[HN Gopher] For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads
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For some searches the whole screen on Google is now ads
 
Author : steelstraw
Score  : 67 points
Date   : 2022-02-04 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
 
web link (twitter.com)
w3m dump (twitter.com)
 
| aparsons wrote:
| This has been the case for a long time on mobile. 1.5 vertical
| screens of ads is not uncommon.
 
| kehrin wrote:
| A little bit ironic that you can see an actual result at the
| bottom of the already cropped screenshot.
 
| ejb999 wrote:
| thats why I don't use google anymore (well one of the many
| reasons actually)
 
| tenpoundhammer wrote:
| Try neeva . com it's really similar to google but with none of
| the garbage experience from ads and SEO Spam. I switched from
| duckduckgo to neeva recently and have enjoyed it wayyy more.
 
  | voisin wrote:
  | What do you like about Neeva vs DDG
 
| imwillofficial wrote:
| That screenshot was shocking. It truly has been a slippery slope
| to get here. So subtle I barely noticed the group shifting
| beneath my feet.
 
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| been using ublock origin for years I have no idea what you're
| talking about. good luck though
 
| dmitriid wrote:
| "We sell advertisement, not search results"
| 
| https://twitter.com/krebs_adrian/status/1488173888068542466
| 
| https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/ (Note: the url of
| this page is /honestresults/)
 
  | post_break wrote:
  | I love that line. It's like coke saying we sell sugar water,
  | not soda.
 
| endisneigh wrote:
| Did anyone replicate this? I couldn't on desktop and mobile.
| 
| Seems like flame bait
 
  | lelandfe wrote:
  | Yes, I see this constantly when my adblocker is off. Search for
  | anything related to "job search" et voila:
  | https://i.imgur.com/dBXghPh.png
  | 
  | Here's "mattress," which has ads that extend beyond the fold:
  | https://i.imgur.com/Z9dGSKR.png
  | 
  | Those two I just took. I mercifully cannot replicate this one
  | anymore, but here's one for "indeed" I took in December, where
  | _LinkedIn_ had an ad that took up my entire laptop screen:
  | https://i.imgur.com/x7g5Uo3.png
  | 
  | I can't replicate OP's specific one, but remember that ad buy
  | is very dynamic. I do get the top two positions as competitors,
  | one of which is seen in OP's link as well:
  | https://i.imgur.com/hYjaWm4.png. I certainly do not think this
  | post is fake.
 
    | endisneigh wrote:
    | I'm talking about the exact query in the OP. No one is
    | shocked that Google has ads.
 
      | imwillofficial wrote:
      | There is zero way to exactly replicate OPs query as Google
      | heavily tailors results to each person, logged in or not.
      | 
      | And yes, people are shocked at the amount of ads google is
      | pushing.
 
        | endisneigh wrote:
        | a very loud and annoying minority of people are shocked,
        | yes. Go look at Alphabets Q1 results on Search - queries
        | up, users up, ad money up.
 
      | lelandfe wrote:
      | The title of this post is "For some searches the whole
      | screen on Google is now ads" - I hope it's shocking that
      | that's true, irrespective of if we can replicate the
      | _exact_ ad placements in this post?
 
  | tonetheman wrote:
  | Yes. I have seen it a lot. More and more as the days go on.
  | Google search results are no better than any of the other
  | search engines and even worse for people not in tech they do
  | not even know they are ads.
  | 
  | Just dark patterns. Sad it used to be a good search engine.
 
  | olyjohn wrote:
  | I saw this myself months ago with my father. He calls me up,
  | and tells me that Google is only showing him ads, and he can't
  | find any actual content. I figured it was some kind of malware
  | he installed, but nope, I get over there and it's exactly like
  | this screenshot. The entire first screen of results was ads.
  | Then when I scrolled down, there weren't Google ads, but just a
  | bunch of SEO spam. Wasn't gonna waste my time figuring it out,
  | so I put him on DDG, and his problems were solved.
 
    | endisneigh wrote:
    | lol, OK what was the query? let's see the DDG and Google
    | results side by side.
    | 
    | I swear people _always_ say nonsense like this and when I ask
    | for specific queries they stop replying. Check my history if
    | you doubt it.
    | 
    | I don't doubt you saw ads, but Google very strictly limits
    | the percentage of the screen that can be ads _or_ percentage
    | of results. If you can find a single query in which every
    | result on the first page is a sponsored ad I 'll send you $5
    | via Venmo right now, no questions asked.
    | 
    | people just like saying 'omg all my screen is ads' and then
    | they crop their screen showing like 20% of the screen on a
    | 1080p monitor. >_>
 
      | mikeyouse wrote:
      | I'm on a 13" Macbook Pro, here's what a Chrome search for
      | "Salesforce Integration" with my adblocker turned off looks
      | like:
      | 
      | https://i.imgur.com/AkQWJeF.png
      | 
      | 100% ads.
      | 
      | DDG for the same search is better, but not by much:
      | 
      | https://i.imgur.com/pcpxr4l.png
 
        | endisneigh wrote:
        | what's after the fold? Why do you crop it so it only
        | shows ads? so ridiculous. Google will almost never show
        | more than 5 sponsored ads or some combination of 2-3 ads
        | and sponsored modal.
        | 
        | this scenario of all of the results being ads is
        | nonexistent. again if anyone can show me a reproducible
        | query in which all results are ads, $5 - easy.
        | 
        | omg DDG 100% ads !111
        | 
        | https://imgur.com/a/gjfovKE
 
  | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
  | Do you think he created that web-page by modifying HTML?
 
    | endisneigh wrote:
    | It's literally a cropped image that no one has said they can
    | reproduce
 
      | strathmeyer wrote:
      | Search "retool slack integration" on google.com with no
      | quotes
 
      | imwillofficial wrote:
      | So what if it is cropped, is the amount of ads shown in the
      | screenshot with no actual search results acceptable to you?
      | Does the fact OP has a smaller or larger resolution than
      | you change your mind?
 
        | endisneigh wrote:
        | Literally the fifth result is what they were looking for.
        | they crop that out and complain on twitter.
        | 
        | so yes, it's acceptable. use ad-block if it's not to you.
 
  | albertopv wrote:
  | There are many factors that could change your results. Since I
  | disabled web & app activity I have seen a lot more ads.
 
  | moonshinefe wrote:
  | I can't replicate at all, in fact I get zero results labeled as
  | ads for the same search (on desktop, logged in, using FF). I
  | have my search history paused, perhaps that could be affecting
  | it?
  | 
  | Edit: I now see 3 ad results after disabling uBlock origin, but
  | still far from the entire thing being ads. I didn't think it
  | removed ads from the search results themselves (since I see
  | 'sponsored ads' occasionally in my search and things). My bad.
 
| gamerDude wrote:
| I wonder if there would be a good way to monetize a search engine
| such that returning great results gets them paid.
| 
| Like a check in if you found what you were looking for, give a
| penny. Or potentially not what you were looking for, but
| something that you are happy you found. Thus giving back good
| info to the search engine and only pay a nominal amount when you
| get what you want.
 
| ssss11 wrote:
| Yeah I've noticed this too. But also the rest of the front page
| is often either seo spam (like those Pinterest links which catch
| whatever search term you've used) or shopping sites. I've found
| google search to be increasingly hostile to its customers.
| 
| I guess we're not the customers. Use duckduckgo or something
| else.
 
  | onphonenow wrote:
  | How is pinterest not just banned unless you do site:pintrest or
  | whatever.
  | 
  | If you are not logged into some of these sites you can't
  | actually get to stuff either. Annoying.
 
  | yostrovs wrote:
  | It's fraud, effectively. I've seen a bunch of people that are
  | not tech savvy do Google searches, and they have no idea
  | they're clicking on ads. I pointed this out a few times and
  | they seem to not care anyways. Google knows this very well and
  | they pretend like they're giving search results, but the
  | majority of users are getting ad search results instead.
 
    | verve_rat wrote:
    | It is basically the yellow pages on the internet model that a
    | few people tried and Google killed. I'm not sure what we can
    | learn from the fact that Google is regressing into the model
    | they killed in the first place.
 
  | systemvoltage wrote:
  | I'd pay $10/month for a nerd-only, developer-friendly, pro-
  | small-biz, precision search that works like 2008 version of
  | Google. Something that I use dozens of times a day, is totally
  | worth paying for.
  | 
  | It is inevitable. It's coming. Algolia? Please?
 
  | twofornone wrote:
  | Kind of an aside but it seems like there are SEO pages which
  | dynamically adjust their displayed text in the search results
  | to your search query...how does that work? Isn't search result
  | text indexed in advance? Or is this some sort of paid feature
  | from google, where your search terms are injected into a
  | template?
  | 
  | Whatever it is it's really annoying because usually these
  | results link to another search on a shopping site and more
  | often than not those results come up empty anyway.
 
    | altdataseller wrote:
    | They are usually search result pages with the keyword in the
    | url parameter, and they link to those search results
    | elsewhere on their site for Google to find
 
  | omnicognate wrote:
  | You're not duckduckgo's customer either (their primary revenue
  | source is keyword based advertising), or the customer of
  | anything else you don't pay for.
  | 
  | The only one I know of that at least plans to have a simple
  | two-way relationship with search users as their customers is
  | Kagi. Currently it's in free beta with a waitlist (took a week
  | for me). When they go live they intend it to be a paid,
  | subscription service with no advertising. So far I've found it
  | good, and I'll gladly pay when the time comes.
 
    | echelon wrote:
    | I hope they penalize websites with heavy tracking or
    | advertising. We might get back to a sane web if this takes
    | off.
    | 
    | They can grow their market by offering 10 free searches a
    | day, and I think that would be enough to entice a lot of
    | folks to switch.
    | 
    | Offer a paid API, and I'd bet they'd have a real growth
    | story.
 
| enumjorge wrote:
| The Facebook stock debacle from yesterday makes me think that
| maybe there is a limit to how user-hostile a tech giant can be
| before it really starts to hurt their bottom line. For a while it
| seemed like companies like FB had captured enough of the market
| that they seemed impervious to backlash from their many
| controversies, too big to fail in a way. But it looks like
| letting resentment towards your product build among your user
| base can come bite you after all.
| 
| FB used outrage as a way to increase engagement and it worked for
| a while, but now FB is increasingly a non-desirable place to hang
| out. Instead you can go to TikTok where you will find mostly
| amusing and at times informative content. When Apple added
| restrictions that cut off oxygen to FB, FB started a PR campaign
| to paint it as one grave injustice. It seems like that was met
| with a collective shrug. Who cheers for the bad guy?
| 
| All that is to say, it seems like Google has been in this value
| extraction mode for a while and I don't see what the long term
| plan is. They don't seem to be innovating much, but are instead
| intent on squeezing as much money as they can from their existing
| assets. And while that may work in the short term, FB has shown
| tech giants are not invincible. I've seen a lot of talk online
| lately about how bad the quality of search results have gotten.
| If a credible competitor emerges, I think a lot of users would
| gladly switch. If/when that happens, Google better hope they
| don't find themselves in FB's position where they can't acquire
| their way out of their rut.
 
| AviationAtom wrote:
 
| iqanq wrote:
| no ublock origin = pebcak
 
  | colinmhayes wrote:
  | how do you get adblock on mobile?
 
    | iqanq wrote:
    | I use adguard with safari. On android you can use brave.
 
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Maybe Google should start a portrait mode monitor business;
| consumers could get even more ad results on their screen.
 
  | riversflow wrote:
  | I think they've already done that-only since they are a
  | software company they decided that it would be better to write
  | an OS for portrait mode monitors, and make it free, off-loading
  | those pesky manufacturing steps. Ideally the OS would be
  | attached to a device that the consumer would bring with them
  | everywhere and have fancy geo-locating tools that tell Google
  | where they go, you know for better ad attr-err search
  | relevance!
  | 
  | (perhaps that's what you were going for?)
 
| bell-cot wrote:
| I often prepend my searches with strings such as "wikipedia " -
| typically there's a big improvement on the SRP end...but the borG
| will fix that if it catches on.
| 
| Coming soon - "Ad Infinitum(tm)" Google search results pages,
| which start to slowly scroll 5 seconds after being displayed...
 
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(page generated 2022-02-04 23:00 UTC)