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Whistleblowing protection, for what? > Of the total U.S. mobile and desktop searches that occur on Google, is it true that less than 50% result in clicks on no
by bko 7y ago
Whistleblowing protection, for what?
> Of the total U.S. mobile and desktop searches that occur on Google, is it true that less than 50% result in clicks on non-Google websites?
Google was asked if less than 50% of Google search results end in a user on a non-Google site. Presumably the 50% number came from some study, which Google mentioned in their response. They noted that the study hadn't been clear on the methodology used and may include cases where the user didn't end up on any site (e.g. "How old is Obama" shows 58 years in the search results).
It's an entirely reasonable answer to the 50% claim. As to the actual number, that depends on how you define the question (see above). They were not asked what percentage, there were asked about the specific claim of 50%, presumably from some paper, which the answer referenced.
And the bigger point is that author of these tweets shows this as some kind of smoking gun. Google is intended to get you answers, not to distribute traffic to other websites. In the case above, if they could answer your question immediately rather than forward you to some site, that's a good thing. If people are searching for video and the video is hosted on Youtube which is owned by Google (gasp!), rather than some shady Russian video site, they should forward users to Youtube.
I get it, some people don't like Google. But this kind of phony outrage hurts actual issues with tech dominance
- tareqak 7y agoThe author of these tweets is also the author of the report, and he claims that he did provide a methodology [0]. The report can be found here: https://sparktoro.com/blog/how-much-of-googles-search-traffic-is-left-for-anyone-but-themselves/ https://sparktoro.com/blog/how-much-of-googles-search-traffi... . [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/randfish/status/1159175385906438144 https://mobile.twitter.com/randfish/status/11591753859064381...
- bko 7y agoThe Google answer makes sense then: Received 150+ Billion searches Solved 48.96% of those searches without a click Sent 7.2% of all search clicks to paid results Sent 6.01% of all searches (~12% of search clicks) to websites owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company Directed a click to non-Alphabet-owned websites (aka, the rest of the web) after 45.03% queries Specifically "Sent 6.01% of all searches (~12% of search clicks) to websites owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company". So only 12% of search clicks resulted in Google owned sites. The 50+% quoted includes all the search results without a click. Getting answers without a click is the ideal for me as a consumer. I don't know why you would include that as evidence that Google somehow favors their site over others. The other factor is the content. IMO Youtube and Google Maps are far superior products compared to others. I imagine an unbiased search engine would favor these sites. If a large percentage of search queries are for videos or places, I would expect the search results to skew towards Google products.