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Yeah I’ve noticed this too. But also the rest of the front page is often either seo spam (like those Pinterest links which catch whatever search term you’ve use

by ssss11 5y ago

Yeah I’ve noticed this too. But also the rest of the front page is often either seo spam (like those Pinterest links which catch whatever search term you’ve used) or shopping sites. I’ve found google search to be increasingly hostile to its customers. I guess we’re not the customers. Use duckduckgo or something else.

yostrovs 5y ago
It's fraud, effectively. I've seen a bunch of people that are not tech savvy do Google searches, and they have no idea they're clicking on ads. I pointed this out a few times and they seem to not care anyways. Google knows this very well and they pretend like they're giving search results, but the majority of users are getting ad search results instead.
- verve_rat 5y ago
  It is basically the yellow pages on the internet model that a few people tried and Google killed. I'm not sure what we can learn from the fact that Google is regressing into the model they killed in the first place.
- ForOldHack 5y ago
  "the majority of users are getting ad search results instead." The Majority.
- dazc 5y ago
  What's worse is that it's particularly acute with financial services where most ads are scams.
- zbuf 5y ago
  Yup. Our competitor advertises against our company name, and Google helpfully optimises the text of their ad -- some ML algorithm finds text most likely to be confused with the search results. Optimising for "clicks" is just optimising garbage.
omnicognate 5y ago
You're not duckduckgo's customer either (their primary revenue source is keyword based advertising), or the customer of anything else you don't pay for. The only one I know of that at least plans to have a simple two-way relationship with search users as their customers is Kagi. Currently it's in free beta with a waitlist (took a week for me). When they go live they intend it to be a paid, subscription service with no advertising. So far I've found it good, and I'll gladly pay when the time comes.
- echelon 5y ago
  I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising. We might get back to a sane web if this takes off. They can grow their market by offering 10 free searches a day, and I think that would be enough to entice a lot of folks to switch. Offer a paid API, and I'd bet they'd have a real growth story.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising." I hope they give me a easy way, to set my own priorities (but I would choose that option).
    - Closi 5y ago
      I'm on the beta and it has both of these things. You can choose to boost particular sites, or to down-rank sites with trackers.
      - echelon 5y ago
        That's amazing. I can't wait!
        Closi 5y ago
        I've personally gone back to using Google from being on the Beta, but i'm sure other people will have more success.
systemvoltage 5y ago
I'd pay $10/month for a nerd-only, developer-friendly, pro-small-biz, precision search that works like 2008 version of Google. Something that I use dozens of times a day, is totally worth paying for. It is inevitable. It's coming. Algolia? Please?
- yabones 5y ago
  I've seen some people mention Kagi[1], but it's a closed beta. Hope they're successful, because I would also gladly pay $10/month to get a search engine that actively resists spam. [1] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/
- rtsil 5y ago
  I'd pay probably more, particularly if it has no ads and no tracking (sorry, I meant "personalized results").
- ddalex 5y ago
  But would you pay $120 / month ? Because AFAIK that's what Google makes using the current version. Disclaimer: I work for Google but in no way related to search, business models, or product decisions. My words are my own.
twofornone 5y ago
Kind of an aside but it seems like there are SEO pages which dynamically adjust their displayed text in the search results to your search query...how does that work? Isn't search result text indexed in advance? Or is this some sort of paid feature from google, where your search terms are injected into a template? Whatever it is it's really annoying because usually these results link to another search on a shopping site and more often than not those results come up empty anyway.
- altdataseller 5y ago
  They are usually search result pages with the keyword in the url parameter, and they link to those search results elsewhere on their site for Google to find
  - l33tman 5y ago
    But they show up in the cached google search preview as well. I search for something that doesn't exist, and you get 5 "shopping" sites that have faked URLs and faked product entries for the non-existant product. Like you see in the cached textlines: "Buy reptilecandy here, low prices!!" or something, and the URL to the site seems legit, trustedstore.com/reptilecandy/ but if you click on it you just get to the shop top page with no reptile candy in sight.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      Have you found a site that sells reptile candy? I’ve been searching forever. Failing to find it had been my greatest regret.
      - l33tman 5y ago
        This actually turned out to be an example of what was discussed... if you google "reptilecandy" (as one word) you get some of these weird search results that do look like they have a category on the shop that has Reptile Candy, with the appropriate Title and search excerpt. Clicking on one of the sites linked in the search results gives: https://www.zazzle.com/reptile+candy+favors https://www.zazzle.com/reptile+candy+favors And on their shop page it seems they have a section called "Reptile Candy & Favors". But if you click on the category above, Candy & Favors, there is no sub-section list so the sub-section is probably entirely dynamically generated. So there's something weird going on, I wonder how those dynamic categories end up in googles search excerpts. Can they pay google to inject non-existant pages and sections into the results? (the search result in question was not marked as an Ad though)
onphonenow 5y ago
How is pinterest not just banned unless you do site:pintrest or whatever. If you are not logged into some of these sites you can't actually get to stuff either. Annoying.
- dazc 5y ago
  I'm beginning to realise that Google are happy for Pinterest to monopolise all image search since it requires a lot of resource and is difficult to monetize. Not sure why they are allowing them to take over the rest of search though?
XorNot 5y ago
I don't get how Pinterest hasn't been removed from existence by Google. There is literally no one who is ever searching for things that wants a Pinterest link, but the incredible persistence of Google in showing me Pinterest is amazing. Though this kind of goes to the related question: why Google don't allow you to setup your profile to nuke domains from consideration when you search, I do not know - it would completely divorce them from any responsibility for search result manipulation and make everyone happier.
- bane 5y ago
  There's a great chrome extension called "unpinterested" that automatically adds -site:pinterest.* to all google queries. It's improved my use of google by an east 20%. It's so bad you'd almost think google has a stake in pinterest at this point.
- wiml 5y ago
  They did have exactly that feature for a while, unless I'm dreaming. But they got rid of it.
  - dazc 5y ago
    IIRC, it was canned because it was linked to search performance and was abused on an industrial scale for negative seo. Such a blacklist could be limited to one's personal account though but, I guess, since there is no monetisation benefit for google they don't care to offer it?
squarefoot 5y ago
Pinterest links can be removed from Google searches using the "Unpinterested" browser extension for Firefox and Chrome, but it breaks Google Maps searches and it was never patched to correct the issue.
function_seven 5y ago
My biggest feature request: A check box that says, "[ ] I'm not buying anything" I don't know how technically hard this would be to implement. Or what business model will resist adding it. I just know that most of my web searches are NOT me trying to buy stuff. They're usually looking up information. Like, how does the load sensing algorithm work on my LG washer? No chance I'll ever find out by searching the web. Only 200 links to different places I can buy a new one. Or maybe some videos explaining that the feature exists, and "oh and would you like to buy one?" Maybe I want to know if my GadgetMaster 3000 will work with my WidgetWanker Mark II. Nope, but here's 100 places you can buy those, or maybe the THINGDOODLE brand of knockoffs. Ok, I'm ranting. Point is: give me a way to restrict my search to only those pages that aren't selling anything. Maybe the heuristic is that the page hasn't changed in 6 months, or uses outdated tags like <marquee>, or some fancy semantic analysis of the page copy. I don't know. I just wish search results weren't so utterly dominated by e-commerce sites or affiliate spam.
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
  Google is incentivised by you relying on them instead of a competitor, shortly followed by page loads. Giving you what you want immediately, particularly when they know that you know what your searching for is a niche interest, isn’t in their best interests.
- jordigh 5y ago
  > My biggest feature request: A check box that says, "[ ] I'm not buying anything" The primary purpose of ads isn't to get you to buy something. It's to plant a brand in your brain so that next time you do want to buy something, you'll think of the brand. Ads are very good psychological manipulation.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    I’m not talking about ads. I’m talking about the “natural” search results. Of course those are also really ads in a sense, but somehow there’s got to be a way to provide a real search engine that doesn’t show only e-commerce sites. I’ll pay for it!
lolinder 5y ago
> Use duckduckgo or something else. Duckduckgo hasn't been any better for me lately. It seems like search as a whole is failing to respond to the latest round of SEO tricks. It takes a lot more work to find what I'm actually looking for, regardless of which engine I use.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  DDG uses Bing as its search provider, and Bing isn't any better than Google right now when it comes to prioritizing ads and dark patterns[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28517187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28517187
  - sp332 5y ago
    Bing is one source among many. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
- dazc 5y ago
  You don't get the first page of ads on DDG though, a simple change of settings equals none at all.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> But also the rest of the front page is often either seo spam (like those Pinterest links which catch whatever search term you’ve used) or shopping sites. Hey now, SEO spam is often packed to the brim with high revenue ads.

by ssss11 5y ago

yostrovs 5y ago

It's fraud, effectively. I've seen a bunch of people that are not tech savvy do Google searches, and they have no idea they're clicking on ads. I pointed this out a few times and they seem to not care anyways. Google knows this very well and they pretend like they're giving search results, but the majority of users are getting ad search results instead.

verve_rat 5y ago
It is basically the yellow pages on the internet model that a few people tried and Google killed. I'm not sure what we can learn from the fact that Google is regressing into the model they killed in the first place.
ForOldHack 5y ago
"the majority of users are getting ad search results instead." The Majority.
dazc 5y ago
What's worse is that it's particularly acute with financial services where most ads are scams.
zbuf 5y ago
Yup. Our competitor advertises against our company name, and Google helpfully optimises the text of their ad -- some ML algorithm finds text most likely to be confused with the search results. Optimising for "clicks" is just optimising garbage.

omnicognate 5y ago

You're not duckduckgo's customer either (their primary revenue source is keyword based advertising), or the customer of anything else you don't pay for. The only one I know of that at least plans to have a simple two-way relationship with search users as their customers is Kagi. Currently it's in free beta with a waitlist (took a week for me). When they go live they intend it to be a paid, subscription service with no advertising. So far I've found it good, and I'll gladly pay when the time comes.

echelon 5y ago
I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising. We might get back to a sane web if this takes off. They can grow their market by offering 10 free searches a day, and I think that would be enough to entice a lot of folks to switch. Offer a paid API, and I'd bet they'd have a real growth story.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or advertising." I hope they give me a easy way, to set my own priorities (but I would choose that option).
  - Closi 5y ago
    I'm on the beta and it has both of these things. You can choose to boost particular sites, or to down-rank sites with trackers.
    - echelon 5y ago
      That's amazing. I can't wait!
      - Closi 5y ago
        I've personally gone back to using Google from being on the Beta, but i'm sure other people will have more success.

systemvoltage 5y ago

I'd pay $10/month for a nerd-only, developer-friendly, pro-small-biz, precision search that works like 2008 version of Google. Something that I use dozens of times a day, is totally worth paying for. It is inevitable. It's coming. Algolia? Please?

yabones 5y ago
I've seen some people mention Kagi[1], but it's a closed beta. Hope they're successful, because I would also gladly pay $10/month to get a search engine that actively resists spam. [1] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/
rtsil 5y ago
I'd pay probably more, particularly if it has no ads and no tracking (sorry, I meant "personalized results").
ddalex 5y ago
But would you pay $120 / month ? Because AFAIK that's what Google makes using the current version. Disclaimer: I work for Google but in no way related to search, business models, or product decisions. My words are my own.

twofornone 5y ago

Kind of an aside but it seems like there are SEO pages which dynamically adjust their displayed text in the search results to your search query...how does that work? Isn't search result text indexed in advance? Or is this some sort of paid feature from google, where your search terms are injected into a template? Whatever it is it's really annoying because usually these results link to another search on a shopping site and more often than not those results come up empty anyway.

altdataseller 5y ago
They are usually search result pages with the keyword in the url parameter, and they link to those search results elsewhere on their site for Google to find
- l33tman 5y ago
  But they show up in the cached google search preview as well. I search for something that doesn't exist, and you get 5 "shopping" sites that have faked URLs and faked product entries for the non-existant product. Like you see in the cached textlines: "Buy reptilecandy here, low prices!!" or something, and the URL to the site seems legit, trustedstore.com/reptilecandy/ but if you click on it you just get to the shop top page with no reptile candy in sight.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    Have you found a site that sells reptile candy? I’ve been searching forever. Failing to find it had been my greatest regret.
    - l33tman 5y ago
      This actually turned out to be an example of what was discussed... if you google "reptilecandy" (as one word) you get some of these weird search results that do look like they have a category on the shop that has Reptile Candy, with the appropriate Title and search excerpt. Clicking on one of the sites linked in the search results gives: https://www.zazzle.com/reptile+candy+favors https://www.zazzle.com/reptile+candy+favors And on their shop page it seems they have a section called "Reptile Candy & Favors". But if you click on the category above, Candy & Favors, there is no sub-section list so the sub-section is probably entirely dynamically generated. So there's something weird going on, I wonder how those dynamic categories end up in googles search excerpts. Can they pay google to inject non-existant pages and sections into the results? (the search result in question was not marked as an Ad though)

onphonenow 5y ago

How is pinterest not just banned unless you do site:pintrest or whatever. If you are not logged into some of these sites you can't actually get to stuff either. Annoying.

dazc 5y ago
I'm beginning to realise that Google are happy for Pinterest to monopolise all image search since it requires a lot of resource and is difficult to monetize. Not sure why they are allowing them to take over the rest of search though?

XorNot 5y ago

I don't get how Pinterest hasn't been removed from existence by Google. There is literally no one who is ever searching for things that wants a Pinterest link, but the incredible persistence of Google in showing me Pinterest is amazing. Though this kind of goes to the related question: why Google don't allow you to setup your profile to nuke domains from consideration when you search, I do not know - it would completely divorce them from any responsibility for search result manipulation and make everyone happier.

bane 5y ago
There's a great chrome extension called "unpinterested" that automatically adds -site:pinterest.* to all google queries. It's improved my use of google by an east 20%. It's so bad you'd almost think google has a stake in pinterest at this point.
wiml 5y ago
They did have exactly that feature for a while, unless I'm dreaming. But they got rid of it.
- dazc 5y ago
  IIRC, it was canned because it was linked to search performance and was abused on an industrial scale for negative seo. Such a blacklist could be limited to one's personal account though but, I guess, since there is no monetisation benefit for google they don't care to offer it?

squarefoot 5y ago

Pinterest links can be removed from Google searches using the "Unpinterested" browser extension for Firefox and Chrome, but it breaks Google Maps searches and it was never patched to correct the issue.

function_seven 5y ago

My biggest feature request: A check box that says, "[ ] I'm not buying anything" I don't know how technically hard this would be to implement. Or what business model will resist adding it. I just know that most of my web searches are NOT me trying to buy stuff. They're usually looking up information. Like, how does the load sensing algorithm work on my LG washer? No chance I'll ever find out by searching the web. Only 200 links to different places I can buy a new one. Or maybe some videos explaining that the feature exists, and "oh and would you like to buy one?" Maybe I want to know if my GadgetMaster 3000 will work with my WidgetWanker Mark II. Nope, but here's 100 places you can buy those, or maybe the THINGDOODLE brand of knockoffs. Ok, I'm ranting. Point is: give me a way to restrict my search to only those pages that aren't selling anything. Maybe the heuristic is that the page hasn't changed in 6 months, or uses outdated tags like <marquee>, or some fancy semantic analysis of the page copy. I don't know. I just wish search results weren't so utterly dominated by e-commerce sites or affiliate spam.

hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
Google is incentivised by you relying on them instead of a competitor, shortly followed by page loads. Giving you what you want immediately, particularly when they know that you know what your searching for is a niche interest, isn’t in their best interests.
jordigh 5y ago
> My biggest feature request: A check box that says, "[ ] I'm not buying anything" The primary purpose of ads isn't to get you to buy something. It's to plant a brand in your brain so that next time you do want to buy something, you'll think of the brand. Ads are very good psychological manipulation.
- function_seven 5y ago
  I’m not talking about ads. I’m talking about the “natural” search results. Of course those are also really ads in a sense, but somehow there’s got to be a way to provide a real search engine that doesn’t show only e-commerce sites. I’ll pay for it!

lolinder 5y ago

> Use duckduckgo or something else. Duckduckgo hasn't been any better for me lately. It seems like search as a whole is failing to respond to the latest round of SEO tricks. It takes a lot more work to find what I'm actually looking for, regardless of which engine I use.

heavyset_go 5y ago
DDG uses Bing as its search provider, and Bing isn't any better than Google right now when it comes to prioritizing ads and dark patterns[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28517187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28517187
- sp332 5y ago
  Bing is one source among many. https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
dazc 5y ago
You don't get the first page of ads on DDG though, a simple change of settings equals none at all.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> But also the rest of the front page is often either seo spam (like those Pinterest links which catch whatever search term you’ve used) or shopping sites. Hey now, SEO spam is often packed to the brim with high revenue ads.