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I tried search "how to secure my data". Both my logged-in and incognito desktop sessions return an LLM-powered summary followed by relevant (but doubt if it's h

I tried search "how to secure my data". Both my logged-in and incognito desktop sessions return an LLM-powered summary followed by relevant (but doubt if it's high quality) organic search results, but no ads. I failed to get a single ad from this query on any of computing environments that I own. These are the top 3 on my logged-in desktop. * 101 Data Protection Tips: How to Protect Your Data (https://www.digitalguardian.com/blog/101-data-protection-tips-how-keep-your-passwords-financial-personal-information-online-safe) * Protect Your Personal Information and Data (https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/protect-your-personal-information-and-data) * Tips for Securing Your Data (https://www.it.northwestern.edu/security/protect-information/secure-data-tips.html) So the problem is not something universal but it is also true that we have many data points that proves Google's failure on providing consistent search results across all areas, languages and form factors. As I see more of these kinds of discrepancies, I began to wonder if Google search is actually trying to improve this situation but those developers are somehow isolated within some sort of echo chambers driven by badly defined metrics? I have no idea which metrics they're using (and it might be sophisticated enough to justify itself), but I imagine that they could optimize it for revenue per ads or whatever so # of total ads actually are decreased but concentrated on very "high value queries" which users actually care about, so the public perception on # of ads is getting worse and worse. And we know that this kind of "feeling" is very hard to capture.

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michaelbuckbee 2y ago
Google search results (and ads) are location and user-specific - the Youtuber is in the UK and looks like he got UK-specific ads.
- summerlight 2y ago
  I can say that location is not the only factor. Tried various English-using countries through VPN and failed to get a single ad. For instance, UK and AU had some differences on the organic search results (e.g. those from ico.org.uk and oaic.gov.au) but still no ads. Personalization and device may matter though since Mac and iOS users tend to be more preferred target amongst advertisers, but I didn't get ads on my iPhone either.
giantrobot 2y ago
I think Google's aggressive tracking and targeting skews search results. Even technically logged out they know who you are. They have your IP associated with your account. So your incognito results aren't likely to be very different from your logged in results. Not saying they'll be totally different from mine but incognito mode alone isn't anonymizing you to Google. For reference I did the same search on Google. I do not use Google search by default nor do I ever log in from non-private sessions. I got the same results as you...after one full viewport scroll. Half the SERP is an "AI Overview", below that are some sort of page summaries (not links) for "Secure Your Data", and then finally one full viewport scroll down is the first external link. DuckDuckGo (my default search engine) isn't doing too much better. The same search gets me three ads before an actual search result. The ads take up 75% of the viewport. Then after only a single outgoing link there's a bunch of links to video results. To me both SERPs contain mostly garbage. I didn't ask for some AI summary. Nor did I ask for Google to summarize a bunch of pages. I also didn't ask DDG for video results which typically aren't meaningfully different from identified ads.

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michaelbuckbee 2y ago

Google search results (and ads) are location and user-specific - the Youtuber is in the UK and looks like he got UK-specific ads.

summerlight 2y ago
I can say that location is not the only factor. Tried various English-using countries through VPN and failed to get a single ad. For instance, UK and AU had some differences on the organic search results (e.g. those from ico.org.uk and oaic.gov.au) but still no ads. Personalization and device may matter though since Mac and iOS users tend to be more preferred target amongst advertisers, but I didn't get ads on my iPhone either.

giantrobot 2y ago

I think Google's aggressive tracking and targeting skews search results. Even technically logged out they know who you are. They have your IP associated with your account. So your incognito results aren't likely to be very different from your logged in results. Not saying they'll be totally different from mine but incognito mode alone isn't anonymizing you to Google. For reference I did the same search on Google. I do not use Google search by default nor do I ever log in from non-private sessions. I got the same results as you...after one full viewport scroll. Half the SERP is an "AI Overview", below that are some sort of page summaries (not links) for "Secure Your Data", and then finally one full viewport scroll down is the first external link. DuckDuckGo (my default search engine) isn't doing too much better. The same search gets me three ads before an actual search result. The ads take up 75% of the viewport. Then after only a single outgoing link there's a bunch of links to video results. To me both SERPs contain mostly garbage. I didn't ask for some AI summary. Nor did I ask for Google to summarize a bunch of pages. I also didn't ask DDG for video results which typically aren't meaningfully different from identified ads.