3 ms·

none.. it’s all because of paid placement taking priority

• bushbaba 5y ago
  Search, "what hotel to stay in san francisco soma". You'll see that every single result above the fold is an Ad. In fact it doesn't even give me a single useful piece of information. #1 result is a link to expedia. #2 is to hotels.com, #3 to the trip advisor. Scroll down Google Hotels widget. Then on the 3rd browser viewpoint page I get actual query results.
  • emmelaich 5y ago
    The result I got was a list, with maps and prices with an option to refine stay dates. Not sure how that could be improved to be honest. Next entry was a non-ad from Tripadvisor.
    • heavyset_go 5y ago
      When weird search results get posted on HN, they're sometimes fixed within minutes. I wouldn't doubt that the search term was "fixed" by someone reading HN.
    • bushbaba 5y ago
      Here's my results: https://ibb.co/cv06gHg https://ibb.co/cv06gHg https://ibb.co/BwZX9FQ https://ibb.co/BwZX9FQ https://ibb.co/NCnBC6b https://ibb.co/NCnBC6b
      • emmelaich 5y ago
        Yeah the second looks like what I got. (BwZX9FQ)
  • asiachick 5y ago
    I got a list of hotels. not sure how it could be more useful https://ibb.co/JxfY6BX https://ibb.co/JxfY6BX
    • bushbaba 5y ago
      Here's my results: https://ibb.co/cv06gHg https://ibb.co/cv06gHg https://ibb.co/BwZX9FQ https://ibb.co/BwZX9FQ https://ibb.co/NCnBC6b https://ibb.co/NCnBC6b
    • unlikelymordant 5y ago
      You are using an adblocker though
• Nextgrid 5y ago
  It's less about paid placement taking priority (as in intentionally degrading results) but more that there's no incentive to spend money improving organic search results where at best it'll do nothing and at worst decrease the profitability of paid results (people are less likely to click on them if the organic results are good), not to mention that crap organic results also benefit Google as these websites often have Google Ads or Analytics.