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You don't see Google on first page of search results by googling “search engine”
- CM30 10y agoInterestingly, you do see it on the first page in Bing and DuckDuckGo. And while I did initially think that might be deliberate (because hey, why bother showing a link to your search engine on the first page of results in your search engine?), Bing and DuckDuckGo are listed when you search 'search engine' in those search engines. Makes me wonder why Google doesn't list themself here.
- ryanmonroe 10y agoI would assume results rankings are based on how many people click the link after searching the given terms. Probably no one searches "search engine" on Google then clicks on a link to google.com .
- rosstex 10y agoYou're right: they all search "Google" and click Google. Source: my mom.
- jbob2000 10y agoBecause google isn't really a search engine anymore. Search engines just do dumb scraping of web pages. Google understands the webpage, so that when I look up "pancake recipe" it will just show me the steps to making pancakes rather than pointing me to websites with pancake recipes. It's more like an "internet integrator".
- tyingq 10y agoGoogle says it is: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/464?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/464?hl=en
- jbob2000 10y agoBecause that's how they're known, search engine is the colloquial term for them. It just seems disingenuous to call them that when their version of "search engine" is space-age while everyone else is palaeolithic era. I thought it would spark an interesting discussion...
- tyingq 10y agoI'll vote for "contextual ad engine". I suspect the r&d dollars are mostly spent there now that there's little incentive to improve the organic results. My definition of ad is broader than Google's though. I would include all their various widgets that are displacing organic search.
- MichaelBurge 10y agoWhether or not that's right or wrong, when you use that word "because" you're saying those pancake recipes and similar features are causally related to the search results. So in particular, if Google removed those advanced features, Google would show up in the results of this query after the next reindexing. Can you confirm that you're not just making a claim, but arguing that it affects the Google search results?
- jbob2000 10y agoI hadn't intended to make that point with my comment, but I kinda like it - that google has advanced themselves so much that their own algorithms don't recognize them as a search engine any more.
- grzm 10y agoBecause google isn't really a search engine anymore I think you might say Google isn't /just/ a search engine anymore. That said, it still very much returns results I search for. How it processes and indexes web content or displays those results doesn't seem restricted by the name "search engine".
- tyingq 10y agoThat's got to be intentional, either as an amusing Easter egg, or to try and provide an example of their unbiased approach. It certainly doesn't jive with the page rank approach.
- f_allwein 10y agoI thnk it makes sense - probably not many people are linking to Google wth the anchor text "search engine". Or rather, they would be more likely to do so with ant other search engine.
- tyingq 10y agoSupposedly, Google got smarter some time back and relied more on contextual meaning of the linking page, as a whole, vs literal anchor text.
- lisper 10y agoHeh, the first result is DDG, the second is the wikipedia page on search engines, and the third is this: https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/02/25/say-goodbye-to-google-14-alternative-search-engines/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/02/25/say-goodbye-to-goog... "Say goodbye to Google: 14 alternative search engines"
- smaili 10y agoSay goodbye to Google: 14 alternative search engines is 3rd :)
- jaypaulynice 10y agoAnti-trust probably...Google doesn't want to be seen as a monopoly even though it has a monopoly on search. One less lawsuit. No ads at the top also. Since the user is looking for a search engine on Google, it could mean they're looking for an alternative to Google.
- thomasthomas 10y agoif i was google's lawyers i'd argue search isn't an industry. they make money via ads so its in the ad industry. itsmy chief problem with thiels 0 to 1.
- kennyledet 10y agoSoftware is the industry. Search is the subcategory. Ads are a part of the business implementation of the search product. You can't say every product is automatically in the ad industry because it generates revenue with ads. If you used this logic here, what of all the other products in different industries that generate their revenue with ads?
- aisofteng 10y agoIf you were Google's lawyer, then you would be a lawyer. From the content of your post, it seems clear you aren't one.
- thomasthomas 10y agogoogle, facebook, twitter all eating from the same pie: ad dollars.
- aisofteng 10y agoWhat relevance does that statement have to anything here?
- 127001brewer 10y agoActually, this comment reminded me of the following: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-03/advertisings-century-of-flat-line-growth https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-03/advertisi... TLDR;: But in one sense, the advertising business is about as static and boring as they come. The industry has never grown in scale. Looking at data since the 1920s, the U.S. advertising industry has always been about 1 percent of U.S. GDP. It’s surprisingly consistent, mostly tracking between 1 percent and 1.4 percent—and averaging 1.29 percent. So when you said, "...eating from the same pie", according to the linked article, they actually are.
- jessaustin 10y agoSpeculation only, but this might be as much to prevent user confusion as for any other reason. Lots of people, especially lots of people who need to research the term "search engine", don't understand the difference between Google and an empty address bar. (That is, they haven't learned about addresses.) If they click a link and just go back to the same page, they'll be confused and frustrated.
- aisofteng 10y agoYour suggestion implies that Google manually modifies the results it gives to some search queries.
- nulagrithom 10y agoThey do. https://www.google.com/search?q=recursion https://www.google.com/search?q=recursion Plenty of other examples.
- aisofteng 10y agoAdding a "Did you mean..." is not modifying search results.
- justinlaster 10y agoCould it be argued that spelling suggestions are still a search result in and of themselves?
- axiom92 10y agoQuery "search engine set default". It figures that you mean business, drops the cool guy act, and is quick to point out ways to come home from IE.
- verbify 10y agoThe other comments claim it's deliberate. I'm not sure. Google are pretty adamant that they don't manually edit results. And it's at least possible that most references to search engines in news articles and the like reference alternatives to Google. Google is the kleenex of search engines - it's so synonymous that people forget that kleenex is a kind of tissue.
- lilbobbytables 10y agoCan confirm: kleenex is not on the first two pages for 'tissues'.
- jaypaulynice 10y agoBut they can control the content of the page. I looked at the source page and there is 0 mention of "search engine" on Google.com source page. I'm pretty sure Google works contextually to know "search engine" means searching the web. Gogoduck does have the reference 5 times in the source code but Bing doesn't. Gogoduck can take the chance with their content to be the first, but if the leading search engines were to sue or act against Gogoduck, then it would be in Gogoduck's favor to get the spotlight. If you go to Google to find Gogoduck then Google is of course the more valuable.
- nerdponx 10y agoDoes Google still use PageRank at all? If so it would make sense that not many people actually link to "google.com"
- samfisher83 10y agoDuck duck go appears first.
- supernintendo 10y agoSurprised to see Dogpile still around (and near the top of results). I remember using it as my main search engine in the early 2000s.
- h4nkoslo 10y agoWhy would you? You're already there. It's effectively a synonym for "different search engine".
- parennoob 10y agoI don't know about the specifics of how this is related to their algorithm, but it makes perfect sense from a philosophical standpoint. You are using Google (the world's most well-known search engine) to search for other search engines. So either you are clueless about what a search engine is (in which case they win, since you're using them without knowing the term), or you're explicitly looking for alternatives (in which case, according to their philosophy, the way to serve you best is to give you a great list of all the other search engines out there).
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- smsm42 10y agoI think it's very good relevancy-wise. If you look on google for search engine, it's more likely that link to google.com is not helpful, since you already know of google.com, supposedly. How that is achieved though might be an interesting question. OTOH, DDG is the second result for "search engine" on DDG :)