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What paranoid tripe, complete with mass downvote conspiracy theory pandering. I never thought I'd hear someone on hacker news actually complain about search eng

by mooted1 13y ago

What paranoid tripe, complete with mass downvote conspiracy theory pandering. I never thought I'd hear someone on hacker news actually complain about search engine results not being commercial enough. Most of the changes you describe enhance the user experience. Do you honestly prefer to wade through a few dozen promotional emails to find messages from your boss, friends or family? Is your argument seriously that google should make their products more inconvenient so companies have to spend less money on adwords? Not to mention the idea that there's some kind of zero-sum trade off between email marketing and adwords is ludicrous. Similarly, wikipedia ranks high for keywords when they are associated with queries for information, not product offers. Your example of the keyword "computer" is a terrible example for making your point: for me at least, only two ads show up for this keyword, but there are dozens for "laptop". This is a strong indicator that "computer" by itself is not what people google when they're buying computers. By contrast, type in "new computer". Finally, the keyword tool has required a (free) google ads account for a long time, so I really don't know what you're going on about here.

platinum1 13y ago
Looks like Google's been reading http://donttrack.us/ http://donttrack.us/
powertower 13y ago
Everything he said was spot on, he just used a bad example at the end. At Google, you better believe that when search changes are made - those changes are ran through a test to see if they have a positive or negative effect on revenues and profits - aka Ad clicks. And that test result heavily outweighs any accompanying change to the search result's relevancy score. Maybe it did not start out like this, but now that Google is a publicly traded company, and now that they own the market, and now that their revenues are still completely dependent on Ad clicks, things work differently. It's not about improving search results, it's about improving revenue numbers. If you can't see how this business process biases Google's algorithm to produce less-relevant search results on page in favor of the Ads having a higher chance of getting viewed and clicked, you have drank the kool-aid. Bing is just as good as Google-search for most people, yet most people have made up their minds about the search engine to use. This market behavior allows Google to not be worried about making algorithmic changes that worsen the results in trade for more revenue ... as the users will keep sticking with them... Because this change has no effect on their userbase numbers (current, and growth #s). Aside from higher CTRs, those changes (that return less relevent search results) will also improve the number of searches done and the number of Ads shown by great margins - as the users will keep at it, performing another search in hopes of getting something relevent back . It's a win-win for Google.
- moultano 13y ago
  >At Google, you better believe that when search changes are made - those changes are ran through a test to see if they have a positive or negative effect on revenues and profits - aka Ad clicks. This is absolutely false, and I wish people would stop repeating it. Google does not make ranking decisions based on revenue. We don't even collect that data for making ranking launch decisions.
  - bsullivan01 13y ago
    If you believe that, you live in the GoogleMatrix! There's some MBA looking over your shoulder, maybe without you knowing and that MBA is giving feedback to your VP. Look on the bright side, you may be gullible and are destroying many small businesses (those free loaders don't buy adwords!!) and lives but at least your stock options are worth double or triple with this revenue enhancing method. When you're desperate to increase CPC, issue mass penalties on small businesses sites, and your ad clicks increase after each major updates, what are we to make? Believe some Google corporate crap or trust your judgment?
    - icebraining 13y ago
      There are many valid reasons to criticize Google, from their massive contribution to the destruction of online privacy to the Kenya scam, but ruining lives because they make it harder to game their engine? Give me a break.
      - bsullivan01 13y ago
        but ruining lives because they make it harder to game their engine? Give me a break Gaming??? What if they are penalizing sites or cutting off free traffic to force sites to advertise via Adwords? Yelp supposedly pulled the same scam with bad reviews
        jlgreco 13y ago
        So your thesis is that google is killing your small company by sending people interested in your business to wikipedia instead? Has it occurred to you that perhaps people are more interested in wikipedia than your business?

by mooted1 13y ago

platinum1 13y ago

Looks like Google's been reading http://donttrack.us/ http://donttrack.us/

powertower 13y ago

Everything he said was spot on, he just used a bad example at the end. At Google, you better believe that when search changes are made - those changes are ran through a test to see if they have a positive or negative effect on revenues and profits - aka Ad clicks. And that test result heavily outweighs any accompanying change to the search result's relevancy score. Maybe it did not start out like this, but now that Google is a publicly traded company, and now that they own the market, and now that their revenues are still completely dependent on Ad clicks, things work differently. It's not about improving search results, it's about improving revenue numbers. If you can't see how this business process biases Google's algorithm to produce less-relevant search results on page in favor of the Ads having a higher chance of getting viewed and clicked, you have drank the kool-aid. Bing is just as good as Google-search for most people, yet most people have made up their minds about the search engine to use. This market behavior allows Google to not be worried about making algorithmic changes that worsen the results in trade for more revenue ... as the users will keep sticking with them... Because this change has no effect on their userbase numbers (current, and growth #s). Aside from higher CTRs, those changes (that return less relevent search results) will also improve the number of searches done and the number of Ads shown by great margins - as the users will keep at it, performing another search in hopes of getting something relevent back . It's a win-win for Google.

moultano 13y ago
>At Google, you better believe that when search changes are made - those changes are ran through a test to see if they have a positive or negative effect on revenues and profits - aka Ad clicks. This is absolutely false, and I wish people would stop repeating it. Google does not make ranking decisions based on revenue. We don't even collect that data for making ranking launch decisions.
- bsullivan01 13y ago
  If you believe that, you live in the GoogleMatrix! There's some MBA looking over your shoulder, maybe without you knowing and that MBA is giving feedback to your VP. Look on the bright side, you may be gullible and are destroying many small businesses (those free loaders don't buy adwords!!) and lives but at least your stock options are worth double or triple with this revenue enhancing method. When you're desperate to increase CPC, issue mass penalties on small businesses sites, and your ad clicks increase after each major updates, what are we to make? Believe some Google corporate crap or trust your judgment?
  - icebraining 13y ago
    There are many valid reasons to criticize Google, from their massive contribution to the destruction of online privacy to the Kenya scam, but ruining lives because they make it harder to game their engine? Give me a break.
    - bsullivan01 13y ago
      but ruining lives because they make it harder to game their engine? Give me a break Gaming??? What if they are penalizing sites or cutting off free traffic to force sites to advertise via Adwords? Yelp supposedly pulled the same scam with bad reviews
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        So your thesis is that google is killing your small company by sending people interested in your business to wikipedia instead? Has it occurred to you that perhaps people are more interested in wikipedia than your business?