Free Software might ... free us ... from that,…

Post by t0ughcritic » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 6:05 AM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #161

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I want exchange rates I type xe.com in the address bar

For an increasing proportion of users, the "address bar" is now the "Google search" bar. You may have discovered xe.com when the distinction was much more obvious, but as time went on the browser UI underwent changes, that will change as well. New versions of Chromium will begin hiding the full URL entirely, probably so that more and more marketing/targeting related UTM parameters can be jammed in without the user ev…

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 7:19 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #202

michaelmrose wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html#data This doesn't provide any protection for the underlying facts.

No, but if Google imports a database then they are still affected by the compilation copyright. It's too obvious of a hack to "just" claim that "yeah, we imported that entire database, but then we cracked all the facts apart and they're all separate now and it's just as if we never imported the database". That's not how the law works. Even more interestingly, we've still never yet resolved the question of why Google…

Post by majani » Thu, Aug 15, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

charlesju wrote: post #225

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…

It's important to note that this is strategically incredibly important for Google because this forms the backbone of their voice AI. The better at answering questions directly, the better their voice AI becomes and that leads to a lot of future products.

Post by milesskorpen » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #440

milesskorpen wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 v…