42 ms·

Every Google result now looks like an ad

• tempodox 7y ago
  Not only that but when I click on a link that pretends to be an actual search result some random shop page opens and wants to sell me shoes or coats or whatever. Only when I press the back button and click that link again the real page opens. Good bye, Google, my search engine is now Bing.
• wnevets 7y ago
  I hate changes like this in general but this one is really bad. Just switch back
• seanwilson 7y ago
  I admit it's weird seeing a sudden change to how search results are displayed, but I think the use of favicons help draw your eye to brands you trust so I don't mind it. If this helps ads mix in with real search results, maybe the ads need to be changed to stand out more? I feel people are focusing on "favicons = bad" instead of "ads looking the same as search results = bad".
• dcchambers 7y ago
  I do think that Google has done a lot of work to objectively add value to the results page of most search queries (eg pulling data straight from websites like Wikipedia, giving better page previews, etc). However they are an ad company - and they ultimately benefit from blurring the line between an advertisement and a "real" result. I do feel like it is harder to find certain types of results as a "power user" though, and it feels like the quality of results rapidly drops off after the first page. I am not sure if the fault lies with Google or with spammy websites hacking the SEO. I wish Google had something like duckduckgo.com/lite (also ddg.gg/lite) for the atypical "power user." It's nothing but text results. I find it really useful for certain types of searches and when you don't want to be bothered by how "busy" the Google search results page has become.
  • JohnFen 7y ago
    > it feels like the quality of results rapidly drops off after the first page Interesting -- I've been playing with Google search this morning, and it's behaving much like it did when I stopped using it: there is only a very low chance that I'll get a relevant search result before the third page.
• itamarst 7y ago
  Perhaps it's worth quoting Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in the original paper on the Google search engine: > "The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. ...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. " (http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html) At the time they thought this was a bad thing...
  • minikites 7y ago
    Money can change almost anyone's opinion about almost any subject.
    • goobynight 7y ago
      Right. And most people are fully persuaded by much lesser sums.
    • mam2 7y ago
      They are not exactly in charge anymore
    • dvtrn 7y ago
      Time for the Upton Sinclair quote?
  • numpad0 7y ago
    They cared not to be evil back then. Now they say they do the right thing, and “right” is subjective.
    • pb7 7y ago
      Evil is also subjective.
      • cptskippy 7y ago
        And yet they felt the need to remove the "don't be evil" clause from their code of conduct.
• lykr0n 7y ago
  I wish there was a way to directly help Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yandex improve their search results. I've tried both, and it's just not the same. Google I can bang in cryptic queries like > centos 7 tuned no daemon and get the 3rd link about how to run tuned in a no daemon mode. Bing/DuckDuckGo have the article at around 7th or 8th place, but prefaced by a lot of "while technically not wrong, not what I'm looking for" links. It's even worse for more niche errors or code snippets. We cannot, as a healthy internet, let Google control so much of the web.
  • awb 7y ago
    Do they factor in the number of clicks on each result? If so then it would presumably improve over time. I know Google also factors in how long people spend on the resulting webpage.
    • smt88 7y ago
      Yes, they do factor in number of clicks. They also consider "regret" -- returning to the search list and picking a different result.
  • Analemma_ 7y ago
    I used to work at Bing. If you really want Bing to improve, the best thing you can do is just use it: clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data. Ideally you could use Bing as your default engine, then fall back to Google whenever there's a search that doesn't yield good results. If you have the time, you can also use the Feedback link on the bottom-right of the page to report bad search results; people do actually triage and read those.
    • seanwilson 7y ago
      > clicks on search results, plus backs and dwell times, are vital training data Interesting. Can you explain more on what is tracked after a user clicks a result and how this data is used?
• bazonker 7y ago
  Not sure about the facts underlying the analysis. In my search results (and it's important to remember that it's possible you get different results than another user, due to launch experiments and trials) the ads do not have icons. They say "Ad" in bold text. The "organics" results have icons.
  • reroute1 7y ago
    Yes I see the same, it's really easy to tell what is an ad and what isn't...
    • city41 7y ago
      The distinction between the two has certainly gone down though (by quite a bit IMO). This feels like boiling a frog.
      • reroute1 7y ago
        I guess it depends on the user. I can't really put myself in the mindset of someone else, but I am pretty sure I would never accidentally click an ad and not realize it. Maybe others who don't pay attention to this kind of thing might be affected though.
    • nicpottier 7y ago
      Agree, ads seem clearer than ever to me, the big bold "Ad" is more distinct to me than the previous treatment.
      • duckmysick 7y ago
        To me, the clearest Google ads had colored background and text "Sponsored Link" on the side.
  • cotillion 7y ago
    This trick is what caused me to click and Ad for the first time in forever. If the icons happen to be dark its easy to ignore the 'Ad' text. Maybe its time to supply a complaint. I doubt this is legal in Sweden.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• decebalus1 7y ago
  Huh... I thought it was just me. I have a rather atypical setup with my privacy extensions and browser settings, so I just assumed that one of them was changing the DOM to make it look like this. Just yesterday I was searching for some ISP offers and clicked on an ad result. Well.. I think I just need to get over my lazyness and finally host searx locally.
  • hnews_account_1 7y ago
    Same here. I think typically antivirus extensions like McAfee provide a few extra metadata on google search results that makes the page look exactly like it does now. My first instinct was "oh which extension fucked this up? anyway, I'll check it out later". Unfortunate to find out it's a change on big G's end.
• basch 7y ago
  The FTC has spoke on this before. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2013/06/ftc-staff-search-engines-differentiate-ads-natural-results https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2013/06/... I believe nearly all the search engines are still guilty of this one. I also think firms should be able to buy "blank space." For example facebook or amazon could pay NOT to have an ad above their result. Maybe they already do, I dont see an ad when I search facebook, however I do see an ad for amazon above the top amazon result. Google should just be smart enough to see the top result and the ad are the same link, and handle the situation more appropriately, like tucking the ad text underneath the result, or signifying that the top result owner has paid to hide ads. I have to say, I dont find these results differentiated ENOUGH from the ad. https://i.imgur.com/8Dhr1mj.png https://i.imgur.com/8Dhr1mj.png
  • tremon 7y ago
    For example facebook or amazon could pay NOT to have an ad above their result That sounds an awful lot like a shakedown practice. "Nice search result you got there. Would be a shame if it would be obscured by an ad..."
    • rrix2 7y ago
      Their current behavior is no different in that regard AND is more confusing for internet users and business AND is based on the twisted "market price" of the search keywords
      • basch 7y ago
        Basically yes. It does appear a bit like a "pay us this much to keep top result, or we will resell it to competitor" but realistically, thats already the case (the ad being the "top result".) Deduplication is the lesser of two confusings.
  • froindt 7y ago
    >I also think firms should be able to buy "blank space." For example facebook or amazon could pay NOT to have an ad above their result. Maybe they already do, I dont see an ad when I search facebook, however I do see an ad for amazon above the top amazon result. Backblaze had a competitor who bought ads for the search term "backblaze". The CEO successfully contacted the competitor CEO and they agreed they'd be in a pissing match throwing money at Google if the practice and retaliation (backblaze buying on their search term) occurred. The competitor promptly stopped the ad campaign. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/save-marketing-money-nice/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/save-marketing-money-nice/
• zozbot234 7y ago
  That's just truth in advertising. Just because they're not Google's ads doesn't mean they shouldn't be shown as such!
• Jerry2 7y ago
  With each AdWords display change, Google's been adding billions of dollars to their revenue by confusing and fooling their users and blurring the line between the content and ads. A visual guide: "A (mostly comprehensive history of Google's ad shading and labeling" https://i.imgur.com/0RxdzBE.png https://i.imgur.com/0RxdzBE.png
  • dehrmann 7y ago
    For branded keywords, it's not just shady, it's racketeering. You wouldn't want your competitor to show up first when someone searches for your brand, would you? Then pay up. E.g. https://i.imgur.com/SfomkdQ.png; https://i.imgur.com/SfomkdQ.png; the second result is a competitor's ad, the third result is the organic result.
    • Jerry2 7y ago
      This is what Basecamp has been complaining about for a while now too [1]. They even testified in front of Congress about it [2]. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/google-paid-search-ads-shakedown-basecamp-ceo-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/04/google-paid-search-ads-shake... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/technology/antitrust-hearing-boulder-colorado.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/technology/antitrust-hear...
      • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        Surely racketeering is legal in USA, the President described applying undue and immoral pressure through dominance as "perfect". Unclear how it could possibly be illegal, given USA's continued endorsement of such behaviour.
    • threatofrain 7y ago
      If my Michelin alternative Yalp became influential and I allowed restaurants to bubble up to the top based on money, am I engaging in racketeering?
    • bduerst 7y ago
      The difference being that you pay magnitudes less for your branded keywords than the competition, through the quality score. Allowing companies to advertise against their peers is actually creating more competition on the marketplace (which is a good thing). Edit: Disclosure - I work at Google but this is my own opinion on multi-sided markets
• Angostura 7y ago
  Spot on. I find myself having to concentrate quite hard now to distinguish between ad and result.
• mrlala 7y ago
  I just want compact results again.. searching for coding related stuff I need to be able to quickly scan through a bunch of results to see if it's what I'm looking for.. but now they are so spaced out it's just weird and inefficient.
  • ryanmercer 7y ago
    Yes! My biggest complaint is I can't quickly scan search results now, there's so much wasted space.
• dehrmann 7y ago
  I remember when Google made a point of being ethical by putting ads on the right rail with a light blue background so it was clear which results were ads and which were organic.
  • asdf21 7y ago
    Seems quaint now, eh?
• cytzol 7y ago
  I've been in this A/B test for a couple of months now, so I've had time to adjust, and I still hate it. I've just become so used to seeing the complete URL in green. The complete URL! If you hover over the results, you'll see that they like to take bits like numeric components or the query string out. This is part of Google's attempt to de-prioritise the URL. Their destructive AMP service confusingly shows you Google's domain instead of the website's — and as they can't fix that without losing out on tracking, they're trying to change what the URL means. Thanks for ruining the Web, Google.
  • reroute1 7y ago
    To be fair didn't internet marketers ruin things first by cramming keywords in URLS and page titles to game search engines?
    • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
      Two wrongs...
      • reroute1 7y ago
        Just saying IMO Google isn't ruining the internet. Of course every decision being scrutinized they can't have a perfect record. They have a search engine that due to it's popularity is the target of all kinds of stats gaming and optimizing, While at the same time trying to grow a profitable product. So it's not like there are simple solutions or easy quips like Google Ruined the Internet. It sounds like a lazy argument.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • sophiebits 7y ago
    AMP obscuring the URL is a side effect of the current technical implementation, not a goal – and they are working to fix it: https://searchengineland.com/google-announces-signed-exchange-solution-to-deliver-amp-speed-to-publisher-urls-315504 https://searchengineland.com/google-announces-signed-exchang...
• have_faith 7y ago
  I noticed this on a co-workers screen recently and my immediate thought was "what dodgy search extensions have they been installing?". Now that it's on my results as well I can't help but strongly dislike the change for some reason. The icons are both very small and very distracting at the same time and don't aid in adding authority or any important meta information about the site. The changes seem to have added enough noise to make parsing the page annoying, but maybe it's one of those things you brain learns to ignore after a while.
  • ryanmercer 7y ago
    >I noticed this on a co-workers screen recently and my immediate thought was "what dodgy search extensions have they been installing?". My legit first reaction when I saw it last week on my daily driver was "I wonder what extension is trying to cash out".
    • woodrowbarlow 7y ago
      (tangent) i really hate what browser extensions have become.
      • jrullman 7y ago
        They’re returning to their roots — 3rd party toolbars.
• shadowgovt 7y ago
  They are still distinguishable (ads have an "Ad" badge as opposed to a favicon). But yeah, new design seems to push them closer to the same format.
  • rstupek 7y ago
    Much harder to visually pick out which are ads versus not now imo which is probably why they did it
• pushcx 7y ago
  https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ It's a little confusing to read now, so for context: at the time Google published this, it only put ads in the sidebar to the right of search results. This post was written to criticize the practice of putting ads atop search results, which competitors sometimes formatted almost indistinguishably from organic search results.
  • ronilan 7y ago
    Your link is gold. A historic artifact. Amazing how clear the writing is, how simple the message. That’s, like, totally not the corpspeak Goog emits now on a daily basis. So, let’s do some digging. Earliest version of url dates back 4+ years. https://web.archive.org/web/20151213182805/https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ https://web.archive.org/web/20151213182805/https://www.googl... Things were a little better than, but not by much. This has to be earlier. Ah, here is: https://books.google.ca/books?id=oNT3AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289&dq=%22Why+we+sell+advertising,+not+search+results.%22&source=bl&ots=I6_PmXD7O5&sig=ACfU3U1QNk3FhKRMOa69ghaxkVA47C_nXg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiU8cDumZXnAhWRoJ4KHVD5DbQQ6AEwBXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Why%20we%20sell%20advertising%2C%20not%20search%20results.%22&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=oNT3AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA289&lpg=P... This page is from a book by Douglas Edwards, employee number 59 published in 2011. The content of OP url, written by same, is dated March 2002. That company no longer exists. Goog should remove it from their website.
    • ronilan 7y ago
      (And OT, or maybe not, as far as I can recall, AdWords was still CPM back then)
    • amatecha 7y ago
      Excellent sleuthing -- makes sense that the message is so old. There's no way they would produce something like this today.
      • microcolonel 7y ago
        They'll fire all the people who made them this way, and get back to that, if they want to survive the next decade at their scale.
• rinze 7y ago
  Google is an ad network with a search box as the bait. Of course everything looks like an ad, it's by design.
• vectorEQ 7y ago
  don't see why ppl are surprised about this from an ad company. its not a search engine company and never as been, despite having a large search engine...
  • rchaud 7y ago
    Google has been the search champion for close to 2 decades, and are seen as the pinnacle of SV innovation. That's the starting point of any conversation about Google, because the victors get to write history. That's why 'ppl are surprised'. To many, Google's ethos is still 'do no evil', an absurd mantra for a for-profit enterprise whose business model relies on developing ever more effective ways to spy on people's behaviours for the benefit of their advertisers. What's rapidly
• JohnFen 7y ago
  I had to check Google to see what the fuss is about... yup, that's pretty bad.
• thehenster 7y ago
  Even though I want them to have more ad cash, DuckDuckGo isn't vastly better: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=buy+printer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=buy+printer
  • saiya-jin 7y ago
    Are you seeing something else than I am? DDG looks lightyears better than current google now, at least on visual clarity side
    • bazonker 7y ago
      I think the point is DDG has the exact pattern you are all whining about: the organic results have icons and the ad says "Ad" instead.
      • mthoms 7y ago
        >you are all whining about: the organic results have icons and the ad says "Ad" instead. You're being condescending but appear to have missed the point. The "Ad" text in Google's results is in the exact same position and is effectively the same pixel dimensions as the favicon. It's cleverly designed and placed to resemble a favicon, to give the over-all layout more uniformity between ads and organic results. As a user, I want less uniformity between ads and organic results, not more.
        • sukilot 7y ago
          DDG is hiding the "Ad" label on their shopping carousel, with unreadable #888 light grey text. That part is worse than Google's darker #666 (and longer word) "Sponsored". The screenshot doesn't show any Ad links in the text list results (unless the ads are wholly unlabeled). It's not really the same case as the OP.
          • JohnFen 7y ago
            I never noticed that. Perhaps because Google has trained me to ignore anything in the carousel.
• mrkstu 7y ago
  Any CSS wizards that could come up with user injected CSS that would move or highlight ads appropriately? Is GreaseMonkey the best for that, or is there a nice lightweight alternative more fit to purpose?
  • anoncake 7y ago
    Ublock Origin will fix the problem. Why spend more effort on cleaning after Google than necessary?
  • JoshTriplett 7y ago
    If you're going to run an extension to fix the search results, I'd suggest an ad blocker.
  • keb_ 7y ago
    Here's some userstyles I made for myself to help get rid of some of the visual clutter. I use it combined with uBlock Origin though, so it's likely not perfect. I use the Stylus extension for Firefox. https://gist.github.com/keb/8a51c42daeb4c230e7f76664e62f9f42 https://gist.github.com/keb/8a51c42daeb4c230e7f76664e62f9f42
• s3r3nity 7y ago
  I think that's the point - when everything looks like an ad, then nothing looks like an ad. (Read: ads blend in more - so users are probably more likely to click on promoted links.)
• harel 7y ago
  I don't like it, but I'm glad I'm not alone. I thought something was off as I was trying to "skip" the ads and get to the actual results but the "ads" seems to go on and on... Took me a while to realise they are not "ads" but actual results. I guess they are trying to blur the lines between paid and organic content by going the other way - instead of making the ads less obvious, they make the non-ads more ad-ish.
• nokicky 7y ago
  I made a Chrome extension a few months ago to fix the design, you'll find it here: https://github.com/attio/google-ad-fixer https://github.com/attio/google-ad-fixer I'll try and submit to the Chrome Store, let's see if it gets in :)
  • fimoreth 7y ago
    I also have one I submitted over the weekend. They haven't taken it down yet :). Mine is just geared towards my dislike of the favicons, not distinguishing the styling of the ads. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-google-search-favicons/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-google-s... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-google-search-favico/minacgnadopeelfnhjhlmoobniogpded https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-google-search... Source: https://github.com/Jtfinlay/gsearch-hidefavicon https://github.com/Jtfinlay/gsearch-hidefavicon
    • nokicky 7y ago
      Nice! The results look much better without favicons, I'm going to install this too.
      • netsharc 7y ago
        I just created a uBlock origin rule. It seems the extension gets the same job done by removing all HTML elements with the class "xA33Gc" or "K7JcSb" (source: https://github.com/Jtfinlay/gsearch-hidefavicon/blob/master/src/content.js https://github.com/Jtfinlay/gsearch-hidefavicon/blob/master/...). In uBlock Origin one could add the rules: www.google.com##.TbwUpd > .xA33Gc www.google.com##.TbwUpd > .K7JcSb Or more generally: www.google.com##.TbwUpd > img to hide the icons...
• ryanmercer 7y ago
  And it is hideous and much harder to quickly scan for relevant returns (all that empty space).
• NelsonMinar 7y ago
  Not a solution for Google's larger product direction problem, but there's a zillion ways nerds like us can filter out this crap from search results. There's a few brand new browser extensions aimed specifically at stopping this. And if you use an ad blocker, here's some rules: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-fix-googles-ugly-logo-filled-search-results-1841062453 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-fix-googles-ugly-logo-filled-s... In the long run this kind of fix-up is a losing game. But maybe it'll bring you some visual peace for now.
• thrower123 7y ago
  It's pretty simple to just use UBlock Origin. Firstly, I don't usually see any of the doubleclick ad results, because they get filtered out, and secondly, if I do click on them, it redirects you to a warning page first. Friends don't let friends use the internet without an adblocker.
  • coldcode 7y ago
    Adblockers are mostly useless, companies pay them to whitelist and the browsers manufacturers (other than the little guys) seem more inclined to make it less functional. I try at home to use a hosts file (ie a manual pihole) but it breaks so many websites I can't find some combo that blocks ads but doesn't break functionality (I still can't comment on reddit any more). With Google putting ads inline coming from them it gets really hard to filter without causing even more issues (and most people use Chrome so they can figure out things out from both ends).
    • celsoazevedo 7y ago
      > Adblockers are mostly useless, companies pay them to whitelist uBlock Origin is open source and doesn't accept donations or payments to whitelist ad networks: - Github: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/ https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/ - Manifesto: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/MANIFESTO.md
    • wtallis 7y ago
      > Adblockers are mostly useless, companies pay them to whitelist If your adblocker doesn't offer you an easy way to add your own blocking rules, you're using the wrong adblocker. Relying solely on third-party filter lists is never adequate, and at times using them at all is more trouble than they're worth. Conflating the adblocking software with the third-party filter lists you're subscribed to is always a mistake.
• acemarke 7y ago
  This GreaseMonkey userscript worked for me to revert the search results to their previous style: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/395257-better-google/code https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/395257-better-google/code
• mam2 7y ago
  They also kinda build the web though
  • pmlnr 7y ago
    read. more. tech. history. You have no idea how furious your comment made me.
    • SquareWheel 7y ago
      They've built browsers, standards, protocols, libraries, and frameworks for the web. They've contributed more to the web than probably any company outside of CERN.
      • ramraj07 7y ago
        And we're all poorer for it. They have taken a public service and molded into something that makes money for them and only for them. And all the while (maybe gradually) they've masqueraded as some benevolent philanthropy. The day "don't be evil" came off their motto is the day they conceded they are evil. At least as evil as any publicly trading company has to be.
        • SquareWheel 7y ago
          Releasing hundreds of open-source tools and donating protocols to standards bodies is really not what I would consider evil. The web is a thousand times better now than it was ten years ago. And despite the frequent misinformation, "Don't be evil" has never once left their code of conduct.
          • hddherman 7y ago
            The web is better in some technical aspects, certainly, but much worse regarding privacy, mass surveillance and data collection.
          • JohnFen 7y ago
• MrPatan 7y ago
  Really, just use duckduckgo.com. Go to your Firefox' settings and change the default search engine, there, done. See if you care in a week to change it back, I promise you that you won't.
  • runamok 7y ago
    Even easier you can use the "bang" commands in DDG when you do wish to use Google, e.g. !g. E.g. "search something !g". Stopping using Google by default is a big deal if enough people do it.
    • Proven 7y ago
      Firefox did very well for themselves when they made millions switch to Google. But it wasn't considered a big deal. Now doing the opposite is a big deal.
• jhoechtl 7y ago
  A new search engine outside the hands of Google is overdue. It feels like a huge ad machinery.
  • pmlnr 7y ago
    duckduckgo.com
    • sunnytimes 7y ago
      ecosia.org .. plant some trees while you search for pr0n!
    • jhoechtl 7y ago
      Relies on Google
      • Rooster61 7y ago
        Nope. It's powered by Bing by default.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
• boksiora 7y ago
  yes, the new design is very bad, those icons are very distracting.... please get back the old design
• Justsignedup 7y ago
  This is why I adblock. I had adblock disabled for a minute and started clicking ads by accident because I really couldn't tell them apart quickly. Terrible.
• izzydata 7y ago
  I used to use google search regularly to search for new websites with the types of things I am looking for. Now I hardly bother going to new websites unless somebody mentions it personally and I navigate to it directly. I still do lots of image searches. I wonder if those are also heavily influenced by ads now.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
  I disconnect from my phone after 6pm or so and if while doing my crossword puzzle I need trivia answered or something spelled out I can ask my Nest Mini and get no bullshit answers most of the time without ads.
  • minikites 7y ago
    >most of the time without ads For now.
• alecbenzer 7y ago
  0.02: I really didn't mind the change, I assumed it was meant to allow users to more easily identify "well-known" sites in the results: noticing a familiar icon is a lot easier than noticing a familiar URL. This seems potentially good for both users and sites? I guess it's bad for sites that are currently trying to build up their credibility and aren't yet "well-known"? In retrospect, I'm sure blurring the lines between ads and search results was probably part of the motivation. But if they modified ads a bit more to further distinguish them and kept the favicons, I don't think I'd mind.
  • sukilot 7y ago
    The icons are unreadably microscopic, though.
    • JohnFen 7y ago
      Yes, they are -- and as a result, there are many icons that are different but look very much the same in the results unless you examine them very closely.
• codegeek 7y ago
  As a small business owner who doesn't run a whole lot of ads and relies on organic traffic, this is really scary. I could be wrong but as a consumer, I prefer clicking on organic results than ads for the most part. Now there is no difference. If my potential customers also think the same way, we would be screwed. Google, please don' do this.
• Zenst 7y ago
  I'm almost at the stage that I almost instantly scroll to the bottom and read up the results as I'm finding most of my clicks at at best near the middle and more often finding it's the second page onwards.
  • jacurtis 7y ago
    Yes, I too have built a subconcious habit of flicking the scroll wheel on my mouse twice after clicking enter on my search phrase. I just want to get past the 4 ads, the pack of local listings that I don't need, and the carousel of Google Shopping results, so that I can see the organic search results. Of course if you scroll down too far, Google jams another 2-4 ads at the bottom of the search results before you can click the link to the next page. Finding organic search results on a google page is becoming similar to playing a game of "Where's Waldo" (Or "Where's Wally" for non-US friends). There's stuff jammed on the top, on the sides, on the bottom. Looking at the real results is like looking through two slats on a fence. It gets very frustrating.
    • prostheticvamp 7y ago
      > Yes, I too have built a subconcious habit of flicking the scroll wheel on my mouse twice after clicking enter on my search phrase. I hadn’t noticed that I had started doing this, but now that you mention it...
• danShumway 7y ago
  Prefer DuckDuckGo for searching, if possible. If you don't like DuckDuckGo's results and can't tolerate them, then prefer Startpage to Google, which will give you the same algorithm minus tracking/customization. Even post-acquisition, Startpage is still a more privacy-conscious engine than Google, and their ads are better labeled. And while I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here, quick reminder that unless you're running Lynx or some crap, literally everyone on this blog should have an adblocker installed (preferably uBlock Origin). I appreciate there are multiple perspectives people have on whether adblocking should be a scorched-earth policy, or whether it's better to just target the worst actors. But disguising ads as native content is abusive enough behavior that you should be blocking those ads no matter where you fall on that spectrum -- and the UI changes here are very clearly, very obviously meant to make ads blend in with normal page results. The 'ad' indicator is meant to look like just another favicon. I'm seeing people here suggest greaseMonkey scripts, and maybe there's something I'm missing, but I just really don't understand that. Don't restyle the ads, block them! Block advertisers that are abusive.
  • cabaalis 7y ago
    I like DDG, but have been using Ecosia for the past 6 months or so. I like that I've contributed to planting 25 trees (by the averages) just in my normal course of searching.
    • sabertoothed 7y ago
      Ecosia serves Bing results (iirc). The search result quality is awful.
      • neodymiumphish 7y ago
        DDG also uses Bing. I've never used Ecosia before, but it's interesting to me that the experience would be so dramatically different when they're both using the same source. Must be some interesting factors involved in DDG's search to assist in pulling more relevant results out of Bing.
• umeshgmrl 7y ago
  Bing seems lot better lately
• scumbert 7y ago
  Unironically switch to Bing
  • cft 7y ago
    I did, first for any search that might include political bias, due to results' censorship, but then I accidentally discovered that programming related searches and other technical searches are often better in Bing too.
    • phkahler 7y ago
      >> but then I accidentally discovered that programming related searches and other technical searches are often better in Bing too. They have gotten terrible at Google because the results are all ads. Any technical article explaining what an expert may want to know is not part of a corporate product page and therefore has no monetary value for anyone (Google included) to push it up in the results. Ask how to implement something and you'll get a bunch of results for products that implement that thing already.
      • jschwartzi 7y ago
        Yeah I had to stop using Google entirely because I just couldn't find anything relevant to what I actually wanted to know. They've worked so hard to make the results relevant to someone with like 1 year of experience that the results are no longer actually relevant to someone who wants to go deeper or know more or who already knows everything on the first page of results but needs more information than a magic library. To be honest the Internet has gotten significantly less useful as a repository of information as it has aged, to the point where I now have to order books if I want to learn anything new in my field.
  • rkuykendall-com 7y ago
    I hear Duck Duck Go is pretty good these days. I tried their image search after Google removed a feature I liked and it had a feature I didn't even realize I wanted.
• DesiLurker 7y ago
  I think its time for mozilla or another provider to launch their own fully open sources web search. its been a while google has has a serious competition.
• bigmattystyles 7y ago
  Does everything look like an ad, or do ads look like legitimate results. I feel like this is a crucial distinction.
• numbol 7y ago
  Because, in some sense, it is tht ad.
• beaker52 7y ago
  Just like Facebook introducing the "big coloured square with text on" statuses - users give their attention to big coloured squares with text on them, and thus the adverts they were previously accustomed to scrolling right past.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Rebelgecko 7y ago
  I've been getting these sorts of search results for a few months. They're actually what convinced me to move to DDG
• ppod 7y ago
  I'm confused. I noticed this aesthetic change a couple of weeks ago and I wondered what was causing it. So now when I saw this post, I turned off adblock on the search results page to see where the ads are, and I still can't seem to see any ads. The sidebar is blank. The main page has results from "Places", "People also ask" and "images", interspersed with the normal results (which now look more like the old ads), but I don't see any actual ads, even with adblock off. For those of you that have the new look and see ads, where are they?
  • nogridbag 7y ago
    The ads look nearly identical to the search results now except the icon is replaced with "Ad": https://imgur.com/a/DpYGib7 https://imgur.com/a/DpYGib7
    • ppod 7y ago
      Thanks! I don't get very many and for the searches I tried the first "Ad" result was on the second page. Yeah, even then they are way too hard to spot.
    • im3w1l 7y ago
      Your image doesn't show the same experiment as the twitter "article" does
• nif2ee 7y ago
  Reminder that almost every Google search bashing thread on HN is most probably injected by DDG. They have been doing that for years and years and it proved to be very effective. It's a amazing that such a mediocre search engine like DDG can be popular only based on rants and accusations on the big guy. But it seems really to be a very effective marketing technique.
  • Rooster61 7y ago
    Or, people are getting onto HN like they do every day, seeing this thread, and upvoting it of their own volition. Certainly the case for me.
  • dang 7y ago
    It breaks the site guidelines to post insinuations of astroturfing like this. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. Reams of previous explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... if anyone wants it.
    • nif2ee 7y ago
      but it's the truth and if you're seriously unaware of it you have a big problem; DDG, Brave Inc and some other companies have been doing this on a regular basis for a long time. You guys should start charging them and at least make some money off allowing these organized shilling parties.
• dend 7y ago
  My assumption here is that this decision is one where someone had an A/B test that showed people are more likely to click on an ad when the content is structured the way it’s shown. Which comes at the cost of a good user experience, where the feature PM didn’t truly ask: “does this deliver any value to the people using the search?” Always trying to remember the wonderful excerpt[0] from Ken Kocienda’s “Creative Selection” on A/B tests - just because the data shows the outcomes are more significant does not make that a better experience. [0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/kocienda/status/1113450945705177088?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/kocienda/status/11134509457051770...
  • wefarrell 7y ago
    A consequence of having a monopoly is not needing to deliver as much value. I see comments advocating using a different search engine, but the small number of users that move do a different search engine because of this won't offset the increase in revenue Google will see. They pay Apple and Mozilla a substantial amount of money to be the default search engine and most users won't bother to change it.
    • craftinator 7y ago
      If they get bad enough, people will make the effort to change the default search engine. Seems Google has been trying to do this slowly (aka boiling a frog), but similarly to a market bubble, at some point it'll pop and they'll take exponential losses to their market share.
• mtgx 7y ago
  They're turning the web into a close system, just like Facebook did (kind of), so that later on, when it's too difficult for anyone to leave this closed system, they can also start charging sites just for appearing in the "organic results" -- just like Facebook did.
• ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
  I've been stuck with this for two weeks now, and it's bad enough that for the first time ever I've considered using something other than Google. It's just so much harder for my eyes to read, I feel I can't glaze through the results like I used to (and I believe the old search would often give date for things like stack exchange and Reddit, which helps with a wide variety of issues). I'm pretty sure for the layout itself I'll eventually just get a tampermonkey script to make it look like the old, but this is the first thing that has truly made me look for a Google alternative. They have severely damaged their main product, in my opinion.
  • altcognito 7y ago
    It is strangely stressful to even read through the results, let alone find the right one anymore. Switching to DDG is pleasant, it even seems to respect a dark mode setting.
• dana321 7y ago
  Why don't they put the icon and url underneath the title? Seems like its around the wrong way!
• node-bayarea 7y ago
  The redesign is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE! It's really hard for me to find the actual results! WTF!
• jerrac 7y ago
  To be a bit contrarian, it puts the url at the top, that makes it a lot easier to tell if the result is a spam site, or an official site. Ads are easily discernible because they have an icon that says 'Ad'. I like it.
• LeftHandPath 7y ago
  I've been using duckduckgo and bing for a while now. Google is just a fallback.
  • Moru 7y ago
    Yes, been using in for several years now. I don't even think of it as duckduckgo any more, it's just search.
    • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
      The only thing I can’t fully rely on DDG for is on mobile if I search a business on iPhone - I need the address and phone number instantly. DDG still isn’t as good as google at this.
      • manmal 7y ago
        You can always prepend „!g“ before your query in DDG to fall back to Google.
        • josteink 7y ago
          No need to prepend. You can bang it at the end and retry your search if it doesn’t work with DDG.
          • anoncake 7y ago
            I wonder why everybody (including me previously) thinks you have to prepend.
            • miah_ 7y ago
              Because some search terms get interpreted by the browser as trying to hit a specific site. If you prepend the browser probably won't make that mistake. I tend to use !g on the end of my search terms and hit this every now and then; I feel like I've hit this issue in Chrome more than Firefox.
• ogre_codes 7y ago
  It's been clear for a little while that Google no longer cares about giving the best experience with a lot of their tools and is just focused on maximizing revenue. More and more, Google is the modern equivalent of Microsoft in the early 00s, still good enough that most people use it, but each successive "version" piles on more frustrations than benefits. It's so ironic that Google has become that which they most despised when they started. The dominance of Google and Facebook is turning the web into a toxic waste.
  • amatecha 7y ago
    I watched this clip of Steve Jobs[0] recently, where was speaking about promoting/empowering Product vs Marketing people. Some of his comments seem especially applicable: "[...] the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out, by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product vs a bad product." ... "They really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really to help the customers." [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM
    • brazzledazzle 7y ago
      This rings true in my experience. In fact I'd say that some companies that survive this trend tend to repeat it in cyclical manner. Good products, customer oriented then profit motivated short sighted decision making. Rinse and repeat.
    • sytelus 7y ago
      Ironically, Jobs installed Tim Cook as Apple CEO and have publicly said that he is "not a product person".
      • amatecha 7y ago
        Oh, interesting.. did he say how he perceives Tim, or what role he sees him filling?
  • 7y ago
• beshrkayali 7y ago
  I was using ddg on and off for the past year, going back to google for specific searches. Their last changes are total crap. Designers/product-managers who came up with this crap are so out of their depth I have no idea how they got their job in the first place. Needles to say I've been completely relying on ddg for the past weeks that now I really find there's no need for google search. So I'm kinda happy they did this honestly. Hopefully it drives more people away from google.
• j45 7y ago
  I miss altavista and the original google layouts. I guess there's always startpage.com
• markosaric 7y ago
  Many don't like Google's new design. Rather than resort to hacks, try an alternative search engine. There are many and you might even find one you like. https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.qwant.com/ https://www.ecosia.org/ https://www.ecosia.org/ https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ https://swisscows.ch/ https://swisscows.ch/ ...
  • searcher1 7y ago
    Qwant, Ecosia, and (to an extent) DDG share the same Bing backend for web results, so if you're particularly interested in trying out alternatives, here are some others. All of these have their own search indexes. https://yippy.com https://yippy.com - ugly, but probably the best independent search engine outside the "big ones" and DDG https://private.sh/ https://private.sh/ - Run by PIA as a proxy for Gigablast, small index but rapidly getting better https://mojeek.com https://mojeek.com - UK-based, worth trying but has a spam problem https://beta.cliqz.com https://beta.cliqz.com - German based, their technical blog has been posted frequently on HN. Will eventually require a browser extension or their own browser to search. https://yandex.com https://yandex.com - Ought to be mentioned, but certainly not privacy focused.
    • __ka 7y ago
      https://beta.cliqz.com/ https://beta.cliqz.com/ is currently available as any other webpage, and will continue to be available in the same way in the future. I think what's being referred to is another search product (search as you type) we have in the Cliqz Browser. I work on these. The blog referred to: https://0x65.dev/ https://0x65.dev/
  • rhlsthrm 7y ago
    I'd love to see a write up about the differences between all these. "Find one you like" makes it seem like a good search engine is more subjective than it is. It would be cool if these companies collaborate and shared their indexing strategies, algorithms, etc to make the whole alternate search engine space better in general.
• imiric 7y ago
  I've been using a local Searx[1] instance for web search for a few months now, and besides it needing an update when APIs inevitably break, it's been relatively pain-free. What I like the most about it is that I get a unified search results page for all engines, which avoids some of the profile bubble, and that the UI is always consistent, avoiding these scummy redesigns A/B tested to infinity and implemented because it increases their revenue. [1]: https://github.com/asciimoo/searx https://github.com/asciimoo/searx
  • DrPhish 7y ago
    Me too, for about a year. The anonymizing stuff searx does really seems to work. My search results seem uniformly neutral regardless of which computer/profile/browser is in use. I host on my LAN and out on the WAN over https protected with simple auth. All my devices, including my work computers and cell phone browsers, are set to use it. I rarely end up on Google in my life. I actually prefer its interface for everything but images (which are only OK, but still perfectly usable)
  • psic4t 7y ago
    Me too, but with mixed results. In the last weeks, results from DDG or Bing appear later or even never. That make Searx not very reliable at the moment.
• hackin247 7y ago
  How is this not breaking the internet? Im glad and annoyed they did this. Giving DDG another chance. Is this a boneheaded PM decision? Having a button to revert to old search layout would have been a safe bet. Unless or this is a mandate from above...
• Debonnys 7y ago
  Hey Google, Don't Be Evil.
• Guest0918231 7y ago
  It's funny, because if you run AdSense on your website, Google has very strict guidelines about not misleading users and making a clear distinction between advertisements and your content. However, when Google shows ads on their site, they don't need to follow those rules, they blend them in as closely as possible. Also, what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? See the below screenshot. https://i.imgur.com/f0Kolfv.png https://i.imgur.com/f0Kolfv.png Doesn't this seem wrong? For a lot of people, Google has become a site to not only search the internet, but to simply navigate it. It's normal for someone wanting to visit Expedia to search "expedia.com" or "expedia". They are trying to navigate to that website, Expedia is the first organic result, and yet Expedia is pressured into paying for an advertisement to prevent one of their competitors from appearing first. Even when a competitor hasn't advertised, they're still stuck paying like the above screenshot. To me, this feels inappropriate. Google is getting a hefty payday by simply redirecting someone searching for "expedia.com" to the Expedia website.
  • bufferoverflow 7y ago
    Notice the first search result URL is different from the ad URL. That probably explains why they display both.
  • ftvy 7y ago
    >what's the deal with showing an advertisement for the same result that's number one? They paid for the ad. They probably leave it up as first organic results because some people think clicking ads is malignant.
  • 333c 7y ago
    They display both because Google is selling ad space on searches like these, where people search the name of a site. If that site doesn't buy the ad, their competitor will. So sites are being forced to buy ads on their own trademark.
    • Guest0918231 7y ago
      I understand why it's happening and I mentioned it in my comment. However, I just find it incredibly inappropriate that... 1. When I search an exact domain Google will take money from a competitor and show their "advertisement" first. I say that in quotations, because it looks like they're showing a search result, not an advertisement. At this point it feels like companies are paying for their search placement. Pay enough money and you can be the first result for any search term. 2. Does Google give Expedia the option to not pay for an advertisement when there is no competition? I don't think so, and in the example I posted, Google has basically scared Expedia into outbidding no one. The whole thing feels like extortion. Pay us money or we'll send people trying to navigate to your website to one of your competitors.
• raz32dust 7y ago
  Funny thing is, this probably did not happen because some PM decided that ads should look like regular results. It is probably an organic result of A/B testing over time, coupled with revenue being an important metric. Small changes that increase revenue get prioritized and over time, it just evolves into this eventually.
  • titzer 7y ago
    This is what they mean by "AI first". /s
  • satyrnein 7y ago
    Yeah, it could have just been designers wanting to put in favicons for their own sake (which is not intrinsically bad, remember the dark ages before browser tabs had favicons?) and product managers saying, well, the revenue looks good... New Theory of Software Evolution: Designers = random mutations Product Managers = fitness function
• pictur 7y ago
  Google is now a spam search engine
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• omani 7y ago
  time to move away from big evilcorp. Im done with google. will use duckduckgo.
• kolanos 7y ago
  Google also broke accessibility of their search results with this change. Now instead of the page titles, screen readers only read the entire URL. If they don't fix this soon, I'll be permanently switching to DDG.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• ausjke 7y ago
  from today on I officially set my default search engine to ddg
• acroback 7y ago
  Did some Program Manager needed a promotion at Google? Looks like it. I personally dislike such changes, which no one asks for. Either people are just pushing their BS through Google higher ranks or they have no clue how their users actually feel and use their core product. ...
• BenoitEssiambre 7y ago
  In other news, duckduckgo's growth draws a perfect exponential curve: https://duckduckgo.com/traffic https://duckduckgo.com/traffic
• vinaypai 7y ago
  Yeah, Google now shows organic results with similar styling with a favicon so you can only tell the difference by the "Ad" shows next to paid ads. Everyone should switch to DuckDuckGo which shows search results with a favicon and ads in the same format distinguished by and "Ad" next to them. Or maybe Bing which shows the search results with ads mixed in (conveniently distinguished from organic results with an "Ad" mark).
• kfrzcode 7y ago
  Anyone here have a pro-Google stance? Because at this point I'm vehemently against the company and most of its products. There's no good replacement for Calendar or Docs/Sheets as of now, that I'm aware of. Microsoft's suite as mentioned by therealdrag0 is an obvious alternative, and perhaps less advertiser-oriented, but still not a great in-browser option IMO. Especially when considering the interoperability of the "platform," it's clear Google is streets ahead of the competition. It's a shame that the best featured tools in this space are also not open-source, and used (probably) to mine massive amounts of data. I'd be ok if you mined my data while I'm on your servers, but only if you allow me to host my own version of your software for when I don't want to be on your servers.
  • kfrzcode 7y ago
    Of course, Search has viable alternatives but it's really not the biggest thorn in my side.
  • therealdrag0 7y ago
    Pro-google stance: They provide tools millions enjoy for free. As for alternatives have you tried Microsoft's Suite?
    • kfrzcode 7y ago
      Good point, I have some blinders on - but the "millions enjoy free" line doesn't justify all the data-slurping and advert-pushing that ABC does, in my opinion. Too large of a marketshare, there's gotta be some serious anti-trust issues going on behind the scenes. Not to mention the thoughtcrime and influence/propaganda potential.
    • titzer 7y ago
      If you think it's free, then you're not counting right. They're making off you by monetizing your eyeballs, steering you towards the highest bidder, and letting them cajole you into buying something you wouldn't otherwise, either now or down the line. It's a tax on your online experiences that you don't see because the money doesn't leave your wallet and go directly to Google. It's indirect. The bidders get their money from you, in the end.
• danvoell 7y ago
  Total aside, but since we are talking google. It's funny how they have worked so hard to make sure that relevant results show up correctly but if you are paying for ad space, they don't care (sure they have relevancy tests but not if the advertiser is dumb enough to spend too much money). For instance, a search for an intravenous needle tip might show an ad for Barb's cross-stitch needle tip (total made-up example). They know that the result isn't relevant, but Barb is spending so much money they don't care. Seems like there should be a solution to this. Or at least to let Barb know she is doing it wrong.
• surferbayarea 7y ago
  Bye bye google. Hello duckduckgo
• RileyJames 7y ago
  It seems like the only difference between the advertising and non-advertising at this point is the “Ad” fav icon. Plus a small (i) info button on the right of an ad. If websites change their fav icons to “Ad”, effectively all results look like ads. Doesn’t achieve a lot, but it does highlight an obvious flaw in their design. It could force a change, but most likely they would just filter the fav icon.
• GiorgioG 7y ago
  I just switched to Edge and didn't bother switching out the default search engine (Bing of course) and for most things it works just as well as Google. Ironically, Google is better at searching for .NET related errors ;)
• mgh2 7y ago
  I hope they are only A/B testing. If not, will likely jump ship to Bing, that offers rewards.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• sfgweilr4f 7y ago
  Completely agree. I haven't used google for so long I thought I'd mis-typed it and got some click farm thing. My impressions were the same as that tweet. I'm not happy with the new Google search results. At all. I can't tell what is what. Is it an Ad? Is it a page? Is it...? So I've now told people who contact me to avoid Google's home page and use DDG so they get the results they're after. Feedback so far is they prefer the DDG replacement instead of Google. "Fixed" is what one person said. Their POV was that Google's result page was now "broken". (These aren't tech savvy people, either) I also read in one of the follow up tweets that we now apparently have a form of "banner blindness" where we skip ads because they are deemed not or less relevant. This theory might be right. But Google's solution is not wise: if we associate ads as less relevant and fade out attention when we see Ads versus results, what happens when the entire google results page looks like ads?
• michaelpetan 7y ago
  i'm not as wise as most here, but as a web UX designer, the new "interface" feels odd, awk-wierd, and as many are saying hard to see whats an ad or not. I was around for the NEW COKE, i did the launch event. Coke lost sight of what the changes, tweaks would mean to consumers. In focus groups the subjects where not informed that the OLD COKE would be taken away, deleted, gone. so when asked how it, tasted better the OLD COKE,a majority said better, but better how, and does better mean your taking away my choice?
• michaelpetan 7y ago
  I have some experience with user experience and navigation design. The new google search experience is horrible. The ads dominate, the scale seems clumsy and the layout and spacing seems awk-wierd. I was on the launch of NEW COKE way back when,Seems like a repeat, Coke did a focus group, taste test and asked "is this new coke was good or better than the old coke." A majority said better, but they did not know the OLD VERSION (classic ) would be no longer available. Deleted from memory. The result was a consumer response that i think has yet to be equaled. Old vs New, if they knew it was an either or the vote would have been different. I appreciate Hacker News and the intelligence that is emitted.
• IvyMike 7y ago
  Others have mentioned that this is almost certainly the result of a long course of A/B testing. The problem with this kind of aggressive A/B testing is that it's a game of "how far can we push the user?" So instead of having enthusiastic fans, they have people who begrudgingly use them. Sure, Google picks up an extra nickel here or there, and I'm sure some PMs got a raise. But I don't know any strong Google boosters any more, and there are hordes of people ready to switch over once something tolerable comes along. (And from the comments, it seems like many of you have already found tolerable replacement search engines. I think I'm going to join you.)
  • komali2 7y ago
    Haha, I remember when they announced chrome like 15 years ago, hyper excited 13 year old me literally emailed ceo@google.com with how excited I was. I uninstalled Firefox and installed chrome. And now I exclusively use Firefox again.
    • yomly 7y ago
      Ha you are totally right, Chrome was such a joy to use back in the day... Remember when google was cool? https://youtu.be/SC-2VGBHFQI https://youtu.be/SC-2VGBHFQI
      • trts 7y ago
        These were brilliant ads. I remember installing Chrome not long prior to this period and it had its issues, but it was so fast that I couldn't not use it.
    • perl4ever 7y ago
      My employer just banned Firefox. Unless you theoretically have a "business reason" that they accept.
      • eitland 7y ago
        That is crazy.
• RyanShook 7y ago
  So interesting how Google can tweak just a few lines of code/HTML on a template and generate so much more in revenue.
• ryeguy_24 7y ago
  More and more I'm bypassing Google and going to places like Reddit, Quora, News Hacker, Stack Overflow to search for what I need. I honestly think there has been a decline in value in the top search results. Hard to pinpoint but definitely an increasing gut feeling. On average, the top search results I receive are heavily advertised with lots of clickbait or content that is on multiple pages of a slideshow. Just overall poor quality.
  • sefrost 7y ago
    Same, except to search Reddit I then end up back on Google using the “site:” keyword because the Reddit search is awful!
• jijji 7y ago
  the quality of the results is going down, not to mention the suggestions... it seriously looks like the suggestions were made up by their PR department. Everything is going downhill, use DDG
• CodeSheikh 7y ago
  So a bad person can steal favicon of say New York Times and trick users clicking their fake links because eventually users will get used to establishing "credibility" of brand by recognizing the favicons? (granted the bad person is great at SEO best practices and their search results show up at the top)
• vannevar 7y ago
  Yes, I think Google reached "peak search" awhile back, and we're now on a downward trend. The search results are increasingly degraded by commercial intervention, by Google and its paying customers. There has always been a conflict of interest between Google and its public consumers, and Google is now leveraging its near-monopoly market position to shift the balance of that conflict to its financial advantage.
• neodymiumphish 7y ago
  My issue isn't so much with the ads being prioritized; it's with when the ad link goes. For example, I often search for something vague because I can't remember the name or the site. When I use Google, the first or second ad is almost always relevant to what I wanted or exactly what I wanted. However, clicking the ad takes me to some sales-pitch link on the site that I don't care to go to. Instead, I'm trying to get to the log in page or front page, or whatever. This forces me to scroll down to the search result of the same name, or just go back up to the omnibox and type the domain in (now that I know what it was).
  • tajstar 7y ago
    This is more of the site's fault rather than google's since whoever set up the ads chose that as the landing page. The whole point of the ad is to rope in new business so if you are clicking on the ad for the login page you're just going to a page that was made to sell (and eating into that company's ad spend)
• aerovistae 7y ago
  First time in my life I've ever wanted to stop using google. Anyone have an extension to CSS it back to the way it was?
  • a5aAqU 7y ago
    Google rejected it as "spam" for the Chrome extension store, but it's available for Firefox. It was a quick hack yesterday to make the URLs visible. Pull requests are welcome. It misses a few cases, and the URL should probably be green rather than highlighted. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-engines-show-me-urls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-engine... https://github.com/codeselfstudy/search_engine_show_me_urls https://github.com/codeselfstudy/search_engine_show_me_urls
• robbrown451 7y ago
  This is a horrible decision. I find it jarring and disorienting, like I made a mistake and am at some non-Google search engine or something.
• flibble 7y ago
  It’s only a matter of time until they intersperse these organic looking ads into the search results, instead of all at the top and the bottom.
• tensor 7y ago
  On mobile this is even worse. Often the first page and a half of results are just ads. It's so bad that sometimes I've almost stopped scrolling wondering if there are even any real results on the page.
• a5aAqU 7y ago
  Yesterday, I created a quick browser extension to put URLs back in the search results, and Google rejected it as "spam". > Your item did not comply with the following section of our Program Policies: > > "Spam and Placement in the Store" There is no spam. It's just a few small JavaScript functions that put the URLs under each search result. Clearly not spam: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-engines-show-me-urls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-engine... https://github.com/codeselfstudy/search_engine_show_me_urls https://github.com/codeselfstudy/search_engine_show_me_urls
• rafaelvasco 7y ago
  Like someone recommended , https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ appears to be a solution. Going to give it a try;
  • impalallama 7y ago
    how they different than something like duckduckgo?
    • rafaelvasco 7y ago
      They say they're using Google's search engine. They bought the rights to use it.
• amatecha 7y ago
  I've been wondering what it is about Google Search results recently, in that they seem _substantially worse_ than ever before. I hadn't quite noticed what the difference was, but I was really surprised, remembering how Google Search results used to be the very best. Now I know what the difference is: making normal results look the same as Ad results. "Don't be evil" :)
  • tolstoshev 7y ago
    also the habit of putting "missing: <search term>" and showing you stuff that isn't as targeted as what you were actually looking for.
• riaabot 7y ago
  censor me, rephrase into some kind of classy english accent, or whatever, but sometimes things are wrong and nefarious and should be called out as such, plain for all to see: fock google.
• ChuckMcM 7y ago
  Very much a way to mitigate the FTC's requirements on making advertising more distinct than organic results. It is an unpopular opinion but I believe Google is dying. They have been for a long time. The cancer is that nothing other than search ads generates the revenue and margins they need and the margins on search ads are now down 90% from where they were in 2010. Personally I'm long on Microsoft/Bing as a candidate for the surviving English language web index. My prediction (which isn't shared by many so don't be surprised if you disagree :-)) is that once Google's dying becomes mainstream and they start heading into ground that Apple will buy their assets, keep Maps, Search, and maybe Waymo and throw the rest away.
  • JoeSmithson 7y ago
    > "the margins on search ads are now down 90% from where they were in 2010." Do you have a source for this?
    • lrem 7y ago
      This is publicly available data, published quarterly in the financial statement... I don't recall ever hearing about that kind of a drop.
    • georgiecasey 7y ago
      i presume he means the increase in the traffic acquisition costs like the $12billion (!!) they pay Apple to remain the default search engine in Safari. i always found this baffling business logic from Google. i think Google is a strong enough brand that a lot of people would switch to it if it wasn't the default. maybe not everyone would switch but not worth $12 billion a year
      • dredmorbius 7y ago
        Buying that traffic bids up the cost of any other competitor doing similarly.
    • ChuckMcM 7y ago
      The quarterly financial statements, and a knowledge of how Google accounting works[1]. Revenue from ads is correlated to CPC (cost per click), ad inventory is correlated to ads on Google sites vs ads on "other" sites, and margin pressure is correlated with operational expenses and traffic acquisition costs. The fuzziest number to model is the ad inventory and relies on estimates of search traffic, ads serviced, and reported revenue and CPC. [1] I worked there and paid attention at their 'life of a dollar' class they used to give Nooglers. :-)
• musicale 7y ago
  Is it too much to ask for a real URL, not some garbage link?
• thecleaner 7y ago
  I think this is a deeper problem, one with the limitations of personalized search itself. In the initial days people were picking up relevant stuff from the search results offered by Google and the feedback was helpful to improve the search index. Nowadays, people click whatever is the first result so the only feedback obtained is that results are great. Everything is so highly optimized for clickability that users are just not able to think and provide feedback.
• nullc 7y ago
  Plot twist: Google insiders concerned with the consistently unethical practices of the company are working in secret to undermine the viability of their primary revenue stream to save the world from google. ... Fiction aside, since so much evil is done by accident and indifference it's only fitting that some heroics be done by similar mechanisms.
• average-alice 7y ago
  hm
• thowthisaway 7y ago
  Google is a Trillion dollar company for a reason
• stagas 7y ago
  Googlexit, anyone?
• 40four 7y ago
  Good thing I stoped using google search last year :) Actually I’ve stopping using google for EVERYTHING, except one old legacy throwaway gmail account. I must say, it feels really good!
  • sefrost 7y ago
    What do you use instead of Google Maps?
    • 40four 7y ago
      Oh yeah, you got me, I forgot about that! Heh, well I do still use Google maps & Waze. So there’s that. For what it’s worth I use maps without logging in.
• CapsAdmin 7y ago
  Something that's kind of related is that I feel I'm seeing more and more spam websites and straight up malicious websites on google. They are often duplicated across many domains. By malicious I mean websites that destroy the back history, create alerts, beeps the computer (not sure how that works) and other nonsense about virus infections.
• hosh 7y ago
  My understanding is that the Google culture has shifted dramatically from engineering-driven to money-driven. It reminded me of the story that got posted about Boeing: https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis/ https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg... I don't know if people will necessarily die, like it did with the 737 Max. But I wouldn't be surprised if the key underpinnings of a participatory democracy gets compromised.
• CapsAdmin 7y ago
  Something that's kind of related is that I feel I'm finding more and more duplicate websites and straight up malicious websites on google. They are often repeated across many domains and I usually see them on more literal search results (like searching with quotes). By malicious I mean websites that destroy the back history, create alerts, flash the favicon, etc. By duplicate websites I mean websites that take content from something like stack overflow and puts it on a website with ads. For example here's how I found it as I was writing this: I wrote "stack trace" in search to get some auto complete results for something to test. I see "stack trace #0 main thrown in" as one of the suggestions and search for that with quotes. I get 2 results, one website that looks legit, and one website that's malicious website, something that redirects me to a website that looks like facebook telling me I won something. It also destroys my back history.
• ElijahLynn 7y ago
  This makes me close to switching my default search engine to Duck.com. If it stays it will push harder.
• vmurthy 7y ago
  If you must use Google, I suggest you use a couple of settings in uBlock/Adblock as detailed in this 4 day old Lifehacker article [1] From the article, - To remove the favicon: google.com##.xA33Gc - To remove the URL: google.com##.iUh30.bc.rpCHfe - To remove the arrow next to the URL: google.com###am-b0 and google.com##.GHDvEf.ab_button - To remove everything: google.com##.TbwUpd and google.com###am-b0 and google.com##.GHDvEf.ab_button [1] https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/01/how-to-fix-googles-ugly-logo-filled-search-results/ https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/01/how-to-fix-googles-ugl...
• semerda 7y ago
  Google is now an “ads search engine”. Eek!
• notadoc 7y ago
  Suddenly favicon optimization is going to be the hot new trend, and some nonsense far will impress us all with an atrocious one that catches the eye. Bright red arrows, green arrows, red stars? Hmm what will it be!
• chrshawkes 7y ago
  Whatever happened to following their own stupid advice about not having more than three ads via ad-sense, not having a bunch of ad's above the fold etc?? I do a search and I see four ad's and more ad's on a map and it's the entire screen. Thanks Google!
• eweise 7y ago
  Funny I didn't even notice the change. I guess after switching to DuckDuckGo a couple months ago, I haven't felt a need to do a google search.
• juped 7y ago
  Another way every Google result now looks like an ad: they're all SEO-spammed with hilarious shoehorned references to various years from 2017 to 2020.
• akerro 7y ago
  Just use µblock origin, it hides ads from search results.
• mcv 7y ago
  One of the responses on twitter links to another twitter thread: https://twitter.com/johnny_makes/status/1218668895655079936 https://twitter.com/johnny_makes/status/1218668895655079936 This one explains very well how I've recently come to feel about Google Search. I still remember when they were new and everybody flocked to them because they had the cleanest search with the best results. These days I barely see any results anymore because I'm automatically parsing them all as ads. Because that's what they did here: organic results look more like ads now. So my automatic ad blindness filters them out. Whenever I search on Google, I feel like I'm only getting useless results, so I switched completely to DuckDuckGo now (I've used it before, but only occasionally; from now on it's going to be my default everywhere).
• kqvamxurcagg 7y ago
  It's an example of a product regressing in quality over time. You can't even search properly using double quotes now. I have to deliberately append 'reddit' or 'stack overflow' to most queries to get decent answers now.
• tech234a 7y ago
  A little while back I started experimenting with changing the user agent string and found that there are actually many different variations of Google’s search UI that are currently accessible. For example, I was surprised to find that by setting the user agent string to Netscape Navigator 4, I could get a lightweight, no-JS version of Google that looked like it was from the early 2000’s. By using a user agent string from IE6/IE9, I could get a version of Google they looked like it was from around 2010 (the former with a simple white navigation bar, and the latter with a more complex black navigation bar). I found it interesting that these UIs seems to be almost frozen in time: many of their navigation bars contain some outdated links that either redirect or 404. I assume this mean that old browser versions are stuck in time in terms of Google search UI also. Many of these UIs don’t have the controversial changes that Google has recently been implementing, including adding favicons and hiding full URLs. I also found that there were several different mobile UIs for Google with different navigation schemes and search box styles. I implemented what I found in a simple Firefox extension that changes the user agent string for Google searches [1]. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-ui-chooser/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search...
  • userbinator 7y ago
    Many of these UIs don’t have the controversial changes that Google has recently been implementing, including adding favicons and hiding full URLs. I used the UA workaround up until near the end of last year, when they broke it and instead replaced with an even more dumbed-down mobile UI. (If you know of a UA which can still "unlock" the old JS-less full-featured UI, please say so!)
  • rasz 7y ago
    Your post got me excited, sadly it doesnt work :( I installed "User-Agent Switcher for Chrome" and played with strings from this extension. Even verified in dev console "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)" was being send, cookies/localstorage deleted. At best what I was able to get is "Second Alternate Mobile UI". I was really hoping for "Last-gen, Black Bar", but it seems unattainable :(
    • 7y ago
• ljm 7y ago
  This is a good time for education to step in and ramp critical thinking and deduction to the max. Google is about as evil as they come now. They’re taking the role MS did in the 90s.
• bhartzer 7y ago
  I changed the favicon to a black "Ad" text and Google didn't really like it that much--they gave the site a manual penalty.
• CivBase 7y ago
  Duckduckgo is just a better user experience. Search results are almost always good enough (sometimes better), and you can easily fall back to Google by adding "!g" to the search.
• jonplackett 7y ago
  I really hate AMP. To the point where I started making an iOS browser that’s sole purpose was to bounce me from AMP links to the original link and delete the history step in between. I wish Apple would offer this in Safari - a simple ‘ignore AMP pages’ check box. AMP is google worst attempt yet at taking over the web. It’s so user hostile. It breaks lots of sites with its fake scroll and fake back button at the top of google news. I hate it soo bad!
  • ubercow13 7y ago
    There is a feature to do this in Safari already, but it's not automatic. If you force press or long press on a link so the preview window pops up, then tap on the preview to load the link, it will skip the AMP page.
  • zackees 7y ago
    Are you suggesting that Google is evil? Because you would be totally right. As a 8.5 year employee of Google I had to resign and blow the whistle. I gathered all of the disclosure documents and stored them here: --> https://www.zachvorhies.com https://www.zachvorhies.com <-- It's worse than you can possibly imagine. Everyone else seems to be waking up to this just recently (last 6 months).
    • spectramax 7y ago
      Thanks for your efforts
    • ben174 7y ago
      Mad respect to you. Odd this is the first I've heard about you. I've got some reading to do.
• fdr 7y ago
  Yelp has also done this. It's very (or rather, isn't very) noticeable on mobile, where it takes some attention to see if you are in algorithmic or sponsored results. Looks like Overture/Goto.com was a bit too early, and a bit not-monopoly-enough.
• amelius 7y ago
  I guess that's a nice job for adblockers, to rewrite the search results pages into something that doesn't look (and isn't) ad-ridden.
• brutus1213 7y ago
  How did this get green-lit? i.e. what story did they have to tell themselves and externally? This seems like an extremely hostile move to users as well as their customers (ad sellers). I simply can't distinguish ads from search results any more. I can't be the only one.
• fjabre 7y ago
  Even worse type in "What to watch" and now Google pushes its own app on you and pushes down legitimate web results for this search in favor of their web app solution for this search. As an independent app dev I find this unconscionable. I expect to be fed web results that are not tainted by Google's own offerings especially not in the form of an web app that pushes other independent results halfway down the page. It's actions like this that make it clear Google is a threat to the web at large and this threat needs to be neutralized or we will all pay down the line.
• kunglao 7y ago
  Try using search engines like Qwant. Give others a fighting chance.
• keyle 7y ago
  Woah it's quite flagrant. Personally I wouldn't know I have been using ddg for the last few months and I highly recommend it.
• vpEfljFL 7y ago
  What did you expect from the advertisement company? I'm pretty sure ad providers liked the changes because they are getting more traffic to their websites. So, the actual clients are happy why so much dislike towards a new change. The most disappointing thing for me in this thread is recommendations to install ad blockers. This thing is harming the web the most because instead of focusing on the issue (bad UI) we just supporting such behaviour by using websites with bad UI. p.s. I'm in risk of being downvoted because of just expressing unpopular opinion about ad blockers.
• agumonkey 7y ago
  isn't the google star dead already ?
• ghostpepper 7y ago
  Can someone explain to me which of the five links in that image are ads so I can have the "aha, sneaky google" moment as well?
• zelly 7y ago
  This was the endgame. Ever wonder why the original release of Chrome combined the search bar and the address bar? Nobody bookmarks/memorizes domains or URLs anymore. Google == the web, as far as most people are concerned. 90% of the time I search for something, I end up on Wikipedia, StackExchange, or HTML versions of documentation/code repos like Github. So I started just searching Wikipedia etc. directly. Next step in taking back my sovereignty is to get in the habit of cloning git repos and ripgrepping the code/docs instead of relying on Github (another monopoly getting bigger every day). (Advertising companies HATE him!)
• geekamongus 7y ago
  So that is what is going on with my search results. I hate it. It makes me feel dirty.
• typpo 7y ago
  I know Google is unpopular here, but the new design doesn't really change ad visibility. Just compare the designs side-by-side [1]. If anything, the new design emphasizes colorful organic favicons. [1] https://i.imgur.com/fEo0QF9.png https://i.imgur.com/fEo0QF9.png
  • crazygringo 7y ago
    Can't believe I had to scroll this far down to see this. They've also had this new design on mobile since May of last year [1]. But nobody seemed to care then? I think people are just bothered by any visual changes in any product they're used to. I found the change slightly jarring for a day... then realized it doesn't really feel much better or worse than the previous way. I guess people were just emotionally attached to URL being in green and below the title, rather than in dark gray and above. We develop attachments to familiar things, it's just how we are. [1] https://www.blog.google/products/search/new-design-google-search/ https://www.blog.google/products/search/new-design-google-se...
• zmmmmm 7y ago
  Would like to hear anybody from Google (anyone?) try to defend this as "not being evil". For a long time I have dismissed the perrenial chant that starts every time Google does something someone doesn't like that they're now "evil". But this really seems to be 100% pure user hostile and directly in conflict with Google's mission to "organise the world's information".
• EasyTiger_ 7y ago
  They really couldn’t care less about their reputation could they?
• bamboozled 7y ago
  Wow, it’s amazing how a company can stray so far from its humble origins and original ethos. It’s an interesting study. I remember Google before Gmail. It was a different time with such promise for a better web and better world. What a shame it’s becoming such an irrelevant piece of junk. Then again, where else could it have went ? What a shame.
• chrischen 7y ago
  I wish there was an easy way to charge customers who are savvy enough to distinguish between ads and organic results different pricing, but until then everyone is subject to the Google tax. Our numbers still show a significant portion of customers come from ad clicks, and we have no choice but to bid on them to stay competitive. I have no problem with companies charging for services, but by decoupling the payment for Google's "free" services from the buyer we're all getting a screwy deal. At least their engineers are paid well though...
• rvz 7y ago
  Well this is Google you're up against. We techies complain every now and then about Google's practices, we hate it and end up moving on and we find ourselves using them again and again. They already ruined the web with Facebook by riddling their search results with ads, being part of the ICAAN and having their own TLD, and then introducing AMP. In this case for this ad search result problem, uBlock Origin wipes these ad-links anyway. No need for these other funky hacks suggested in the Twitter thread. It's also funny to see some Twitter users in the thread who have a website only for me to see on uBlock Origin which reports usages of 'Google Analytics'. Looks like we will all go back to spreading Googleware once again.
• clement_b 7y ago
  I wonder what the tipping point will be? At what point Google Search revenue will have peaked, pushing Google to accelerate the pace of experiments and new solutions to make more out of fewer users. Like many around here, I have (re)started using alternatives to Google products last year. We're early adopters, so it will take a while for Google to be affected by a mass exodus, but what will happen when it will start? What medium will they use to fill the gap. The only (currently) untapped options matching Search's reach to display ads are: Gmail, Android, Google Photos. Probably nothing else. What happens for advertisers targeting specifically users like me who end up stopping using Google Search (e.g., how do you reach a high earner from Bay Area if they have completely stopped using Search? Because this, will happen first, and these users are valuable). The required scale of any alternative is critical. Compensating for Search revenue decline is no easy feat. So much that, until now, nothing else generates anything even close to Search's revenue. If you talk profit, it's even worse as YouTube is probably not as profitable as Google would like (YouTube Premium anyone?) it to be. So, the future will probably come from outside of Google's own properties, and that is why they are slowly killing competition in the ad tech space (3rd party cookies & Chrome). That is why they have been trying to diversify and are wisely enough pushing very hard with GCP and other proven revenue streams like subscriptions (YouTube Music, YouTube Premium, gSuite). Probably also why founders really left. It will be an interesting decade, for sure!
• 7thaccount 7y ago
  Time for duck duck go
• gdsdfe 7y ago
  It sounds financially absurd or foolish but someone should work on search, Google can't stay the Monopoly for long
• chrisfrantz 7y ago
  It’s interesting, Google is moving completely pay to play if you also look at the ad tech movement right now. Google has always preferred you just give them a dump truck of money and have them run the ads where they would prefer. With Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) they generate the ads and the keywords you bid on. Which means you can basically agree to pay Google X amount per month and they will run ppc ads for you. The part that you won’t find online, since most of these guides come from agencies that want you to pay them to manage the ads, is that these DSA search ads actually work really well, in some cases outperforming agency work. It could be preferential treatment internally for its own generated content or maybe google just knows which specific copy to show, URL’s to link to and which keywords to surface the ads under, better than any human can. Either way, it’s starting to paint a bleak future for the web and even as a marketer, it’s not one I’m excited about.
• unnouinceput 7y ago
  Google changed their results page? I didn't notice. uBlock Origin does wonders I suppose. For me their results look the same as always. Youtube as well, barely any ads slips the tight net my ad-blocker has.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Schnitz 7y ago
  At this point GOOG is just another legacy company ready to be disrupted
• ggggtez 7y ago
  I don't get it. They say "Ad" on them don't they? The picture of the search results doesn't even show any ads in it.
• rukuu001 7y ago
  Looks like absolute trash. DDG is search of choice now, !g a last resort
• rawoke083600 7y ago
  Thank You Google... My Life is Better With You. I'm going to voice maybe the unpopular opinion here... Disclaimer:I don't work for google, nor am I rich or part of a big corp. Thinking of what google has given us... mostly for free (yes yes I know we have paid in data and privacy...) 1. Really good search results: I remember the day of the search wars. AltaVista was the best there was and it was kinda crap. But but but I hear you say.... the results are worse and the ads blah blah so use another search engine then. For the most part they deliver on what they promised.. Organising the worlds information and they do it mostly for free for you. 2. Maps: Holly hell I don't want to live in a world WITHOUT IT !! I'm the type of person that gets lost in a mall. I kid you not. Yea I had a very expensive(for me at least) TomTom but Google maps has been free and always in my pocket. 3. GMail: When last did you have to delete a mail ? I freaking love GMail. There are few companies so good at spam protecting a 10 year old email address ! Sure there are things that can be better... ironical for me I wish it was search-inside-gmail. But apart from that Gmail is amazing they almost never down and never crap. GMail got there first with the big mailboxes and not too crappy UI. Thunderbird is a mess and slow. I save so many digital stuff(forever) just by emailing it to myself. Its Free - You bloody ungratefull fools ! 3.Chrome(Browser). As stated I come from a time of the browser wars and Netscape and though Netscape was nice for the time. Chrome again blow it out the water... It just took us to the next level. Fine right now most modern browsers are at this next level but again Google got their first and again its free. 4. ML and Data-Tools. Maybe I get a bit specilzied here but TensorFlow is a fantastic.. yes its awkward to program but keras is a nice layer on-top of it. But Google did the ground work and still pushing the boundaries. Guess what yea... TF is free. Every had to pay for a "Delphi-Component" or any fancy Borland Compilers ?? Blessed you lucky stars ! Thanks Google ! 5. Targeted Ads: Yea I get ads can be anoying but all these amazing planatary free service as mentioned above needs to be paid somehow... Guess what I like personlized ads compared to shitty ads about hair shampoo for women ! I watched "normal free to air tv" the other day, and q generic ad break came on... Lol it almost felt cruel to watch this advertiser just blasting it's un-targeted ads at me that will never buy fancy hair shampoo to the masses. If I type in plumber by god I want to see plumber ads in my area. 5b GoogleAds: Still the cheapest way to promote your business. Can you imagine going back to the old day... Printing 5000 flyers paying some kid to delivery it for you Try working out your CPL on that ! I always try to look for new advertising opportunities for my small business from newsletters to billboards the money they want to charge is crazy !! And most of the time untraceable ! With GoogleAds if I spent 1k on ads I can pretty much make up a spreadsheet model and deduce how much I will get for it. Try doing that with a billboard, flyers, school newspaper, BingAds( awful ), newsletter.radio or SMS. Balancing the products and balance sheet of a company as big as Google must be a nightmare I don't want that job. Most comments here about Google ruining this and that... well its easy don't use their products go be unhappy on another platform. My life is truly easier with Google in my life ! Thank You Google.... You Are Like A Long Marriage... Your Not Perfect And Neither Am I... But My Life is Better With You. Thanks For All The Freebies And Advances.
• JamalW 7y ago
  RIP Google.
• systematical 7y ago
  I thought I was just going crazy. I asked friends and they didn't agree. It actually looks at lot like duck duck go. I never liked their UI, but if I am faced with a privacy destroying goliath and a terrible UI or a privacy-protecting company with a horrible UI...well I think the choice is obvious. Google took queues from Reddit and fucked their UI. That's why those top UI/UX grads get paid the big bucks I guess.
• userbinator 7y ago
  I know a lot of Google's own employees read this site and sometimes respond to comments, maybe even ones who had something to do with this change, so it would be very interesting to know what they think. Presumably its own employees use it to search too, so they would've also noticed the decline in result quality? I wonder if there's any discussion about this on their internal channels ("why can't I find info about X?" "what happened to the URLs?")... or do they get a special internal version of search that works more like it used to for everyone else, so they don't notice?
• anigbrowl 7y ago
  At the same time, they've also made filetype icons (like pdf) less visible, which is hugely annoying when you're searching for a specific document. The canonical versions of legal filings and government documents are usually in pdf, because their publication is a legal fact, so it matters quite a bit even if you don't care for pdf from an interactivity/metaphorical point of view. Also, Carthage must be destroyed: the vertical created by ownership of the database and user interface is a Bad Thing about the web and HTML. Yes, it can be made consistent for everyone which is great from an adoption or branding point of view, which in turn generates more economic activity, but it becomes worse and worse for consumers of the service over time as providers move toward extraction of economic rents. On the other hand, perhaps this speeds evolution. I foresee distributed and (quasi-adversarial) search networks with much more client-side intelligence, somewhat like Archie and Veronica search engines in the pre-web days.
• mikorym 7y ago
  Am I correct that it doesn't say "ad" or "sponsored" at all? Is that even legal (in some countries)?
  • skybrian 7y ago
    I just searched on "Hawaii hotels" (to make sure ads show up) and got a bunch of ad links, each prefixed by Ad in bold, followed by a bunch of regular links with a favicon (?) where the Ad appears. It doesn't seem that hard to distinguish? Perhaps other people are seeing something else?
    • mikorym 7y ago
      In the picture in OP I doesn't seem to like like that. Maybe the picture is not clear or resized? Edit: I googled as well, and got the same results as you did.
• navidkhn1 7y ago
  I wrote a quick css snippet when I first saw it - I use it with the firefox plugin stylus. https://gist.github.com/navidkhn1/a2eff24419ef8d4ff8b40b6498532ec2 https://gist.github.com/navidkhn1/a2eff24419ef8d4ff8b40b6498...
• finneganscat 7y ago
  Google gives results that aren’t ads? Wow, I thought they were just an ad search engine.
• Haga 7y ago
  Seems a search engineer exodus is imminent.. What good is your best work if the world does not get to see it? Can not write this in a resume.
• rs23296008n1 7y ago
  Different thought: our expectations are in the way. Let's see it as it is. If the whole page looks like an ad then maybe we should see it that way. Google search is now for finding which ad to click on. Its now an advertising index. Not a general search engine. They don't want you finding anything but ads. So they've made everything look like ads. I think I'll stick with DDG. Unfortunately if the whole page is an ad then the whole page is likely irrelevant. No matter how much data they have on me, paid content in my search results are likely not what I want to see. Them knowing I have fish hasn't helped them advertise to me. Google results don't include who I regularly buy from. Even reading my fish hobby email account hasn't helped them improve. I've already used google search with that google account etc. All the ads were completely useless. Trying to sell me irrelevant items from irrelevant retailers. Wrong fish. Or trying to steer me towards boats. If anything, I didn't find what I needed and dropped back to DDG. I needed information necessary to a sale and paid content is completely inappropriate. All that infrastructure slowed down and frustrated a sale. So. Not so good.
• matheist 7y ago
  Pure uBlock Origin filter syntax: www.google.com##+js(remove-attr.js, onmousedown, .rc > .r > a) www.google.com##.rc > .r > a:after:style(content: attr(href); display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; color: darkgreen; white-space: nowrap; width: 100%) www.google.com##.rc > .r > a > br www.google.com##.TbwUpd www.google.com##.B6fmyf:style(right: 0px) This restores the old style: no favicon, full green URL. (submitted 4 days ago as a Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22072706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22072706)
• Iv 7y ago
  I used to think it was just me not keeping up with the cultural change. Then Amazon made their search result unusable by interlacing each product row with a product advertisement row. Browsing visually just looking at pictures became insufferable. I then installed Stylus, a firefox extension that allows you to add a few lines of CSS to any website. I dont do webdev, but the level of CSS it requires is minimal. I just made filters for all the websites with these toxic features. I wish there was a repository where people could share their CSS corrections with each other to make the web saner.
• dmode 7y ago
  Let’s face it. This is largely a first world problem. In a few months we will soon forget that this is a new design and will shriek when someone shows us the old design. I am thinking of all the ink that was used up when iOS7 was launched with flat icons
• teekert 7y ago
  I've been using DDG for a couple of months now (longest streak ever, I usually go back to Google but the !g options helps). Anyway, I don't see what is different and the same from what ads look(ed) like? could I have become so desensitized so quickly? Is it the missing of that green URL? Hmm, didn't even notice although it's there on DDG.
• vfinn 7y ago
  Such an idiotic move by Google. You really should switch back for your own sake.
• dandare 7y ago
  Startup elevator pitch: We will do for search what Google did for search. (Joking, just use DDG)
• anibalin 7y ago
  Add this filter on ublock origin: google.com##.xA33Gc
• varshithr 7y ago
  For people who are suggesting DDG, At the risk of exposing my unpopular opinion, I kind of like personalized results. In fact, I prefer it. It improves the searching speed a lot and Google exactly knows what I had on my mind. Isn't this why still everyone prefers Google?
• nathias 7y ago
  imagine still using google in 2020
• steve1977 7y ago
  People are still using Google?
• _pmf_ 7y ago
  ISSUE-345: ADS SHOULD NOT LOOK LIKE SEARCH RESULTS Fixed by making search results look like ads.
• kull 7y ago
  Not many posts get close to 3k upvotes on HN.
• pepijndevos 7y ago
  This pushed me over the edge to switch to DuckDuckGo. So far so good.
• johan_larson 7y ago
  For what it's worth, Bing doesn't make the distinction much clearer. Ads have a tiny little Ad icon, but both the background and the text look just like regular search results.
• NetOpWibby 7y ago
  Investor Driven Design is the best summation of these changes.
• presiozo 7y ago
  So interestingly, depending on what you're looking for, Google is actually not the best search engine to use. At this point DuckDuckGo is best for keyword searches, Google is good if your searching for concepts and links sorted by popularity and similar subjects.
• zimbatm 7y ago
  Remember when Google was good? One of the main selling point when they introduced ads was that they would be clearly marked as such. The ads were on the side so that they couldn't be confused with the search results. This was sold in contrast to all the other "bad" search engines who would first show a page of ads that looked like search results.
• sm4rk0 7y ago
  PSA: You don't have to use Google.
• onceUponADime 7y ago
  I wonder - if there is a some economic theory that predicts, that in the end the only economic feasable solution for any company is to completely ruin there most important product and commit a sort of sepuku of trust.
  • derp_dee_derp 7y ago
    maybe tech companies, but not any company. coca-cola is still going strong. so is BNSF railway. so is McDonalds. i mean, i could go on here with more counter examples if you want?
• tclover 7y ago
  stop using google, fools
• 6510 7y ago
  The right question is: How should ranking work in a distributed search engine?
• techaddict009 7y ago
  And Ads look like Normal result. Journey of Google Ads from Being Ads to Being Normal Search Result: https://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2019/06/GoogleAds_Timeline_FNL2.001.png https://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2019/06... Source: https://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-google-bing-254332 https://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-goog...
• jinushaun 7y ago
  I might just switch to Bing because of this.
• nquryshi 7y ago
  Someone needs to fix Google! Non profit based search engine?
• knowThySelfx 7y ago
  It may also be an attempt to work around Ad blocking browsers like Brave.
• i4t 7y ago
  I finally switched to duckduckgo and its fine! No complaints so far.
• shirak_untel 7y ago
  Google proves more often that it transitioned from being user-centric to being money-centric. It'd do anything to make more money.
• CheesecakeFred 7y ago
  Ok. But who in their right mind still uses google search directly?
• andresramon 7y ago
  Snapchat is the worst app I ever use