Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 101 posts

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#91

Post by nend »

criddell wrote: post #87
nend wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you think newsreaders are as evil as Google? I use NetNewsWire on my tablet and very few of the feeds I subscribe to show any ads and I rarely click through to the source. I haven't used an RSS reader in a while, so I may be wrong on this but: 1) Last I remembered content creators could still place ads that are displayed through the reader, so it's not a complete loss if you don't click through. 2) NetNewsWire is…

In the long term, basic facts will be table stakes for anything that wants to answer questions. Think about Amazon's Echo, Apple's Siri, or the Google Assistant. You can ask any of them about weather or Dr. Fauci's age and get basic factual answers. I would expect digital assistants to be able to handle queries of much greater complexity in the future and I would expect google.com to keep up with that. If they make t…

There's almost no search engine competition, so whether it's easy to switch is irrelevant because for the average user, there's no option to switch to.

Echo/Siri/Google assistant actually make it harder for people to switch, because the average user is not going to install google assistant on an echo device, which means they have to spend money and learn a new device in order to use a new assistant. So if in your future you're treating assistants as search engines, lock-in becomes worse.

>If Google starts to make decisions that are bad for users

Google has already made plenty of decisions that are bad for users, and they still have 90% market share because there's no meaningful competition.

You're basically envisioning a dystopian future where facts are controlled by a small set of mega corporations.

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#92

Post by impalallama »

jeffbee wrote: post #64
impalallama wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mike Moloney runs FilterGrade, a marketplace for custom filters photographers use to edit their work. He gets most of his traffic from articles on his website, such as lens reviews and camera-related top 10 lists. Recently, he noticed Google pulling photos and text straight off the site and showing it at the top of search results. There’s a link to Moloney’s company at the bottom of the section, but clicking on any…

The site FilterGrade appears to resell the work of outside authors, taking a cut off the top instead of directing traffic to the original authors' own sites, which do exist. As usual, whenever you actually dig into these complaints it always turns out that the complainer is a galactic-scale leach doing something way sleazier than what they accuse search engines of doing.

They're running a marketplace to sell stuff...

Yes a store front charged a premium to host something on their platform. Like you can levy that complaint against practically every e-comerce website on the internet from e-bay, etsy, amazon, steam, overstock, etc.

And they do link to the creators websites. You can click through to their vendor page which can have a link to their personal website. https://filtergrade.com/vendor/carlos-viloria/

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#93

Post by roenxi »

saalweachter wrote: post #24
roenxi wrote: post #14

It'll be fascinating to watch if Google eventually falls. They have really interesting strategic weaknesses. Advertisers will go where the people go, but Google's balance sheets suggest there is enormous scope for a middleman to go and negotiate with the Apples/Mozillas/Microsofts of the world to give them a better cut of the search revenue. I can imagine a key based system where I register a token with, say, "Hoogle…

... did you just describe an advertising marketplace as an alternative to web search?

If I search "computer" on google my entire screen was literally filled ads. For that query a "web search" would be an alternative to the advertising marketplace that Google actually was.

There isn't anything magical about Google or Google's ability to provide a search service. It isn't easy, but it isn't outside the skills of the top 2-5% of developers. If a company figures out a superior business model they can be disrupted.

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#94

Post by occamrazor »

shirakawasuna wrote: post #88
mikro2nd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So time, then for a robots.txt with User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: / ? (Of course one would have to find an exhaustive list of all the web-spiders they have and their UA strings, but you get my point...)

They could just ignore it, right? Or do any new rules actually require honoring robots.txt?

All major search engines follow robots.txt

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#95

Post by freediver »

mattkevan wrote: post #7

For all the tiny violins that could be played about how life is getting harder for SEO practitioners, this marks a fundamental and very unwelcome change in the Web. Google have decided that it’s more profitable to keep people on its own site than redirecting them elsewhere, a big change in its contract. Before, it was ‘structure your site well and we’ll send you traffic’. Now it’s becoming, ‘structure your site well…

Arguably, there is nothing wrong with the concept of showing snippets/answers instead of links. If you are looking for your car keys, you want to find the keys not a note that tells you were to look.

The problem is different and is similar to oil exploitation. Google is exploiting the website content for enormous benefit and with no compensation. If Google compensated the websites it takes content from (50%-50% profit split?) it would be a whole another tune.

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#96

Post by moz14015 »

bberenberg wrote: post #89
jeffbee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that if an SEO guy who resells third-party software is complaining that Google is cutting them out of the deal, the SEO guy is a hypocrite.

I don't understand why you think he's an SEO guy? Is he scraping content to build his marketplace without seller consent? Would Etsy be an SEO guy in your mind?

Yes he is an SEO guy, no that doesn't mean you don't have consent for content you are listing. Yes, Etsy is built on the back of SEO, as well as Pinterest and many others.

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#97

Post by EricE »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #35
onion2k wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lose the serendipity of other things sites might tell you - you get Dr. Fauci's age quicker, and a few other bits that Google sanction as appropriate for you, but that's all you get. Google can censor the rest of the facts if they choose to, and you'll never know because you don't leave the safe walls of Google's search page. To date Google have 'only' censored search results in countries like China, but doesn't…

I get that "censorship" is dominating some people's thinking these days, but the relevancy here is ... tenuous. Google always controlled the search results, and therefore the information you were going to see. Filtering the pages they link to isn't materially different from filtering the facts they choose to feature. There's also a complete lack of motive here: Google allows you to pay them to "manipulate" SERPS (by…

>Google always controlled the search results, and therefore the information you were going to see. Filtering the pages they link to isn't materially different from filtering the facts they choose to feature.

And they have been caught over and over either flat out memory holing or burying things they are ideologically opposed to as well.

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#98

Post by EricE »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #54

Tangential, but Google search has become worse, as they seemingly have decided to no longer index everything. Looking for specific error messages + a keyword used to lead directly to the blog article that solves the problem, now the search results seem very superficial. Doing research and exhaustively finding all references of something seems harder now. On Youtube it is even worse, I get 7 search results, that's it.…

In the results right below where your search terms are, there's a line of light gray text that starts with All News Images - at the end click on Tools. Then change All Results to Verbatim.

It eliminates all the recommendations, and the majority of the guesses about context, relevance, etc. Combine that with judicious use of quotes and it's still possible to have decent error message/keyword searches.

Never thought I would pine for Altavista.

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#99

Post by EricE »

meh206 wrote: post #65

There needs to be a public service for internet search!

We need a decentralized search just like DNS is a central service, but not centrally managed (OK, mostly not centrally managed).

How about each web site indexing their own contents and then there being a mechanism for your client to crawl the indexes, just like a DNS resolver will query servers until it finds the answer it wants. My iPhone is leaps and bounds more powerful than desktops of a decade ago - there is zero reason to pool power in data centers. Indeed it would be impractical for Google to replicate the power of all the clients worldwide in a data center.

Re: Google Search Upgrades Make It Harder for Websites to Win Traffic

#100

Post by jitendrac »

Every time I think about my good programming projects in past, I remember I was just good at google search. I knew exactly which phrase and which Business/Tech jargon had to be used. but now I can surely see the difference in search results quality compared to past.In past there were 1-2 adword ads on top, but now I can encounter multiple events in day when I can count 4-5 ads on top as well as bottom, and don't forget about price comparison at sidebar. Sometimes its really annoying. I tried ddg and being but they are still not good enough for me.

I hate SEO and love the organic content which is now far limited to just hobby bloggers.

Post reply on HN