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I have no problem with this. But in return I should be able to opt out of results that I cannot view. A result for a news article that changes when I click on i

by erentz 9y ago

I have no problem with this. But in return I should be able to opt out of results that I cannot view. A result for a news article that changes when I click on it to a "Please subscribe..." plea is not the result that was returned that I clicked on. Unfortunately, like the AMP fiasco, I doubt this is what will happen as Google doesn't exist to serve it's users.

mathattack 9y ago
AMP fiasco?
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  The whole thing where AMP is being enforced in Google, such that what were previously links to third-party sites are now served entirely from Google with a moderately-broken shell around them, and with no ability to opt-out of having search results hijacked in this manner.
baldfat 9y ago
You block the sources in your Google News feed. https://news.google.com/news/u/0/settings/sources?hl=en https://news.google.com/news/u/0/settings/sources?hl=en
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  So "blocking paywalls" that appear accessible in Google Search is now "opt out"? Ewww. This might be the time I hit Duck Duck Go. To be clear, I have no issue with paywalls. But they should be flagged as such. "Article title: blah blah blah [Subscription required to view content]" even. But they won't do that, because publishers, who buy advertising, will scream because they KNOW their click through rates would plummet. After all, even with a paywall, you still get plenty of metrics and advertising bumps on that first click to the site.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    > Google Search is now "opt out"? No, not at all. It just doesn't let you get free articles behind the pay wall. So now you can either avoid the pay wall websites or you just block them.
    - FireBeyond 9y ago
      Right. I have to go through and filter my search to remove each source that has "articles that are available to Google to index, but not to me, except for a fee". Note that in no way am I complaining about using Google to avoid paywalls. I rarely bother. I'm talking about having to filter out paid content that is indiscernible from free content.
kevmo 9y ago
DuckDuckGo has gotten a lot better and is now a pretty decent alternative. You lose some features and the UI is less visually pleasing, but you can always go back to Google when you know you want a specific feature.
KGIII 9y ago
There was a time when Google made a public priority of the importance of the site showing the visitor the same thing it showed the search engine. I believe they called it cloaking or masking? Someone into SEO will probably know the details better than I. If I click a link on Google, I should see the same results that Google 'saw.' I think a fancier word for this would be 'trust.' So far, I like Google's results and make use of their personalized results. One of the reasons I do so is because I trust the results, for certain definitions of trust that is. If I can't trust that the site showed me the same response that it showed Google, we have an erosion of that trust. It may be time for me to seek an alternative.
Pxtl 9y ago
> I doubt this is what will happen as Google doesn't exist to serve it's users. There intent is to serve users with quality, truthful information. If all the quality information goes out of business and gets replaced with "Fwd:Fwd:Fwd: Obama failed New Orleans during Katrina!!" then Google doesn't have any more quality information anymore. Google and Facebook are becoming acutely aware of how easily dishonest propaganda can propagate through their systems and are trying to find a solution for that. One step is making sure that people who have to make a living finding the truth for us all have the means to get paid.
- pessimizer 9y ago
  > Their intent is to serve users with quality, truthful information. I thought their intent was to serve me the websites that I'm looking for. If their aim it to define truth, I want to see them broken up.
- ehsankia 9y ago
  Also, it's a very small percent of users who dislike it (or even know AMP is a thing), and majority of them are developers who don't want their site cached. To claim that they don't serve their users is ridiculous.
- erentz 9y ago
  Should Google give these providers payments in that case? It doesn't help if the first five links I get shown on Google I click only to find nothing but a pay wall. Maybe the money flow should be: 1. Google is best search engine, attracts most eyeballs looking to find content 2. Advertisers pay google to show their ads to my eyeballs 3. I use Google because it provides good, true, accurate content, when I click on a link to nytimes.com Google should pay nytimes.com a portion of the revenue they collected Almost, kinda, makes sense maybe? Or maybe this'll be the revenue model for a post-Google source of information.
m-p-3 9y ago
I kinda hope they would put a symbol to indicate a paywall (for example, a green brick wall), like how some articles are labelled with a lightning bolt for AMP-ed pages.
yoz-y 9y ago
Hm. But if the site shows only the title and summary to google shouldn’t they index at least that ? I could technically make a Wordpress site that pops up a pay wall after you click on “read more” and it won’t look different to google compared to a site without one.

by erentz 9y ago

mathattack 9y ago

AMP fiasco?

matthewmacleod 9y ago
The whole thing where AMP is being enforced in Google, such that what were previously links to third-party sites are now served entirely from Google with a moderately-broken shell around them, and with no ability to opt-out of having search results hijacked in this manner.

baldfat 9y ago

You block the sources in your Google News feed. https://news.google.com/news/u/0/settings/sources?hl=en https://news.google.com/news/u/0/settings/sources?hl=en

FireBeyond 9y ago
So "blocking paywalls" that appear accessible in Google Search is now "opt out"? Ewww. This might be the time I hit Duck Duck Go. To be clear, I have no issue with paywalls. But they should be flagged as such. "Article title: blah blah blah [Subscription required to view content]" even. But they won't do that, because publishers, who buy advertising, will scream because they KNOW their click through rates would plummet. After all, even with a paywall, you still get plenty of metrics and advertising bumps on that first click to the site.
- baldfat 9y ago
  > Google Search is now "opt out"? No, not at all. It just doesn't let you get free articles behind the pay wall. So now you can either avoid the pay wall websites or you just block them.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    Right. I have to go through and filter my search to remove each source that has "articles that are available to Google to index, but not to me, except for a fee". Note that in no way am I complaining about using Google to avoid paywalls. I rarely bother. I'm talking about having to filter out paid content that is indiscernible from free content.

kevmo 9y ago

DuckDuckGo has gotten a lot better and is now a pretty decent alternative. You lose some features and the UI is less visually pleasing, but you can always go back to Google when you know you want a specific feature.

KGIII 9y ago

There was a time when Google made a public priority of the importance of the site showing the visitor the same thing it showed the search engine. I believe they called it cloaking or masking? Someone into SEO will probably know the details better than I. If I click a link on Google, I should see the same results that Google 'saw.' I think a fancier word for this would be 'trust.' So far, I like Google's results and make use of their personalized results. One of the reasons I do so is because I trust the results, for certain definitions of trust that is. If I can't trust that the site showed me the same response that it showed Google, we have an erosion of that trust. It may be time for me to seek an alternative.

Pxtl 9y ago

> I doubt this is what will happen as Google doesn't exist to serve it's users. There intent is to serve users with quality, truthful information. If all the quality information goes out of business and gets replaced with "Fwd:Fwd:Fwd: Obama failed New Orleans during Katrina!!" then Google doesn't have any more quality information anymore. Google and Facebook are becoming acutely aware of how easily dishonest propaganda can propagate through their systems and are trying to find a solution for that. One step is making sure that people who have to make a living finding the truth for us all have the means to get paid.

pessimizer 9y ago
> Their intent is to serve users with quality, truthful information. I thought their intent was to serve me the websites that I'm looking for. If their aim it to define truth, I want to see them broken up.
ehsankia 9y ago
Also, it's a very small percent of users who dislike it (or even know AMP is a thing), and majority of them are developers who don't want their site cached. To claim that they don't serve their users is ridiculous.
erentz 9y ago
Should Google give these providers payments in that case? It doesn't help if the first five links I get shown on Google I click only to find nothing but a pay wall. Maybe the money flow should be: 1. Google is best search engine, attracts most eyeballs looking to find content 2. Advertisers pay google to show their ads to my eyeballs 3. I use Google because it provides good, true, accurate content, when I click on a link to nytimes.com Google should pay nytimes.com a portion of the revenue they collected Almost, kinda, makes sense maybe? Or maybe this'll be the revenue model for a post-Google source of information.

m-p-3 9y ago

I kinda hope they would put a symbol to indicate a paywall (for example, a green brick wall), like how some articles are labelled with a lightning bolt for AMP-ed pages.

yoz-y 9y ago

Hm. But if the site shows only the title and summary to google shouldn’t they index at least that ? I could technically make a Wordpress site that pops up a pay wall after you click on “read more” and it won’t look different to google compared to a site without one.