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The biggest perverse incentive for Google is that making better search results can mean less clicks to ads (clicking an ad because results are crap, going thru

The biggest perverse incentive for Google is that making better search results can mean less clicks to ads (clicking an ad because results are crap, going thru more pages of results means more ads). Clicks are revenue which is much easier to optimise for. Internal Search owners can push for better algos, but what if the algo causes revenue to fall? Are there strong forces strong enough within the organisation to ensure that search quality prevails? If this is the case, the problem is existential. It can only be arrested at the very top https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

yabones 5y ago
If I had to pay $10/month for good search results, I absolutely would. I think most people would. Get rid of the ads and spam, and you have a service worth a premium. The solution is to make it user-centric instead of advertiser(spammer)-centric.
- visarga 5y ago
  Some kind of browser or extension that re-ranks and filters search results on the web.
nitrogen 5y ago
The biggest perverse incentive for Google is that making better search results can mean less clicks to ads This gets close to the real root of the issue -- attention is monetizable independently of the quality of content. There would be much less incentive to create SEO spam if search engines negatively weighted pages with ads and affiliate links, and if manufacturers were barred (e.g. by the FTC) from owning or imitating reviewers.
Closi 5y ago
> The biggest perverse incentive for Google is that making better search results can mean less clicks to ads This is also something that Google can control if competitors come along. i.e. If a reasonable competitor comes along that is willing to sacrifice ad revenue for better search result quality than Google, google can just adjust their search quality upwards to knock them out (and then adjust it back once the competitive threat is gone). Perverse incentives from Google are all over the place - Searching for the delivery business "Just Eat" in the UK for instance returns an ad for their competitor Deliveroo above the legitimate organic search result for me - and I can also see that JustEat are trying to pay for their own brand name just to compete - and IMO this sort of behaviour is anti-competitive, borderline extortion considering Google is the de-facto way of searching for a business, and shocking from a search-quality perspective (where the wrong result is intentionally shown at the top because they paid more money).

yabones 5y ago

If I had to pay $10/month for good search results, I absolutely would. I think most people would. Get rid of the ads and spam, and you have a service worth a premium. The solution is to make it user-centric instead of advertiser(spammer)-centric.

visarga 5y ago
Some kind of browser or extension that re-ranks and filters search results on the web.

nitrogen 5y ago

The biggest perverse incentive for Google is that making better search results can mean less clicks to ads This gets close to the real root of the issue -- attention is monetizable independently of the quality of content. There would be much less incentive to create SEO spam if search engines negatively weighted pages with ads and affiliate links, and if manufacturers were barred (e.g. by the FTC) from owning or imitating reviewers.

Closi 5y ago

> The biggest perverse incentive for Google is that making better search results can mean less clicks to ads This is also something that Google can control if competitors come along. i.e. If a reasonable competitor comes along that is willing to sacrifice ad revenue for better search result quality than Google, google can just adjust their search quality upwards to knock them out (and then adjust it back once the competitive threat is gone). Perverse incentives from Google are all over the place - Searching for the delivery business "Just Eat" in the UK for instance returns an ad for their competitor Deliveroo above the legitimate organic search result for me - and I can also see that JustEat are trying to pay for their own brand name just to compete - and IMO this sort of behaviour is anti-competitive, borderline extortion considering Google is the de-facto way of searching for a business, and shocking from a search-quality perspective (where the wrong result is intentionally shown at the top because they paid more money).