5 ms·

Except when search engines bury the thing you're obviously looking for under an entire page of sponsored ads, then that convenience argument starts to not hold

Except when search engines bury the thing you're obviously looking for under an entire page of sponsored ads, then that convenience argument starts to not hold up as well...

dkkergoog 2y ago
[dead]
krferriter 2y ago
When I search 'dc plane crash' in Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo I don't get results buried under ads. When I search 'air conditioner for sale' I do get ads at the top of each of those, but that's more okay because I am looking for things to buy. And it's easy to look past the ads to get to sites like home depot or other traditional retailers that come up not just because they purchased ad space.
- yellowapple 2y ago
  It helps that decent ad-blockers also tend to be able to block sponsored results.
piva00 2y ago
Paying for ad-free search engines do exist as an alternative, sucks a lot for the ones who cannot afford such a luxury but at some point I noticed that for my life search is quite important, both personally and professionally, so I haven't minded paying for it after the free experience provided by Google, Bing, etc. started worsening.
Rayhem 2y ago
Except when LLM providers bury the thing you're obviously looking for under an entire page of sponsored ads (buy Diet Coke™!), then that convenience argument starts to not hold up as well...
shpx 2y ago
install uBlock Origin
coryrc 2y ago
Do you not use an ad blocker?
ptmcc 2y ago
If LLMs aren't already doing this, they certainly will soon. And it'll be even more insidious and "invisible" than sponsored search results.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  This is the biggest argument in favor of subscription-based funding models for search I've heard. (Kagi et al.) Ad-sponsored models are going to be dead as soon as people realize they can't trust output. And because the entire benefit to LLM search is the convenience of removing a human-in-the-loop step (scanning the search results), there won't be a clear insertion/distinction point for ads without poisoning the entire output.
  - handfuloflight 2y ago
    What if the advertiser's product or service is objectively (according to either a prompt defined by the user or by the UI operator, transparently provided) the answer to the query?
    - crabmusket 2y ago
      Then the response will also contain ads for things that are not the answer to the query. This is how search engines currently behave. Example from my work. Many of our customers will search for our company name in order to find the login page. I've watched them do this over screen share. When they do that, the top search result is an ad slot. The second search result is our login page. We buy ads against out own company name so that we can be the ad slot as well as the first result. Otherwise a competitor who buys ads against our company name could be the top slot.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        Or a phisher could buy the ad slot or game the search results to publish a fake login page to phish credentials. This is why 2FA is not really optional anymore for anything of value.
0x0203 2y ago
And most of the actual results from said search are nothing but LLM generated slop content that provide zero utility to the user and only exist to capture as many clicks and traffic as possible so they can shovel as many ads as possible. The current web is practically unusable.

Except when search engines bury the thing you're obviously looking for under an entire page of sponsored ads, then that convenience argument starts to not hold up as well...

dkkergoog 2y ago

[dead]

krferriter 2y ago

When I search 'dc plane crash' in Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo I don't get results buried under ads. When I search 'air conditioner for sale' I do get ads at the top of each of those, but that's more okay because I am looking for things to buy. And it's easy to look past the ads to get to sites like home depot or other traditional retailers that come up not just because they purchased ad space.

yellowapple 2y ago
It helps that decent ad-blockers also tend to be able to block sponsored results.

piva00 2y ago

Paying for ad-free search engines do exist as an alternative, sucks a lot for the ones who cannot afford such a luxury but at some point I noticed that for my life search is quite important, both personally and professionally, so I haven't minded paying for it after the free experience provided by Google, Bing, etc. started worsening.

Rayhem 2y ago

Except when LLM providers bury the thing you're obviously looking for under an entire page of sponsored ads (buy Diet Coke™!), then that convenience argument starts to not hold up as well...

shpx 2y ago

install uBlock Origin

coryrc 2y ago

Do you not use an ad blocker?

ptmcc 2y ago

If LLMs aren't already doing this, they certainly will soon. And it'll be even more insidious and "invisible" than sponsored search results.

ethbr1 2y ago
This is the biggest argument in favor of subscription-based funding models for search I've heard. (Kagi et al.) Ad-sponsored models are going to be dead as soon as people realize they can't trust output. And because the entire benefit to LLM search is the convenience of removing a human-in-the-loop step (scanning the search results), there won't be a clear insertion/distinction point for ads without poisoning the entire output.
- handfuloflight 2y ago
  What if the advertiser's product or service is objectively (according to either a prompt defined by the user or by the UI operator, transparently provided) the answer to the query?
  - crabmusket 2y ago
    Then the response will also contain ads for things that are not the answer to the query. This is how search engines currently behave. Example from my work. Many of our customers will search for our company name in order to find the login page. I've watched them do this over screen share. When they do that, the top search result is an ad slot. The second search result is our login page. We buy ads against out own company name so that we can be the ad slot as well as the first result. Otherwise a competitor who buys ads against our company name could be the top slot.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Or a phisher could buy the ad slot or game the search results to publish a fake login page to phish credentials. This is why 2FA is not really optional anymore for anything of value.

0x0203 2y ago

And most of the actual results from said search are nothing but LLM generated slop content that provide zero utility to the user and only exist to capture as many clicks and traffic as possible so they can shovel as many ads as possible. The current web is practically unusable.