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A comment on Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story. Parent comment

Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by r721 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @11:35AM (#37802583)
Maybe they meant a longer version of this tweet:

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297 (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802302)

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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by tyingq on Saturday October 07, 2023 @12:25PM (#37803059)
"The organic (IE: non-sponsored) results you see in Search are not affected by our ads systems."

Uh, other than being pushed off the visible page, I guess?

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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by hn_throwaway_99 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @12:40PM (#37803204)
That's a very fair point, and I've complained about that degradation on Google many, many times over the years on HN, but I also don't think that's what Google was responding to. The Wired article has been taken down, but I'm assuming it was arguing that Google would change organic results to get more ad clicks. Google is saying here that ad results and organic results are 2 independent, orthogonal systems.

Again, your point is one I strongly agree with, but it's also taken out-of-context with respect to the article Google was responding to.

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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by tyingq on Saturday October 07, 2023 @01:36PM (#37803725)
I think there's also a case for neglecting the quality of organics, while investing highly in the quality of ad targeting. So it's not quite as twirling-mustachio villain feeling, it has roughly the same effect.
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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by judge2020 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @12:32PM (#37803125)
Yep. It's obvious that they design for you to click ads, but it was fairly rocky suggesting that the backend reaches out to the ad system. This wouldn't just destroy results, but also run afoul of FCC Ad disclosure requirements.
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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by zo1 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @04:32PM (#37805275)
So is no one questioning that maybe the search subsystem talks to the "website score" (or whatever it's called in Google-speak), to determine if it's relevant? And perhaps that score is influenced by how many valid ads there are.

Maybe the score is simply highly-correlated with a site that shows many google ads? Think about it, someone that shows Google ads happens to also be very very keen on optimizing everything that affects their rankings in Google searches.

Hey Google, perhaps "displaying many Google ads" should be a negative on page-rank?

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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by judge2020 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @04:49PM (#37805428)
Regardless, the Wired piece had no evidence and didn't make a claim on the same basis as what you're suggesting. The opinion author mistook this feature by thinking it applied to organic results: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10286719?hl=en
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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by wolverine876 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @01:12PM (#37803485)
The 'visible page' isn't a finite length.
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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by tyingq on Saturday October 07, 2023 @01:37PM (#37803740)
I'm not sure what point you're making. Is it just that I didn't say "currently visible portion of the page, the part you see without deliberate scrolling"?
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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by matt74827289 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @01:17PM (#37803533)
It's not fixed, but it is finite. No infinite sized screen exists
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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by wolverine876 on Saturday October 07, 2023 @01:38PM (#37803747)
If they mean it's forced off the screen, not the page, that makes sense.
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Re:Wired has removed "How Google Alters Search Queries" story by jppittma on Saturday October 07, 2023 @04:53PM (#37805461)
People don't click on or look at anything past the top 5 results anymore. They just refine the query.
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