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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

#71

Post by sixothree »

puranjay wrote: post #29
cletus wrote: post #15

So a common trope in the startup world is the difference between a feature and a company, the idea being that lots of features are masquerading as companies. This inevitably leads to them being shocked--SHOCKED--when some bigger player adds that feature, eating their lunch. I feel the same way about a lot of outbound sites on Google. There are a bunch of things I just don't want to go to another site for. Off the top…

I understand your stand, but what Google did with its featured snippets is essentially a form of bait and switch. It encouraged entrepreneurs and creators to create content that could answer specific queries with the promise that Google will drive traffic to their sites. Now Google is using the same content and depriving them of the traffic. That's pretty scummy in my opinion.

Also the data they are serving is often incorrect or outdated. I've grown accustom to not trusting these info boxes.

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

#72

Post by jwilliams »

cletus wrote: post #15

So a common trope in the startup world is the difference between a feature and a company, the idea being that lots of features are masquerading as companies. This inevitably leads to them being shocked--SHOCKED--when some bigger player adds that feature, eating their lunch. I feel the same way about a lot of outbound sites on Google. There are a bunch of things I just don't want to go to another site for. Off the top…

> Although this one I find infuriating because Google doesn't know how to correctly round off exchange rates

I generally search for "1000 USD in AUD" as a workaround.

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

#73

Post by iClaudiusX »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #2

This is the subtle truth that I've seen a few folks on Twitter talking about for the past year or so: That Google has slowly but steadily reduced both the outbound clicks to other websites, but also the portion of their revenue that's based on ads hosted by other websites, while bringing both the "results" and the ad placements in-house, where they no longer have to pay out a share to site owners. Whereas Google was…

The increasing sprawl of non-search widgets invading the search result page reminds me of the AOL years where "the web" was funneled through a narrow portal controlled by one entity.

Having to scroll down past ads, unrelated news, unrelated youtube videos, and ever more of these info boxes has pushed the actual content I'm looking for out to the second page. It's made it much easier to use ddg as default and use the !g flag only when absolutely necessary.

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

#74

Post by xyzzyz »

inetknght wrote: post #56
8ytecoder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example query - “Leonardo DiCaprio‘s net worth”. While previously this would have resulted in a click to the top website that put in the effort to compile this information, now google would highlight that exact sentence with the answer right there. The site loses a click through and any potential revenue.

> The site loses a click through and any potential revenue. I'm having trouble understanding how the site would have lost potential revenue. All the query wanted to know was the net worth of someone. I don't imagine anyone casual enough to use Google to answer that who would be willing to spend a lot of time trying to figure that out using an advertisement-laden "free" website. I don't imagine anyone professionally i…

I'm having trouble understanding how the site would have lost potential revenue.

They lost ad impressions.

I don't imagine anyone casual enough to use Google to answer that who would be willing to spend a lot of time trying to figure that out using an advertisement-laden "free" website.

Why not? It's not like that they had any other options than trying to extract that information from ad-laden websites. Most people read rather slowly, and by the time they either find out what they need or decide that they give up, lots of ad impressions have already had happened.

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

#75

Post by whatshisface »

cletus wrote: post #15

So a common trope in the startup world is the difference between a feature and a company, the idea being that lots of features are masquerading as companies. This inevitably leads to them being shocked--SHOCKED--when some bigger player adds that feature, eating their lunch. I feel the same way about a lot of outbound sites on Google. There are a bunch of things I just don't want to go to another site for. Off the top…

>the difference between a feature and a company

If the right investments were made, every software company's product could be a feature of Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft Windows could be a feature of Intel CPUs.

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

#76

Post by wongarsu »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #53
criddell wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of those things aren't really searches though, are they? I do queries like "2 tbsp in tsp" or "45 * 22" or "$25 CDN in USD" all the time and I don't think of them as a search. Same goes for my Echo. I ask it all the time for today's weather or what time the Texas Rangers are playing or who is the starting pitcher for the Giants tonight. None of that feels like a search.

Well, simple math isn't, but think about your currency conversion, your weather lookup, or your sports schedule. Where did Google get the data for those things? Does whoever provided that data have expenses, and did Google compensate them in any way for those expenses or did Google lift the data for free with GoogleBot?

A good comparison here is WolframAlpha, which can also answer all those queries (I was a bit surprised that the Texas Rangers example worked, but it does [1]). Most of their data comes from a curated list of primary sources, not Wikipedia or random websites.

1: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=texas+rangers+next+gam...

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

#77

Post by ocdtrekkie »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #70
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, simple math isn't, but think about your currency conversion, your weather lookup, or your sports schedule. Where did Google get the data for those things? Does whoever provided that data have expenses, and did Google compensate them in any way for those expenses or did Google lift the data for free with GoogleBot?

How did that site get the sports schedule? Did they just copy it from somewhere else?

And that's part of the question: If Google's getting all it's data from first party sources, say, scraping it from the team's website, it may not have harmed anyone there. But if it's scraping it from a site which aggregated and normalized the information into an easily parse-able format (hence, providing value, of which Google took advantage), then they must be compensated for it.

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

#78

Post by ignu »

bduerst wrote: post #36
cletus wrote: post #15

So a common trope in the startup world is the difference between a feature and a company, the idea being that lots of features are masquerading as companies. This inevitably leads to them being shocked--SHOCKED--when some bigger player adds that feature, eating their lunch. I feel the same way about a lot of outbound sites on Google. There are a bunch of things I just don't want to go to another site for. Off the top…

>with seemingly no opt out (on the consumer or publisher side) I though AMP was opt-in for publishers? As in you have to write the front-end spec and pick a CDN to cache with.

It's not really. Google will highly reward sites with AMP (even when you're not searching on mobile.)

So unless you can survive getting bumped off of the first page of results, not implementing AMP isn't optional.

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

#79

Post by skyyler »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #64
cletus wrote: post #15

So a common trope in the startup world is the difference between a feature and a company, the idea being that lots of features are masquerading as companies. This inevitably leads to them being shocked--SHOCKED--when some bigger player adds that feature, eating their lunch. I feel the same way about a lot of outbound sites on Google. There are a bunch of things I just don't want to go to another site for. Off the top…

Don't know about everything else, but Genius is unparalleled for lyrics to rap and hip hop. I honestly don't see Google having clout to get Zack Fox to do some commentary; Tidal and spotify pretty much cornered that.

Genius is a good resource for lyrics of all genres now. They used to be called RapGenius, if you remember :-)

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

#80

Post by treis »

bduerst wrote: post #36
cletus wrote: post #15

So a common trope in the startup world is the difference between a feature and a company, the idea being that lots of features are masquerading as companies. This inevitably leads to them being shocked--SHOCKED--when some bigger player adds that feature, eating their lunch. I feel the same way about a lot of outbound sites on Google. There are a bunch of things I just don't want to go to another site for. Off the top…

>with seemingly no opt out (on the consumer or publisher side) I though AMP was opt-in for publishers? As in you have to write the front-end spec and pick a CDN to cache with.

>I though AMP was opt-in for publishers?

It is but Google will only put you in the carousel at the top of the search if you use AMP. That's a significant enough driver of traffic where publishers can't afford to lose it.

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