5 ms·

I haven't seen anyone mention the fact that a big factor that contributes to how the Google Ads "black box" determines how to rank ads is via an Ad Quality meas

I haven't seen anyone mention the fact that a big factor that contributes to how the Google Ads "black box" determines how to rank ads is via an Ad Quality measurement. Each ad is given a quality score, and since your own website will be guaranteed to be the most authoritative source for a keyword search with your own branded keyword(s) in it, by default the quality of your own ads will be much higher than your competition. This means in practice that the cost for a brand to be shown first on their own branded keywords is much lower than their average CPC, let alone the cost for their competitors to be there.

titzer 5y ago
The very fact that you have to bid on clicks for your own damn website by paying Google, because Google has prioritized ads to the point of displaying them higher and making them almost indistinguishable from the "organic" search result proves they have intentionally created a tax on the internet. It will get worse, to the point where to get auto-completed in the omnibox you'll have to pay. TBH I am not even sure if that isn't already the case!
- alphabetting 5y ago
  I'd rather ignore some ads which are less intrusive than places like Amazon than pay a subscription fee to use search, gmail and docs which are funded by ads.
  - titzer 5y ago
    There are other options. For example, funding a publicly-owned search engine with $1 billion a year in infrastructure and development costs would be 50x cheaper than what the US spends on foodstamps. It'd be 1/10th the NSF's annual budget. Not that that's the best option, but we could consider some new ideas.
    - zaphirplane 5y ago
      A government owned search engine is 100% bad idea, it will cost a ton, it will cost more than equivalent business developed one, it will be abused by governments and law enforcement, your traffic will be combined with government data to make a last century dictatorship police state weep for joy be a money maker for people you very much don’t admire most of all there is no public value for it when the government can legislate operators
    - vkou 5y ago
      A publicly owned search engine, that will absolutely not be used for propaganda purposes by, say, the Department of State, or by a megalomaniac elected representative. Need to build consent for a war with <Country>? Give me access to the search index, and a few weeks, and it'll be done.
      - titzer 5y ago
        I didn't say it was the best option. But wow, you just trust a billion lines of closed source written to satisfy ad optimization criteria with zero transparency? I mean, we can subject things to public oversight.
        alphabetting 5y ago
        Google is pretty big with open sourcing. Open sourcing search would ruin it though. Spammers would game the system.
        vkou 5y ago
        > But wow, you just trust a billion lines of closed source written to satisfy ad optimization criteria with zero transparency? I trust that a multi-national serving multiple markets is going to give me less nationally biased information than the government of a superpower (with political ambitions that span the globe.) It's why I generally don't turn to the Voice of America for news.
        deleted 5y ago
dorgo 5y ago
>Ad Quality measurement It's called Quality score (soon to be discontinued) and has 3 components. Only one of which is landing page related. And nothing prevents competitors from building "more relevant" landing pages than the original brand.
arkh 5y ago
Or maybe ads could go back to where they were: on some yellow background and on the side. Not looking like the first search results.

titzer 5y ago

The very fact that you have to bid on clicks for your own damn website by paying Google, because Google has prioritized ads to the point of displaying them higher and making them almost indistinguishable from the "organic" search result proves they have intentionally created a tax on the internet. It will get worse, to the point where to get auto-completed in the omnibox you'll have to pay. TBH I am not even sure if that isn't already the case!

alphabetting 5y ago
I'd rather ignore some ads which are less intrusive than places like Amazon than pay a subscription fee to use search, gmail and docs which are funded by ads.
- titzer 5y ago
  There are other options. For example, funding a publicly-owned search engine with $1 billion a year in infrastructure and development costs would be 50x cheaper than what the US spends on foodstamps. It'd be 1/10th the NSF's annual budget. Not that that's the best option, but we could consider some new ideas.
  - zaphirplane 5y ago
    A government owned search engine is 100% bad idea, it will cost a ton, it will cost more than equivalent business developed one, it will be abused by governments and law enforcement, your traffic will be combined with government data to make a last century dictatorship police state weep for joy be a money maker for people you very much don’t admire most of all there is no public value for it when the government can legislate operators
  - vkou 5y ago
    A publicly owned search engine, that will absolutely not be used for propaganda purposes by, say, the Department of State, or by a megalomaniac elected representative. Need to build consent for a war with <Country>? Give me access to the search index, and a few weeks, and it'll be done.
    - titzer 5y ago
      I didn't say it was the best option. But wow, you just trust a billion lines of closed source written to satisfy ad optimization criteria with zero transparency? I mean, we can subject things to public oversight.
      - alphabetting 5y ago
        Google is pretty big with open sourcing. Open sourcing search would ruin it though. Spammers would game the system.
      - vkou 5y ago
        > But wow, you just trust a billion lines of closed source written to satisfy ad optimization criteria with zero transparency? I trust that a multi-national serving multiple markets is going to give me less nationally biased information than the government of a superpower (with political ambitions that span the globe.) It's why I generally don't turn to the Voice of America for news.
        deleted 5y ago

dorgo 5y ago

>Ad Quality measurement It's called Quality score (soon to be discontinued) and has 3 components. Only one of which is landing page related. And nothing prevents competitors from building "more relevant" landing pages than the original brand.

arkh 5y ago

Or maybe ads could go back to where they were: on some yellow background and on the side. Not looking like the first search results.