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Google disobeys their own standards in MUCH worse ways. This year they are pushing a reduction in Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). https://web.dev/cls/ https://we

Google disobeys their own standards in MUCH worse ways. This year they are pushing a reduction in Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). https://web.dev/cls/ https://web.dev/cls/ But they purposefully use CLS in Search to increase clicks on Ads https://twitter.com/andyhattemer/status/1262564268890820609 https://twitter.com/andyhattemer/status/1262564268890820609

andypants 6y ago
The android gmail app is horrible with this. They load a couple of your emails above ads so that the ads start on the second or third row. And the re-ordering happens as your mails and the ads are loading! You might be about to tap your email, then the ads load in and you suddenly click on an ad. Or you want to tap the top row, but the app decides to put a different email above the ads and you end up tapping into the wrong mail because it was reordered just before the tap.
- Madzen__ 6y ago
  You get ads in gmail app? I have never seen ads there.
- tsbertalan 6y ago
  I've also never seen ads in the Gmail app. Maybe it's because of G Suite.
- IndexPointer 6y ago
  There are ads on the Gmail app??
lima 6y ago
> But they purposefully use CLS in Search to increase clicks on Ads You present this as a fact, but it would be absurd that Google would use such a cheap and easily detected trick to increase CTR. It would be bordering on ad fraud and I'm sure that Google, of all companies, knows better than that. Occam's Razor says that this is a stupid async content loading bug, which they subsequently fixed. I've never seen this happen and when I just tried it without adblocker with that exact search term, it didn't - the page loaded with the ad.
- hugey010 6y ago
  Happens to me all the time, it's either complete UX heresy or ad fraud.
- tsbertalan 6y ago
  For example, the scourge of "people also ask" at the top of search results, that appears synchronously where the top result was a second ago, and has a randomly-generated container ID to prevent easy blocking. Not an ad, but, equivalently, content that I didn't ask for but that Google, for some reason, clearly really wants me to click on.
- eitland 6y ago
  > You present this as a fact, but it would be absurd that Google would use such a cheap and easily detected trick to increase CTR. 3 years ago and I wouldn't believed it at all but around 2 years ago I saw it happen consistently with a colleague at the desk next to me. I cannot say for sure that it wasn't an extension in his browser but I can say for sure that I think Google has been really busy tearing down the mountains of trust they had before 2007 - 2009.
- miskin 6y ago
  Similarly, thanks to async ad loading, gmail replaces first two items in my email list with ads with such a convinient delay that I accidentaly click on the ads more often than I would like to. Occam's razor would say that if it can bring more money, it is not accident.
  - lima 6y ago
    Accidental clicks are invalid clicks according to Google's own documentation[1][2]. For this to not be an accident, one would have to assume that Google actually makes more money from those invalid clicks, and that someone decided that yep, rendering ads asynchronously was a decent and legal approach at increasing advertising revenue, and requested the GMail team to implement it. This kind of corporate misbehavior is not unheard of, but I just can't imagine it happening at Google. It's much more likely that this is just unfortunate UX design to "improve" rendering performance without considering users on slow connections. (I can reproduce this one just fine in desktop GMail - on the first render of the "Promotions" tab, the ads render asynchronously) [1]: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/42995?hl=en https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/42995?hl=en [2]: https://www.blog.google/products/ads/preventing-accidental-clicks-for-better-mobile-ads https://www.blog.google/products/ads/preventing-accidental-c...

andypants 6y ago

The android gmail app is horrible with this. They load a couple of your emails above ads so that the ads start on the second or third row. And the re-ordering happens as your mails and the ads are loading! You might be about to tap your email, then the ads load in and you suddenly click on an ad. Or you want to tap the top row, but the app decides to put a different email above the ads and you end up tapping into the wrong mail because it was reordered just before the tap.

Madzen__ 6y ago
You get ads in gmail app? I have never seen ads there.
tsbertalan 6y ago
I've also never seen ads in the Gmail app. Maybe it's because of G Suite.
IndexPointer 6y ago
There are ads on the Gmail app??

lima 6y ago

> But they purposefully use CLS in Search to increase clicks on Ads You present this as a fact, but it would be absurd that Google would use such a cheap and easily detected trick to increase CTR. It would be bordering on ad fraud and I'm sure that Google, of all companies, knows better than that. Occam's Razor says that this is a stupid async content loading bug, which they subsequently fixed. I've never seen this happen and when I just tried it without adblocker with that exact search term, it didn't - the page loaded with the ad.

hugey010 6y ago
Happens to me all the time, it's either complete UX heresy or ad fraud.
tsbertalan 6y ago
For example, the scourge of "people also ask" at the top of search results, that appears synchronously where the top result was a second ago, and has a randomly-generated container ID to prevent easy blocking. Not an ad, but, equivalently, content that I didn't ask for but that Google, for some reason, clearly really wants me to click on.
eitland 6y ago
> You present this as a fact, but it would be absurd that Google would use such a cheap and easily detected trick to increase CTR. 3 years ago and I wouldn't believed it at all but around 2 years ago I saw it happen consistently with a colleague at the desk next to me. I cannot say for sure that it wasn't an extension in his browser but I can say for sure that I think Google has been really busy tearing down the mountains of trust they had before 2007 - 2009.
miskin 6y ago
Similarly, thanks to async ad loading, gmail replaces first two items in my email list with ads with such a convinient delay that I accidentaly click on the ads more often than I would like to. Occam's razor would say that if it can bring more money, it is not accident.
- lima 6y ago
  Accidental clicks are invalid clicks according to Google's own documentation[1][2]. For this to not be an accident, one would have to assume that Google actually makes more money from those invalid clicks, and that someone decided that yep, rendering ads asynchronously was a decent and legal approach at increasing advertising revenue, and requested the GMail team to implement it. This kind of corporate misbehavior is not unheard of, but I just can't imagine it happening at Google. It's much more likely that this is just unfortunate UX design to "improve" rendering performance without considering users on slow connections. (I can reproduce this one just fine in desktop GMail - on the first render of the "Promotions" tab, the ads render asynchronously) [1]: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/42995?hl=en https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/42995?hl=en [2]: https://www.blog.google/products/ads/preventing-accidental-clicks-for-better-mobile-ads https://www.blog.google/products/ads/preventing-accidental-c...