But if it's not an experiment, I'd start putting my energy into moving away from Google. In the AltaVista era, just before Google, there was a company called Real Names, which wanted to bypass intentional DNS and use searches as direct keywords to domains. Since many people use Google to go to everyday sites, just taking the top result each time, this is in effect what Google would be doing with this change, since one would have to actually go to the site to verify it. Which would be great for ad impressions, but terrible for the consumer experience, IMO way too random for Google to seriously consider it. The next step would be to remove URLs from browsers. But that would be quite a change in direction from good intentions.
Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
61–70 of 337 posts
Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
#62This is just another manifestation of the corporate/state control and Balkanisation of the Internet that has slowly been taking place. The Internet will pretty soon be entirely subsumed into various the structure of various countries and corporations and there'll be no such thing as the "free web", at least for most users not willing to go through several hoops.
Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
#63They also do open most links in their own google.com wrapper. Time to break them up
Which is extremely annoying when it’s a pdf or other document that’s set to immediately download; it’s rather tricky to get the actual URL if you want to share it as it won’t ever show up in the address bar.
Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
#64fu google.
Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
#65It's still regular for me but if true this will probably be the last straw for me. It's already absolutely impossible to send someone a link to a pdf you've found through google, this would make it impossible to send any link. That bloody wrapper is also a fine piece of shit. Search engines should link to content, not appropriate that content, hide who supplies it or mess with the links.
I ended up in their google maps product on mobile and was clicking around between their reviews, their location on google maps, the opinions of other google users about what they thought crate and barrel was good at, pictures of crate and barrel stores, etc...
But I could not find their websites URL... not in what I would consider a reasonable amount of time at least.
Obviously I found it in the end.
But I couldn't help but think that Google really doesn't want me even going to the actual URL.
They want me to call and drive to the store using their phone and their google maps product, and leave a review on their platform, growing their company's value for them.
Crate and barrel and my original intentions be damned.
Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
#66Google run hundreds of A/B tests. The chances of this ever being rolled more widely out are slim to none. Terribly misleading headline.
Also, to get some people to try alternatives, because even if this isn't deployed, Google's anti-user direction seems clear enough.
Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
#67They also do open most links in their own google.com wrapper. Time to break them up
Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
#68Re: Google are removing URLs entirely from search results?
#69Google run hundreds of A/B tests. The chances of this ever being rolled more widely out are slim to none. Terribly misleading headline.