

Calling Out Google's Bullshit - puranjay
http://startupdispatch.com/opinion/calling-out-googles-bullshit/

======
saalweachter
Having worked for a comparison shopping engine, I blame users.

The typical user of the typical comparison shopping engine is not a user in
any real sense of the world. They accidentally stumble onto the site, almost
always from Google, and click out to a merchant before they even realize
they're on a comparison shopping engine. There are like three guys who
actually type the URL of a shopping engine into their address bar and
intentionally search on that site for the product they're looking for. This
holds across basically all of the top comparison shopping engines. Their
direct traffic is almost non-existant, and they are utterly dependent upon
search and paid traffic to survive.

And it's all the users' fault. The various engines have spent nearly a decade
and literally millions of dollars trying to figure out how to get people to
come to them when they want to buy something, and they just don't want to.
Users can't deal with remembering a _second_ URL to go to to find something on
the internet. They want to go to Google and type in what they're looking for
and find it.

------
codesuela
I feel like this post is just troll linkbait. What are the alternatives? To
weed through every review in the sites listed in the SERPs? Check each and
every site (each with their own design and sometimes horrible UI) write down
the prices in Excel and sort them by price? I have limited experience with
Google shopping US but I know that in Germany if you submit your products in a
CSV you will get listed at Google shopping. Also you are always free to sort
the results by price. So Google provides a API for you to submit your
inventory and scrapes reviews and provides a user friendly unified interface
for people to compare prices of different retailers (leaving out SEO
efforts)...and that's a bad thing??? The fact that Google shopping is always
the first result is also not true here is a search for "keyboards" [
<http://imgur.com/GMZBs> ] at Google Germany (can't replicate it with US
Google because I don't even get Google Shopping at google.com).

tl;dr I call bullshit on this article.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I use DuckDuckGo

------
thezilch
Why not callout everyone?

Bing? <http://i.imgur.com/SOmwD.png>

Yahoo? <http://i.imgur.com/oZmIp.png>

So much about this is missing the mark. For example, the supposed Sears quote
that Google is ripping off; turns out Sears must have "ripped off" Nikon:
<http://www.nikon.com/news/2010/0915_d7000_02.htm>

~~~
puranjay
That's like calling Ebenzer Scrooge greedy. Bing and Yahoo don't apply.

At the same time, notice that neither Bing nor Yahoo have one of their own
sites as the top result. The top result is Nikon.com in both cases. Not the
same thing as Google.

~~~
thezilch
I get the same top, non-ad result for all three properties.

------
damian2000
"we want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast as possible"
-- larry page was talking about the google search engine, not google shopping.
If you go to google shopping in the first place, its because you're looking to
buy something, otherwise just stay on google search? There's a multitude of
other shopping comparison sites out there that all do the same thing.

~~~
puranjay
Why do people forget that tech-savvy hackers aren't the only people who use
Google?

My mother "The Yahoo" is THE internet.

How misleading is planting a 'Shopping Results' on top of the search results
page for average, non-internet savvy users ("there are thousands of us!")?

It used to be simple enough to use for my mother. It isn't anymore.

~~~
calbear81
I think at some point Google realized that it could do a better job at
answering certain types of queries for the end user than just showing them 10
blue links and this is the case when there's high shopping intent. If the end
user (average) gets a better experience, then why is it wrong for them to
promote G! Shopping? Also, Google has always maintained that it aims to
organize the world's information. When you're shopping, that data can best be
organized as a combination of availability, price, shipping options, etc.

Let's assume that your mom was shopping for the Nikon D7000 and only clicked
on the organic results:

1st result: DPReview - Review site with comprehensive review of the D7000.
Price/Purchase options at the bottom are not as comprehensive as on G!
Shopping.

2nd result: Nikon - Bad pricing options, enjoy paying full retail.

3rd result: Amazon - Basically same as the 1st since Amazon owns DPReview but
it's a good shopping option.

4th result: Wikipedia - No pricing options, pretty bad result if your aim is
to shop.

Now compare that to the Google Shopping result: On the 1st click, I can see:
\- Pricing options from many stores, including local ones that carry it. \-
Aggregated reviews across the web (editorial reviews means from
magazines/publications vs. user reviews from normal users) \- Seller ratings
so I know who is reputable and who isn't.

At the end of the day, I think the average user would have gotten more
information and more pricing options than if they had to click on a link to a
bunch of different stores or third party sites.

I think it's fair to say that it's harder and harder to get to the top of
Google without paying for it and the heyday of SEO-driven business models may
be at its end in many categories.

Just my 2 cents.

------
mikenereson
re: youtube and the video filter. The topbar and the sidebar are two totally
different things. I think is more than OK for youtube to be in the topbar. In
fact I want it there. I click it all the time when I want to move my search to
youtube.

~~~
puranjay
Yes, but look at it this way: the 'image' link performs the same function in
both the top and the left nav menu. The 'video' link from the left nav menu,
on the other hand, is replaced by a link to YouTube.

This wasn't the case until a couple of months ago. Obviously, this is to drive
more visitors to YouTube.

Think how your father would view this if he was new to the internet - he would
automatically assume that YouTube was the default video search engine, just
like Google. He would never know Vimeo, DailyMotion or others.

It's not misleading to us because we're on HN. But think of the average
computer illiterate user.

------
yanw
Not this nonsense again.

 _Larry Page: "we want to get you out of Google and to the right place as fast
as possible"_

That was pre-IPO Google! if you haven't noticed the web changed quite a bit
since then and companies do evolve, especially the ones who want to remain
relevant.

Also It's not like Google is selling the items in shopping search it's just a
different view for shopping results, and I'd argue that sending users
elsewhere and not computing the solutions (results) or visualizing them
immediately is a weakness that I'm glad to hear Google is working to address.

~~~
puranjay
Oh noes its not.

Google is promoting its own content when better alternatives exist.

And why does Google want to do that?

Because the longer a user stays on Google, the more ads he clicks.

It's all about the money at the end of the day. Google used to care about the
user, but now it's a giant middle finger with a search box.

This is not evolution; this is a company selling you a car with 10 years of
warranty, but reneging on the promise 3 years down the line.

Change I can understand, but this shit is telling internet entrepreneurs who
use SEO: screw you. IMO, that's not too good for the internets

~~~
yanw
So go to other sites, I assume your browser has an address bar.

Also: _SEO is killing America_ :
[http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/the-information-
die...](http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/the-information-diet-stump-
speech)

If Google is killing SEO then they are making the world a better place.

