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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

#91

Post by C1sc0cat »

jasode wrote: post #50
puranjay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Now Google is using the same content and depriving them of the traffic. I found some instructions[1] that says a website can opt out of Google's Featured Snippets with special HTML code: Are there any cases of websites deliberately opting out of snippets and therefore seeing their referral links (and ad revenue) increase? [1] https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/27/google-featured-sni...

Thus allowing your competitor to take your place

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

#92

Post by throwaway2048 »

jasode wrote: post #50
puranjay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Now Google is using the same content and depriving them of the traffic. I found some instructions[1] that says a website can opt out of Google's Featured Snippets with special HTML code: Are there any cases of websites deliberately opting out of snippets and therefore seeing their referral links (and ad revenue) increase? [1] https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/27/google-featured-sni...

wanna take bets google then deranks you heavily?

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

#94

Post by pwinnski »

jasode wrote: post #50
puranjay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Now Google is using the same content and depriving them of the traffic. I found some instructions[1] that says a website can opt out of Google's Featured Snippets with special HTML code: Are there any cases of websites deliberately opting out of snippets and therefore seeing their referral links (and ad revenue) increase? [1] https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/27/google-featured-sni...

It's hard for me to shake the vague feeling that this feels like someone setting up on the sidewalk in front of your property and saying hey, you could have done X, Y, or Z, to stop me from being here. And you say, I did do X. And they say, oh, X was two years ago. Y was last year. Now you have to do Z. Until next year when it'll be AA. And weirdly, AA is the exact opposite of X, because what you thought would take care of things two years ago now penalizes you.

It's not a perfect analogy, because obviously people still hope for referrals from Google. But this idea that because something is published somewhere, it's okay, reminds me of Arthur Dent finding out that the notification about demolishing his house was in the third-subbasement of a local government building in a file cabinet marked "Beware of the Leopard." From rough memory; please forgive if I mis-remembered.

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

#95

Post by Semaphor »

bitL wrote: post #48
ergothus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also had several fights with google over my refinements. If I search for 2 words, odds are stupidly high that most of the results will NOT include one of my two words. Thanks Google, for deciding I didn't really mean to type that. I follow up with added quotes, etc to enforce what I actually typed, so there will be a lot of Google-induced churn. Google has focused so highly on the peak that more and more searche…

DuckDuckGo is lately behaving the same way... Time to find another alternative I guess.

DDG is worse, sadly. Unlike Google, they don't tell you they ignored part of your query. And for Google forcing a term is a strong signal and it will show to in the snippet most of the time. For DDG forcing a term is a weak signal and it will often not show up in the snippet and sometimes not at all.

I love DDG because of their bangs, but their "let me tell you what you actually wanted to search for"-attitude is pissing me off.

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

#96

Post by michaelmrose »

luckylion wrote: post #30
michaelmrose wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you once communicated the fact that 2+2 is 4 and Joe makes very good spaghetti you own the copyright to the text you published but neither the fact nor the opinion belongs to you in any meaningful way nor should it.

That's true, but a collection of facts ("a database") falls under copyright.

https://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html#data

This doesn't provide any protection for the underlying facts.

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

#97

Post by jonas21 »

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?

I'm pretty sure they have partnerships with the major stock and currency exchanges, pro sports leagues, and weather.com to get that data.

EDIT: added some sources (sorry, that's the best I could dig up in 5 minutes)

[1] https://www.google.com/googlefinance/disclaimer/

[2] https://searchengineland.com/google-now-with-real-time-nhl-h...

[3] https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/ibm-scores-a-weath...

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

#98

Post by SomeOldThrow »

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 great thing about the calculator and specific DSLs like the exchange conversion is that it's trivial to parse. The helpfulness of the "more than just a search index" degrades rapidly into siphoning people to top 50 sites, like scraping metadata from IMDB. I'd much rather they gave me the ability to restrict the information they show me as most of it is distracting to me and reduces my productivity.

If I want to look up an actor I'll just add 'IMDB' to the end and get a much better experience on the site itself than google could ever offer in their search page.

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

#99

Post by dmitriid »

criddell wrote: post #84
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Presumably the site being scraped is getting some value from being included in Google's index. If they aren't, they can always opt out.

First you have to find a way to prove it’s your data which isn’t trivial.

Genius had to invent a watermarking system for texts: https://betanews.com/2019/06/17/google-genius-com-lyrics/

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

#100

Post by ericflo »

wongarsu wrote: post #83
whatshisface wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Microsoft tried that with Internet Explorer and another time with Bing, it didn't work out so well.

Apple's taking another crack at it, and so far nothing looks likely to stop them.
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