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If google where to just use bounce rate as a ranking measure, that's fine -- if interstitials increase bounce rate, then site owners will have to determine for
by x0x0 11y ago
If google where to just use bounce rate as a ranking measure, that's fine -- if interstitials increase bounce rate, then site owners will have to determine for themselves whether it's worth the price. otoh, deciding to arbitrarily lower the rank because they don't like a particular type of advertising is exactly anti-competitive.
So ranking measures derived from user behavior: great. Ranking measures designed to prioritize features in your browser, or to push people away from apps (that, just by total happenstance, your dominant competitor does better than you, and which threaten to undercut your dominance in search/display ads): not fine. Which really is classical antitrust: you can't use your monopoly (search) to juice your other businesses (browser, app store).
- bduerst 11y agoMany websites with pop-up ads (Forbes, etc.) display a 2-5s timer countdown to dismiss the ad and view the content, which engages users long enough to stay on the site. This games the bounce rate and would defeat a solution that is base solely on on it.
- x0x0 11y agoI don't think you understood, or I wasn't clear. Users will bounce if they don't like ads, with or without countdown timers. Acting based on observed user behavior is great. If they don't like it, they bounce. If they tolerate it, they don't bounce. Over time, users will migrate to less-annoying sites. Ranking sites on observed bounced rates, whether caused by ads, low quality, or what ever else, is awesome and should have no anti-trust implications. That's not what google did. After all, if these ads really annoyed users in general, that would show up in their behavior, and thus naturally be picked up on by ranking algorithms, no? (They annoy me, but I'm not all users.)