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How Google is Killing Organic Search

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Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#81

Post by Alex3917 »

AJ007 wrote: post #70
jcampbell1 wrote: post #22

The auction model for ads basically ruins internet searches in transactional categories. If you want to win at the "italian restaurant" search game, you have to bid the highest for the ad, which means you must have the highest margin. The best way to win is to open a restaurant with ridiculously high margins (over priced wine and cheap ingredients). Want the "cheapest car insurance"? Google is zero help. It sends you…

I am happy to see other people finally pointing this one out. I will refine your hypothesis a little. a) It isn't companies with the highest margin who win, but the ones which are able and willing to devote the greatest percentage of revenue to performance driven advertising. If the company has a slim margin to begin with, they will never even be able to start in the "race." b) Education is a better example than car…

"many [for-profit colleges] spend more on acquiring a single enrollment than on educating them."

According to the DoE, 4-year for-profit colleges spend 2.9x more on administrative expenses (albeit including student services and academic support) than instruction. Unfortunately I can't find a better breakdown of this category, but I'd assume this is mostly leadgen.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#82

Post by md224 »

RivieraKid wrote: post #74
md224 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this topic recently, so it's nice to see a discussion on HN. AdWords ad placement is determined by a mix of quality score and bid size. It's good that they're using quality of links to influence ad ranking, but here's what troubles me: We're allowing money to influence information salience. You could say this is how the world works, and I can't deny it. Money = power = eyeballs…

I've been thinking about this too. IMHO, the only reason to advertise that is beneficial for both the consumer and the advertiser, is to provide information. Ie.: our product is objectively better than the competition for certain consumers, but the problem is, they don't know about us. So we create a ad campaign, that will be beneficial for both the consumers and our company.

The goal of connecting people with value-providing businesses is a noble one, but the problem is the difficulty in using advertisements as reliable indicators of a product's merit. Economists have written about the prominence of advertisements as signaling mechanisms, but the bottom line is that I would rather rely on customer reviews than ad placement when it comes to determining if I want to buy a product.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#83

Post by s3r3nity »

saalweachter wrote: post #17

Nit: this article is really criticizing a UI change which makes local results more prominent (in that they take over the entire page). The local results at the top of the page when you search for "Italian restaurants" are all still organic. In fact, whenever there's a map on the right-and side of the page, it's displacing ads. Now, you can be against Google ever making a UI change, or even against Google showing diff…

In the search market, ANYTHING related to UI impacts clicks and views -- ever since it was repeatedly shown in study after study that after the top 2 results in the SERP click rates drop drastically.

It's not that organic search results are changing, but their VIEWABILITY, and therefore relative importance, is drastically altered

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#84

Post by thecoffman »

ActVen wrote: post #65
michaelhoffman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USAA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA#Returning_profits_to_the_i... ), although most people aren't eligible ( https://www.usaa.com/inet/pages/pub_eligibility_task_entry ).

This is hands down the best company with which I have ever done business. Their technology is amazingly far ahead of others in the banking and insurance space. I was taking a photo of a check with my smartphone to deposit it years before it became mainstream. It is a great example of how constraints build value. By constraints I mean, they have had to deal with military customers stationed in far flung places for yea…

I will second pretty much everything you just said. I have renter's and auto insurance, checking, savings and a credit card all through USAA and they are fantastic. Many banks are just beginning to catch up with their technology and none can match their customer service.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#85

Post by estel »

goostavos wrote: post #18
oceanstone wrote: post #8

There is a way to increase the percentage of organic search results on a Google page, with relative ease. Just scroll down.

I mean, really, what is the article complaining about here? The most often clicked on organic search results appear above the fold. If you need more, scroll down a bit. Maybe I'm the minority, but if what I'm looking for isn't one of the first few results, I modify my query. Google is showing the stuff that makes it money, and the organic stuff we're most likely to need. And at the end of the day, what we're talking…

Indeed, I wasn't really aware that the "fold" was really much of an issue any more with modern web design. Users expect to, and do, scroll down; it's no big deal :/

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#86

Post by webjprgm »

austenallred wrote: post #52
nowarninglabel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your hypothesis is quite far off. Can you give an example of an auto insurance company that is a non-profit? I couldn't find any. Perhaps you mean a mutual insurance company? Furthermore, when I bought car insurance last month, Geico gave me the most coverage for the least amount of money (after quite a bit of research), so I also don't agree with your assertation that Google is no help in that regard. While…

As someone who sells car insurance leads for a living, this is an interesting discussion. First, Geicko isn't ranked number 1, affiliates who mask themselves as Geicko are. In high rewards markets like insurance (where 30% of the overall price of insurance goes to affiliates) it's actually about which affiliates convert the best and have the best payout. Those SERPs are dominated by black hat SEO. None of that is org…

Could Google Analytics data be used as "something other than links"? They can track traffic, bounce rates, how long people stay, how often the same people return. Would that provide a better indicator of quality pages? It would only apply to sites that opt-in by using Google Analytics, but if it made them rank higher than everyone would do it. (How many don't already?)

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#87

Post by estel »

Eclyps wrote: post #3

For some reason I was surprised to see bing's results even more cluttered and useless... http://i.imgur.com/kuRTMhO.png You would think that bing would be trying to win the popularity contest by actually providing more relevant searches in the short term and then expanding ads in the future...

I'm not sure why Google's results might be said to be /useless/? There's definitely an interesting argument to be made about Google using a monopolistic position in search to cross-promote some of their other products (local, ads, maps), but the OP's examples seem to show results that quite likely exactly what the user would have been searching for.

I guess what I'm saying is that pure organic search isn't necessarily the optimal way for a user to find the information they're looking for.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#88

Post by RivieraKid »

md224 wrote: post #82
RivieraKid wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this too. IMHO, the only reason to advertise that is beneficial for both the consumer and the advertiser, is to provide information. Ie.: our product is objectively better than the competition for certain consumers, but the problem is, they don't know about us. So we create a ad campaign, that will be beneficial for both the consumers and our company.

The goal of connecting people with value-providing businesses is a noble one, but the problem is the difficulty in using advertisements as reliable indicators of a product's merit. Economists have written about the prominence of advertisements as signaling mechanisms, but the bottom line is that I would rather rely on customer reviews than ad placement when it comes to determining if I want to buy a product.

I absolutely agree, most of the time ads don't help consumers make better market decisions.

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#89

Post by yaddayadda »

api wrote: post #54
GuiA wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In light of "designy" things like this, and other "ideological" things that have transpired in the past few weeks, I've been forcing myself to use DuckDuckGo. It's been about a month now, and I find the results terrible . I want to love it, but the first 10 results are pretty much never what I want. Sadly, Google still performs better on this front for me. If anyone has tips to make it better, I'd be very happy to he…

I've found DDG to be better at finding obscure content, and the Goog to be better at finding what I call "canonical" content. For example, if I search for "binary tree" I probably want Wikipedia followed maybe by StackExchange. Google does that, while DDG sends me deep into the netherworld.

One awesome thing about DDG is their !bang searches. It won't automate an unknown search, but if you know the first thing you're going to want is the Wikipedia entry you just search ["binary tree" !w]; for related StackExchange questions ["binary tree" !so]; you can even do a straight goggle search ["binary tree" !g]. For the available !bangs check out - https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

Re: How Google is Killing Organic Search

#90

Post by zalew »

hnriot wrote: post #76
zalew wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mine is even worse, because google apparently has trouble with me not being in the USA http://i.imgur.com/sQ5lue3.png

What did you expect it to show you? It seems like a decent result to me. Possibly google doesn't know any sushi restaurants near you in Warsaw.

pointless zip-code form.
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