
Entire Google search result pages are now ads - freediver
https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/gvdsu1/entire_google_search_result_pages_are_now_ads/
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mthoms
Reminder: it's been 4 months since Google said they would roll back their ads
with favicons. Surprise! Nothing's changed.

"Every Google result now looks like an ad"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22107823)

"Google backtracks on search results design"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144210)

~~~
gundmc
I don't see any favicons on my desktop search, which is what the links
reference.

Mobile favicons had been around for some time prior to those articles and
continues to have them.

~~~
mthoms
Interesting. I'm still seeing them.

Are we talking about the same thing? They aren't _actual_ favicons btw, they
are composed of text with the word "Ad" but formatted and positioned to look
like exactly like favicons.

~~~
gundmc
Ah yes they did change the ad indicator as you described, but that's not what
the pushback was against.

They briefly changed desktop search to include favicons next to every native
search result, making it way harder to quickly see what was and wasn't an ad
(since every result had some image next to it). They rolled that back and it
has not returned (yet).

Check the screenshot from the first article you linked for the difference.

~~~
mthoms
Ahhh... right you are. Thanks for the correction!

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MattGaiser
Sure, but if you are interested in buying a mattress, are those not where you
generally want to go anyway?

I suspect the mattress hobby community is not very large.

~~~
jader201
Yeah, and DDG’s results for “mattress” aren’t much better:

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mattress](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mattress)

Basically a map listing three mattress stores, followed by two ads. Then
finally a few non-ad results, but still stores selling mattresses.

If you’re on desktop, there’s a bonus ad on the right sidebar, below the
definition.

~~~
tpxl
I see a couple of mattress stores, a wiki ad, a facebook group for the first
couple of mattress stores, something russian and then more mattress stores.
Nary an ad in sight, (got uBlock origin and javascript off)

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cercatrova
Everyone should be using uBlock Origin. There is no reason to see ads anywhere
on the internet.

~~~
pjmlp
There is, not willing to pay for content.

~~~
jka
Can you think of any content (software, for example) that is produced without
advertising?

~~~
pjmlp
No, but that doesn't mean content producers have other sources of income,
specially when those consuming it aren't willing to pay them.

~~~
jka
Agreed; so figuring out how to sustainably meet (and ideally exceed) people's
basic needs is important to safeguard content production.

Meanwhile, I don't think consumer expectation of free service is likely to
change, and expect there's a market for ad-free reimplementations of existing
services.

~~~
aabbcc1241
I've seen some ad-free alternative, but they usually have much less budget on
promoting themselves, so harder to reach the critical mass (for network
effect)

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dimator
I'm curious what kinds of sites people think _should_ be returned for a search
term of "mattress", if not mattress shopping sites?

~~~
grawprog
Comparisons of mattress materials or brands, histories of different mattresses
used by cultures, forums for mattress aficionados, tutorials for making your
own or modifying mattresses, general mattress information or facts, other
random weird shit the internet used to have about strangely niche subjects
that have way more people dedicated to them then you'd expect you'd only
discover by searching random terms then you find there's a whole world of
weird things dedicated to this niche topic, say mattresses in this case, that
you'd otherwise never know about.

~~~
bagacrap
what is a "general mattress fact"? If you typed "mattress Wikipedia" you'd get
a bunch of mattress history and facts, so it's not exactly hard to find what
you're looking for, but it's probably the case that most people who type just
"mattress" are looking to buy one. If that weren't true, why would Google show
so many ads? It's not like showing a million ads is going to trick a seeker of
general mattress facts into buying a mattress they don't need.

~~~
fragmede
It's trivial to find "random fun mattress facts" by Googling for exactly that,
but thanks to link and content aggregators, instead of flipping through
channels on the tee-vee, we scroll for miles with our thumbs. Before
commercial interests took over the web, it was full of weird and wonderful
sites by hobby enthusiasts, built in their spare time that would have random
weird facts and stories. For better or worse, _that_ Internet is behind us
now, so it's rare to come across that sort of treasure trove of a site. (To be
clear, there's better _and_ worse today, compared to the Internet of yore.)

What's the case here, is that mattress store owners, in the conversion to
online sales, have purchased, not only the adword for "mattress", but paid for
all manner of SEO tricks and hackery in order to drive their site to the top
of the results. Far in excess of what a hobbyist could or would bother with.

It's a long shot, but the long tail of the Internet says that this has
happened at least once. Someone was just poking around came across a random
mattress myth or fact page, and found out that something they hate about their
mattress isn't something they have to put up with. Whether that's "being
tricked" into buying a mattress they didn't need, I won't say, but it still
tickles an intellectually curious itch that I didn't even know I had, to find
out that it’s illegal to purchase a mattress on Sundays in Washington.

A single word query like "mattress" is vague and starting from first
principles, we live under capitalism, assume everyone's trying to sell you
something, and a search for "mattress" proves to be no exception. Same goes
for if you search for "windows". Second link is how to get it (for $199).

------
N1H1L
Well didn't how Yahoo die to a certain extent? I remember back when Google
first came on the scene - we were all using Yahoo. Yahoo was an ad-filled
ungodly mess, while Google was clean and _fast_. People switched over really
fast.

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thebean11
If you scroll down on that page, pretty sure there are non ad results. Seems
disingenuous to say it's the entire page.

~~~
willcipriano
With infinite scrolling what's a page?

~~~
em-bee
a screenfull.

so therefore, if all i see is ads at first, it's entirely reasonable to claim
that i get a page full of ads.

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rkagerer
I would really love a search engine or keyword that lets me exclude pages with
ads (or too high an ad-content ratio).

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rolph
there is always this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397615)

kinda stuff being posted here and it gets approximately zero traction

So how else do you expose the ad to eyes other than getting meta by making
postings like GP?

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maest
This is a great way for Google to make all the margin of mattress sellers.

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Bayart
Even when there's not a lot of apparent advertising, a large portion of the
high ranking pages are ads or referral links disguised as informative content.

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buboard
on the bright side, it's now easy to compete with google

~~~
musicale
I'd like to see someone develop a search engine that was optimized for finding
web sites based on categories, such as non-commercial, enthusiast, blog,
academic, companies, merchants, etc..

My favorite google flavors are google scholar and google news, which seem to
more or less do what they say.

Too many search engines seem to have crowded out the web search function with
widgets for ads, local properties, wikipedia, media companies, etc..

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olives
I don't think the map portion of that screenshot is monetized.

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a3n
Duck Duck Go, [https://duckduckgo.com/](https://duckduckgo.com/)

It's good enough. And when you don't get what you want, you can use the google
bang code, !g in front of your search.

DDG should be your default.

~~~
MattGaiser
With my adblocker off it doesn't seem all that different in having mostly ads
and a map on the front of the page.

~~~
ivanfon
DGG lets you disable ads in the settings:
[https://duckduckgo.com/settings#general](https://duckduckgo.com/settings#general)

But the main difference is that DGG chooses ads based only on search term, as
opposed to tracking you and collecting your data across the entire net.

~~~
bagacrap
so iow, less relevant ads that are more likely to just get in the way and not
be a product I want

~~~
lazyload
The service has to monetize somehow? Unobtrusive, non-retargeted aren’t a
dealbreaker by any means for me, and I loathe the ads industry in general

