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Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

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Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#71

Post by Cthulhu_ »

moneywoes wrote: post #47
crazygringo wrote: post #44

> ...zero-click results have cost Wikipedia’s English language subdomain tens of millions of organic visits. > ...Google was able to steal over 550 million clicks from Wikipedia in six months... "Cost"? "Steal"?! This would make sense if Wikipedia were ad-supported. But Google saves Wikipedia money by requiring less servers to support traffic. And Wikipedia is open content , you literally can't steal from it -- being…

Doesn't less page views also mean less donations?

Possible, but Google's also donating to Wikipedia itself: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/google-org-donates-2-milli...

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#72

Post by eitland »

gabbagandalf420 wrote: post #67
Swizec wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally love it when my search results just give me the answer I'm looking for, so I don't have to click through to Wikipedia (or any site) Except for the very frequent times when Google’s summarization engine conveys the opposite point than the text was making. I’ve had lots of cases where google reassures me that something is possible (like an iOS feature) because it takes a Yes from paragraph 2 and then pro…

Could you give an exact example?

I have one from yesterday where I tried to figure out if I could connect Files on my iOS to a webdav server.

According to Google that seemed possible.

While I don't use Google much more (except the last few days to figure out if the improved quality I've seen and heard about is true) I have enough experience from the last decade to not immediately believe them.

That said, their attempts at artificial intelligence can be funny sometimes: https://erik.itland.no/more-fun-with-google-mixing-images-fr...

So much for the filter bubble were you only get interesting and relevant but not thought provoking results ;-)

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#73

Post by lameiam »

why is this a bad thing? Often Wikipedia is responsible for publishing the info that google displays as the one zero-click result.

I just assumed that Wikipedia objectives include making all information easily available. So, by that measure, Wikipedia is succeeding or so it seems.

Wikipedia is not add driven and therefore how much traffic the site attracts really is secondary to meeting their knowledge sharing goals.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#74

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pydry wrote: post #34
tantalor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, as well as many other companies, has long relied on Wikipedia for its content. Now, Google and Google.org are giving back. Google.org President Jacquelline Fuller today announced a $2 million contribution to the Wikimedia Endowment. An additional $1.1 million donation went to the Wikimedia Foundation, courtesy of a campaign where Google employees decided where to direct Google’s donation dollars. https://tech…

I remember when Wikipedia used to warn against donations from Google and the like and running ads because even if it didn't undermine their independence it would at the very least undermine the perception of their independence. Looks like they're ok with it now though. I suspect it won't be too long before they get used to this largesse and won't want to do anything that might jeapoardize it.

The difference is that google's donation is a no-strings-attached donation, whereas if they were running ads, Google could decide to hold their payout or serve hostile and invasive ads. Running ads on that scale equals leverage.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#75

Post by troughway »

nend wrote: post #68
crazygringo wrote: post #44

> ...zero-click results have cost Wikipedia’s English language subdomain tens of millions of organic visits. > ...Google was able to steal over 550 million clicks from Wikipedia in six months... "Cost"? "Steal"?! This would make sense if Wikipedia were ad-supported. But Google saves Wikipedia money by requiring less servers to support traffic. And Wikipedia is open content , you literally can't steal from it -- being…

As the article points out, the problem isn't specifically that this harms Wikipedia, it's that this practice harms pretty much every for profit business that Google does this to. Pretty much every company in an established space that Google has entered, is losing traffic and thus revenue due to this practice: Yelp, any flight/hotel/tourism based company, video hosting sites, weather data sites, the list goes on and o…

>Yelp

You had me feeling bad until I came across this.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#76

Post by the_duke »

crazygringo wrote: post #44

> ...zero-click results have cost Wikipedia’s English language subdomain tens of millions of organic visits. > ...Google was able to steal over 550 million clicks from Wikipedia in six months... "Cost"? "Steal"?! This would make sense if Wikipedia were ad-supported. But Google saves Wikipedia money by requiring less servers to support traffic. And Wikipedia is open content , you literally can't steal from it -- being…

I personally don't like the short Wikipedia excerpts.

I almost always want more information, and Google tries to make the Wikipedia link as unintuitive as possible in order to keep the user on Google property.

What's more, showing the info box means that the real article link is removed from the results list.

Edit: to clarify, I do find the blue Wikipedia link decidedly small and I often have to actively look for it instead of it being an intuitive click and clear on first sight, especially on mobile.

WRT to the results, they do indeed seem to appear now, but often not in the first or second position. (I do remember that not being the case previously, but I admittedly might be mistaken)

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#77

Post by thayne »

marcinzm wrote: post #62
ysavir wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when fewer and fewer people are exposed to the donation banners/buttons on Wikipedia because they stop at the Google results page, how will Wikipedia keep running? It might be a non-profit, but donation banners _are_ ads, and denying Wikipedia its page views denies them donations in the same way it would deny other sites ad revenue.

Wikimedia Foundation mission is: >The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. The mission is NOT "get as much donation money as possible" and donations should exist to support the mission not vice-versa. Google seems to be helping in thei…

> Google seems to be helping in their mission of disseminating information

except for when google takes something out of context, or combines two unrelated paragraphs to convey the wrong information.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#78

Post by ciarannolan »

nwienert wrote: post #59

Have any HNers used google without ad blocking lately? It’s sort of insane. Even with it, I have just a huge variety of workaround I use to find anything remotely valuable. Usually adding reddit, wiki, HN, SO, examine, and all sort of other specificity filters. If you’re shopping, looking at health issues, comparing things, it’s worthless. If you’re looking for anything scientific it’s worse than worthless, it often…

Google results lately are absolute garbage without an ad blocker, and just regular garbage with one.

With no ad blocker, for any query I run, ads fill the whole screen when I search. I have to scroll down to see the first normal result.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#79

Post by mthoms »

rodw wrote: post #45
rodw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that it disappears (rolls off the top of the screen) when you scroll down, and reappears when you scroll up. There's little or no "inertia" in that behavior though, so depending on your mousewheel/track-pad/touch scroll behavior that can seem kinda flaky. A tiny scroll-up action brings the sticky header back. I have noticed other sites that do that can be really annoying on mobile, but on a MacOS laptop at l…

UPDATE: Playing with it a little more I do think it is a little flakier than that. There's something weird about the marquee image that makes the header re-appear for reasons I don't understand. If you use the arrow keys for scrolling (so there's no chance of an accidental "bounce" when you stop moving your fingers) the behavior is a little more obvious and consistent, but you can see that when scrolling from the top…

Yes, I found the page nearly unbearable and I normally like HackerNoon. This must be a relatively new bug.

Re: Wikipedia Lost 3B Organic Search Visits to Google in 2019

#80

Post by xxs »

Monory wrote: post #2

Shouldn't Wikimedia Foundation be grateful for that? Their goal is met — people learn stuff even faster, and also they incur less server costs, because Google eats them. For a site without ad revenue, it looks like a total win-win for them!

They are less likely to contribute, explore more, or check the veracity of the info. Google routinely shows disputed info in their short excerpts.

Personally I dislike the attempt to scrape and show results of their original sites.

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