5 ms·

I'm curious what kinds of sites people think should be returned for a search term of "mattress", if not mattress shopping sites?

grawprog 6y ago
Comparisons of mattress materials or brands, histories of different mattresses used by cultures, forums for mattress aficionados, tutorials for making your own or modifying mattresses, general mattress information or facts, other random weird shit the internet used to have about strangely niche subjects that have way more people dedicated to them then you'd expect you'd only discover by searching random terms then you find there's a whole world of weird things dedicated to this niche topic, say mattresses in this case, that you'd otherwise never know about.
- teruakohatu 6y ago
  "mattress forums" find me forums. "mattress history" gets me a page entitled "The History of Mattresses" followed by Wikipedia.
- cbo100 6y ago
  Then perhaps try searching "mattress materials", "history of mattresses" or "mattress making tutorial". Plenty of relevant results, zero ads. When somebody searches "mattress", 99% of the time, they want to buy one.
  - grawprog 6y ago
    So, if I want a page full of ads, by yours and the other commenter's examples, I should have to type in 'buy mattress' or 'mattress shopping' shouldn't I? Why should just searching the word mattress imply I'm looking to buy one? Ideally, if I search for just mattress, I should get a little bit of all those things in one search, including a few ads to buy one, but it shouldn't be everything.
    - johnday 6y ago
      You seem to have missed the critical point from the person you're responding to: > When somebody searches "mattress", 99% of the time, they want to buy one. This is unfounded I suspect but it would be a reasonable justification for Google's results.
      - grawprog 6y ago
        Reasonable justification != Reasonable My point is, searching for just mattress should reasonably and logically include a small sampling of 'all' related topics. As by your own words, specific implications behind the search should be left to additional keywords. Assuming the search is for the purposes of buying, without specifying that, is certainly more profitable to google than a small sampling of all related topics, but not what most users want when simply searching for a vague general thing or concept.
        johnday 6y ago
        Suppose that we know, axiomatically, that 99% of people who search "mattresses" want to buy a mattress. Search engine A, when someone queries "mattress", shows a page of options to buy a mattress. Search engine B, when someone queries "mattress", shows a light touch on a number of different aspects of mattresses, including a history, the wikipedia page, and so on. Which one is doing a better job of showing relevant results to the user? I would suggest A.
- joshvm 6y ago
  Good luck finding a comparison page of just about anything that isn't SEO spam these days. And I would bet money if you search for DIY mattress, a good fraction of the results will be Pinterest.
  - freediver 6y ago
    It should not be your job to do that, but of the trillion dollar company whose stated mission literally is 'organizing world's information'. The inversion of roles is the problem.
- bagacrap 6y ago
  what is a "general mattress fact"? If you typed "mattress Wikipedia" you'd get a bunch of mattress history and facts, so it's not exactly hard to find what you're looking for, but it's probably the case that most people who type just "mattress" are looking to buy one. If that weren't true, why would Google show so many ads? It's not like showing a million ads is going to trick a seeker of general mattress facts into buying a mattress they don't need.
  - fragmede 6y ago
    It's trivial to find "random fun mattress facts" by Googling for exactly that, but thanks to link and content aggregators, instead of flipping through channels on the tee-vee, we scroll for miles with our thumbs. Before commercial interests took over the web, it was full of weird and wonderful sites by hobby enthusiasts, built in their spare time that would have random weird facts and stories. For better or worse, that Internet is behind us now, so it's rare to come across that sort of treasure trove of a site. (To be clear, there's better and worse today, compared to the Internet of yore.) What's the case here, is that mattress store owners, in the conversion to online sales, have purchased, not only the adword for "mattress", but paid for all manner of SEO tricks and hackery in order to drive their site to the top of the results. Far in excess of what a hobbyist could or would bother with. It's a long shot, but the long tail of the Internet says that this has happened at least once. Someone was just poking around came across a random mattress myth or fact page, and found out that something they hate about their mattress isn't something they have to put up with. Whether that's "being tricked" into buying a mattress they didn't need, I won't say, but it still tickles an intellectually curious itch that I didn't even know I had, to find out that it’s illegal to purchase a mattress on Sundays in Washington. A single word query like "mattress" is vague and starting from first principles, we live under capitalism, assume everyone's trying to sell you something, and a search for "mattress" proves to be no exception. Same goes for if you search for "windows". Second link is how to get it (for $199).
  - anoncake 6y ago
    > why would Google show so many ads Because that's their business?
sytelus 6y ago
Most definitely NOT the advertisers who wants to pay the biggest bugs or yielding huge ad click throughs. I would expect Google ranking reviews from more honest sites like consumer reports, BBB, chiropractor reviews etc and supported by articles in good newspapers or magazines. Mattress business is extremely high margine business with their major spend category being ads, not R&D or manufacturing. They almost entirely depends on glossy ads with ongoing war of making outrageously false claims among competitors. Ads are the last thing you want to depend on in this category to make your purchase decision that would impact you for may be half decade.
achow 6y ago
Whatever it is not multiple ads for sure. If I'm a buyer, I would expect to see the most trafficked, most popular, most bought deep linked online mattress shopping page - as the first link. I'm ok if that is after one or two ads. If the search engine was trustworthy then I will click on that deep linked product page, cursorily glance the user reviews to see if there are any red flags, if not, then quickly empty my wallet and be done with my shopping for a mattress.
rkagerer 6y ago
Here's one closer to home: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563358 Admittedly it's not the best example. But personally I'd weight sites offering unbiased information (some of which may indeed be happen to be merchants) higher than those trying to shove "the world's #1 mattress" down my throat.
JeremyNT 6y ago
> I'm curious what kinds of sites people think should be returned for a search term of "mattress", if not mattress shopping sites? You'd never know it by the google results, but there are robust hobbyist communities dedicated to exposing the underlying information (and misinformation) about mattresses and the companies that make them. The Mattress Underground is a good example [0] This is an interesting case in point - you might never even know what you're missing if google doesn't even hint that it exists, because it buries things under ads! A generalizable way to "hack" google into showing you useful results when a keyword is so polluted with SEO and ads is to add the word "forums" to your search string, although even that is no guarantee. [0] https://www.themattressunderground.com/mattress-forum.html https://www.themattressunderground.com/mattress-forum.html
qbaqbaqba 6y ago
Porn of course.

grawprog 6y ago

Comparisons of mattress materials or brands, histories of different mattresses used by cultures, forums for mattress aficionados, tutorials for making your own or modifying mattresses, general mattress information or facts, other random weird shit the internet used to have about strangely niche subjects that have way more people dedicated to them then you'd expect you'd only discover by searching random terms then you find there's a whole world of weird things dedicated to this niche topic, say mattresses in this case, that you'd otherwise never know about.

teruakohatu 6y ago
"mattress forums" find me forums. "mattress history" gets me a page entitled "The History of Mattresses" followed by Wikipedia.
cbo100 6y ago
Then perhaps try searching "mattress materials", "history of mattresses" or "mattress making tutorial". Plenty of relevant results, zero ads. When somebody searches "mattress", 99% of the time, they want to buy one.
- grawprog 6y ago
  So, if I want a page full of ads, by yours and the other commenter's examples, I should have to type in 'buy mattress' or 'mattress shopping' shouldn't I? Why should just searching the word mattress imply I'm looking to buy one? Ideally, if I search for just mattress, I should get a little bit of all those things in one search, including a few ads to buy one, but it shouldn't be everything.
  - johnday 6y ago
    You seem to have missed the critical point from the person you're responding to: > When somebody searches "mattress", 99% of the time, they want to buy one. This is unfounded I suspect but it would be a reasonable justification for Google's results.
    - grawprog 6y ago
      Reasonable justification != Reasonable My point is, searching for just mattress should reasonably and logically include a small sampling of 'all' related topics. As by your own words, specific implications behind the search should be left to additional keywords. Assuming the search is for the purposes of buying, without specifying that, is certainly more profitable to google than a small sampling of all related topics, but not what most users want when simply searching for a vague general thing or concept.
      - johnday 6y ago
        Suppose that we know, axiomatically, that 99% of people who search "mattresses" want to buy a mattress. Search engine A, when someone queries "mattress", shows a page of options to buy a mattress. Search engine B, when someone queries "mattress", shows a light touch on a number of different aspects of mattresses, including a history, the wikipedia page, and so on. Which one is doing a better job of showing relevant results to the user? I would suggest A.
joshvm 6y ago
Good luck finding a comparison page of just about anything that isn't SEO spam these days. And I would bet money if you search for DIY mattress, a good fraction of the results will be Pinterest.
- freediver 6y ago
  It should not be your job to do that, but of the trillion dollar company whose stated mission literally is 'organizing world's information'. The inversion of roles is the problem.
bagacrap 6y ago
what is a "general mattress fact"? If you typed "mattress Wikipedia" you'd get a bunch of mattress history and facts, so it's not exactly hard to find what you're looking for, but it's probably the case that most people who type just "mattress" are looking to buy one. If that weren't true, why would Google show so many ads? It's not like showing a million ads is going to trick a seeker of general mattress facts into buying a mattress they don't need.
- fragmede 6y ago
  It's trivial to find "random fun mattress facts" by Googling for exactly that, but thanks to link and content aggregators, instead of flipping through channels on the tee-vee, we scroll for miles with our thumbs. Before commercial interests took over the web, it was full of weird and wonderful sites by hobby enthusiasts, built in their spare time that would have random weird facts and stories. For better or worse, that Internet is behind us now, so it's rare to come across that sort of treasure trove of a site. (To be clear, there's better and worse today, compared to the Internet of yore.) What's the case here, is that mattress store owners, in the conversion to online sales, have purchased, not only the adword for "mattress", but paid for all manner of SEO tricks and hackery in order to drive their site to the top of the results. Far in excess of what a hobbyist could or would bother with. It's a long shot, but the long tail of the Internet says that this has happened at least once. Someone was just poking around came across a random mattress myth or fact page, and found out that something they hate about their mattress isn't something they have to put up with. Whether that's "being tricked" into buying a mattress they didn't need, I won't say, but it still tickles an intellectually curious itch that I didn't even know I had, to find out that it’s illegal to purchase a mattress on Sundays in Washington. A single word query like "mattress" is vague and starting from first principles, we live under capitalism, assume everyone's trying to sell you something, and a search for "mattress" proves to be no exception. Same goes for if you search for "windows". Second link is how to get it (for $199).
- anoncake 6y ago
  > why would Google show so many ads Because that's their business?

sytelus 6y ago

Most definitely NOT the advertisers who wants to pay the biggest bugs or yielding huge ad click throughs. I would expect Google ranking reviews from more honest sites like consumer reports, BBB, chiropractor reviews etc and supported by articles in good newspapers or magazines. Mattress business is extremely high margine business with their major spend category being ads, not R&D or manufacturing. They almost entirely depends on glossy ads with ongoing war of making outrageously false claims among competitors. Ads are the last thing you want to depend on in this category to make your purchase decision that would impact you for may be half decade.

achow 6y ago

Whatever it is not multiple ads for sure. If I'm a buyer, I would expect to see the most trafficked, most popular, most bought deep linked online mattress shopping page - as the first link. I'm ok if that is after one or two ads. If the search engine was trustworthy then I will click on that deep linked product page, cursorily glance the user reviews to see if there are any red flags, if not, then quickly empty my wallet and be done with my shopping for a mattress.

rkagerer 6y ago

Here's one closer to home: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563358 Admittedly it's not the best example. But personally I'd weight sites offering unbiased information (some of which may indeed be happen to be merchants) higher than those trying to shove "the world's #1 mattress" down my throat.

JeremyNT 6y ago

> I'm curious what kinds of sites people think should be returned for a search term of "mattress", if not mattress shopping sites? You'd never know it by the google results, but there are robust hobbyist communities dedicated to exposing the underlying information (and misinformation) about mattresses and the companies that make them. The Mattress Underground is a good example [0] This is an interesting case in point - you might never even know what you're missing if google doesn't even hint that it exists, because it buries things under ads! A generalizable way to "hack" google into showing you useful results when a keyword is so polluted with SEO and ads is to add the word "forums" to your search string, although even that is no guarantee. [0] https://www.themattressunderground.com/mattress-forum.html https://www.themattressunderground.com/mattress-forum.html

qbaqbaqba 6y ago

Porn of course.