Every Google result now looks like an ad

Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by Gustomaximus on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @06:10PM (#22112780)

Google decides the layout. You can have the 'strongest SEO' in the world and Google still decide if they put 1 ad or 9 in front of the result.

Strength of SEO is irrelevant to the ads. The only thing Google hate is when sites manipulate themself to rank higher and offer a worse user experience.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by onion2k on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @02:25AM (#22115381)

Strength of SEO is irrelevant to the ads.

It wouldn't be very surprising if Google varies the number of ads in a search results page based on the search term. For sites that have strong SEO for all of their key search terms that would be indistinguishable from Google placing more ads in pages where that site ranks highly.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by Gustomaximus on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @11:38AM (#22119024)

My understanding it is very linked to 1) Profitability. Search terms around things like lawyers and credit cards. You'll almost always see 4 ads. 2) Genuine relevance. Google know for certain searches your not likely looking to buy something and to keep credibility don't show ads.

Occasionally you can find pockets of less competitive search's that 1) allow ads 2) relate to your product via the algorithm even if they don't to a human brain 3) Align to your desired audience and these can give great return.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by rijoja on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:04PM (#22112162)

Do they really? Wouldn't a "strong SEO" site be ideal for their spiders?

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by dheera on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:35PM (#22112471)

I guess sites with real, useful content (e.g. Wikipedia) don't need strong SEO since they have a ton of back-links from other sites that validate their high ranking, so "strong SEO" is really about making a less useful site look more useful, which makes sense for them to hate.

SEO really translates to "How to fool Google into boosting your ranking artifically".

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by pyrale on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:47PM (#22112589)

In my experience, Wikipedia has been relegated lower and lower in search results.

So much so that I now specifically use their search tool rather than go through google just in case some interesting thing pops up.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by JohnJamesRambo on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @06:17PM (#22112834)

Having to search for “xxxxxxx wiki” more and more now. No I don’t want Healthline and Medicinenet links above the Wikipedia entry, thank you Google.

I wish by each search result there was a button that said “banish this domain to oblivion, I never want to see it again.”

You could improve search really fast that way if you still cared about things like that.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by adelpozo on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @06:59PM (#22113141)

There used to be such feature in the results page. I just went looking for it and I got 'Cached' and 'Similar' when I click in the little drop-down arrow. Nice feature that appears to be removed. How does removing that feature benefited the users?

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by marcan_42 on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @11:44PM (#22114711)

It used to be an extension (an official one from Google, Personal Blocklist). It was never part of the vanilla search results page itself.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by ComputerGuru on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @12:22AM (#22114864)

No, it used to be part of the official results before the personal blocklist extension ever existed. Then some features were removed from the search results and then partially reimplemented in that extension.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by goodmachine on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @02:46AM (#22115483)

Personal Blocklist by Google has been forked and reimplemented by a number of people:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/personal-blocklist...

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by welder on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:14PM (#22113235)

Yes, a ban button has been on my search wish list since Google existed!

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by randycupertino on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @10:05PM (#22114205)

I do the same thing when looking for product reviews or useful discussion- generally put "xxxx forum" or "xxxx reddit" etc.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by boomlinde on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @11:09PM (#22124786)

If you know which site you want to search, and its search feature is as decent as wikipedia’s, I suggest adding it as a search keyword. Saves me some time to type e.g. ”wk turtle” in the address bar instead of going through the front page or lazily searching via some third party search engine.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by lainga on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:23PM (#22113972)

try <foo> !w on DuckDuckGo

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by sovok_x on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @12:37AM (#22114921)

Or add "w" keyword for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s&go=... bookmark on Android Firefox and then search with "w searchstring" from its address bar.

It's silly that it's necessary to create separate bookmark for this, though. Native search engines, surprisingly, don't support keywords there.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by pferde on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @03:53AM (#22115803)

Why silly? It is in fact a bookmark - just a parametrized one. :)

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by sovok_x on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @10:48AM (#22118513)

They do have native search engines with neat option to add them from a site's search field. Why not add keywords too as they did on desktop.

I feel silly adding bookmarks for the things I already have in search engine list.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by jethro_tell on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @06:12PM (#22112789)

I use duckduckgo, and for the most part, you know what you are searching for so the !tags are really good. !w search term, just takes you right to wikipedea. When I really have no ideal what or where I'm looking for something, I still find myself looking on google a bit, but for the most part, !youtube, !arch, !git, !stack, get me exactly what I want about 99 percent of the time.

Check it out, because it sounds like it might start to match your workflow: https://duckduckgo.com/bang?q=

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by takeda on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:00PM (#22113846)

For YouTube you can use !yt, much shorter.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by wolco on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:22PM (#22113964)

Is there a shorter domain name for ddg?

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by qilo on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:45PM (#22114089)

There is a https://ddg.gg which redirects to the main domain, so I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by runarberg on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:43PM (#22114073)

https://duck.com Should redirect you.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by dole on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:43PM (#22114066)

Duck.com?

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by BigJono on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @06:16PM (#22112818)

Which is complete fucking bullshit. It's driving me mental that when I search for something, Wikipedia usually isn't on the front page. It's almost always the best result for most things, it should be on top.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by rawoke083600 on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @10:57PM (#22114470)

Shouldn't you then just go to wikipedia and search there ? You know to stop the "F* bullshit" and "save your mental state" ?

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by dlkf on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @02:15AM (#22115341)

Wikipedia's search is totally inferior to google. It requires correct spelling within one or two edit distances and the SERP is far less informative. This is a common enough action that those seconds add up. If ddg wants to be competitive they need to fix this.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by lostgame on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @01:07PM (#22120198)

Wait, what?

Google used to put the Wiki article right at the top of the results list. It virtually never does that anymore. This is what's bullshit.

The point of a good search engine is that it is supposed to conglomerate good results, relevant results - let's say I'm looking up 'Phillip J. Fry' from 'Futurama', but I still want wiki information. Wikipedia won't even spellcheck for you if you don't know how to spell something correctly, like a city name.

If I use a search engine, I'll get this Wikipedia result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Fry

But I will also get the far more informative Futurama-wiki result: https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Philip_J._Fry

Wikipedia is not a search engine. Although, at this point, Google is barely one, so plastered with sponsored results it can be hard to find the result you're looking for, and with this change, I've finally made the long-needed jump to DuckDuckGo.

Yes, it's time to 'stop the fucking bullshit', and save all our mental states - searching Wiki isn't going to solve that - but not using Google can help. ;)

Comparing a search engine to wikipedia search is like comparing a search engine to a local file search.

If you're looking for a specific driver on your computer that you know the exact spelling and version number of, a local file search will help you find that. A search engine will return many results with download links as well as potentially other drivers, or other versions of drivers for your product - and will generally forgive you if you misspell something.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by ehnto on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @11:42PM (#22114701)

You are perhaps joking but that has been my tack for a while now. Having specific sites I use to search through. I used to web search the pick from the offerings presented, not caring what site it was so long as it had the information I needed. But now I really value a good website that respects UX and good, honest content with low commercial influence.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by CalChris on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @06:09PM (#22112767)

I would love to be able to overrule Google and always sort Wikipedia as the first result. Maybe this can be done with a browser extension.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by svcraig on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @08:04PM (#22113540)

Wikipedia seeming to lose relevance is like my old high school teachers finally getting their way over a decade later...

Do you find their search tool more effective than appending "wikipedia" to your Google search?

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by takeda on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:03PM (#22113866)

I think it's Google's work to deprioritize them on other search engines it is still showing up at first DDG gives it special treatment, by highlighting its summary, which is often what I'm looking for.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by pyrale on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @03:40AM (#22115751)

At this point I have moved to another search tool as my baseline.

I also use hoogle a lot for work so I'm used to switching search tool.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by mlang23 on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @09:29AM (#22117787)

I noticed that as well over the years. Also, one thing that really drives me crazy is that Google is trying to steer me into using the german wikipedia, even though I am already explicitly searching for the english article name. I really prefer reading the english version for techie topics, no matter if there might be an article in my native language. This is the sort of "smart" behaviour that really feels dumb.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by wolco on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:20PM (#22113949)

I remember a thread where everyone complained over too many wikipedia results popping up. Now we complain the other way.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by xenocratus on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:09PM (#22112208)

I think the idea is that a strong SEO site doesn't have to pay to be seen through searches.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by dmix on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:52PM (#22113464)

There will still be 2-4+ ads above the fold of the real "good SEO" results anyway.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by dsfyu404ed on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:11PM (#22112220)

If you have good SEO and drift to the top of queries that actually are relevant for your site then you don't need to buy as many Google ads.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by xp84 on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:02PM (#22113168)

The way Google defends its income stream against that is simple: They allow your competitors to buy ads on your own names and trademarks, then you're forced to do so as well because otherwise your organic link is below the ads. It used to be that it mattered since only dumb users would click the ads. But now that they're unshaded and look 99% identical, only super nerds bypass ads. Meaning your #1 organic result is basically only good for bragging rights and nothing more if there's anyone willing to pay even a small amount to jump up above you.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by brennebeck on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:22PM (#22112323)

Wouldn’t having strong SEO incentive competition to buy ads? Of course it also incentives them to work on SEO, but the only way to ‘get above’ a top ranking site would be to buy an ad, no?

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by Retric on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:44PM (#22112561)

Increasing costs for your competition is a net win for you.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by iudqnolq on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:46PM (#22112574)

And Google

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by Retric on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @05:47PM (#22112590)

Depends on the industry, but if you can profit at lower prices you can force your competition to spend less on advertising. That’s bad for Google.

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Re:Every Google result now looks like an ad by iudqnolq on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:31PM (#22113357)

That makes sense. I meant increasing the ad buy spend of a firm's competitors helps Google

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