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Long long time ago at a conference I did hold a talk (about something that is now common knowledge) that SEO is not a product, it's a channel. And an ad based

by franze 4y ago

Long long time ago at a conference I did hold a talk (about something that is now common knowledge) that SEO is not a product, it's a channel. And an ad based revenue model does not work based on SEO. As as soon as the revenue (which is coupled with traffic) goes down you are inclined to just ad more ads or make ads more agressive, which counteracts good UX which will lead to further traffic loss, which leads to more ads... Google is not dependend on SEO, but as a defacto monopolist in search in the western world on user traffic. User traffic to search will go down from now on. Thx to AI assistants. Ads will go up, in aggressiveness and quantity, so their mai product will get worse and worse, fast. So, Google is toast. If they go down this road. Or, they go the opposite way. Less ads, more focus on UX including AI Assistants. Revenue comes later. But as we all know, Google will not go down that way. They are an ad business with a halfway decent search engine attached.

sseagull 4y ago
Larry Page and Sergey Brin were on record as saying that quality search results and ads are at odds. So at first they were generally against ads. Here's somewhat of a mention: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-engine-bias/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-... Can't say I blame them, though. See how well you stick to your convictions when someone waves a few billion in front of you :)
therealdrag0 4y ago
Ad free results is not always the best experience for everybody, or at least not in todays context. I remember hearing a commentator on a podcast (I forget if they worked for goog or not) who pointed out that so much of online activity is economic so that ads (pay for placement) is a powerful relevance indicator. I think the example they gave was if someone searches for “Taylor swift tickets” then they are more likely to be interested in the paid results from someone who wants to sell tickets than in the million forum posts discussing tickets (even tho they have the same keyword match). And their data proves this. Maybe there are ways to be “smart enough” to avoid this indicator, but a lot of “relevance” is a guess on user intention so seems like a damned if you do damned if you don’t.
gremlinsinc 4y ago
I have a theory shittier search results are so you try 2-3 times to find what you're looking for so they can give you 3x the ads, or so you click ads because they're probably way more relevant now than the actual results.

by franze 4y ago

sseagull 4y ago

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were on record as saying that quality search results and ads are at odds. So at first they were generally against ads. Here's somewhat of a mention: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-engine-bias/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-advertising-and-search-... Can't say I blame them, though. See how well you stick to your convictions when someone waves a few billion in front of you :)

therealdrag0 4y ago

Ad free results is not always the best experience for everybody, or at least not in todays context. I remember hearing a commentator on a podcast (I forget if they worked for goog or not) who pointed out that so much of online activity is economic so that ads (pay for placement) is a powerful relevance indicator. I think the example they gave was if someone searches for “Taylor swift tickets” then they are more likely to be interested in the paid results from someone who wants to sell tickets than in the million forum posts discussing tickets (even tho they have the same keyword match). And their data proves this. Maybe there are ways to be “smart enough” to avoid this indicator, but a lot of “relevance” is a guess on user intention so seems like a damned if you do damned if you don’t.

gremlinsinc 4y ago

I have a theory shittier search results are so you try 2-3 times to find what you're looking for so they can give you 3x the ads, or so you click ads because they're probably way more relevant now than the actual results.