
Google’s Featured Snippets are often wrong, and also damaging to businesses - lucabenazzi
https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com
======
joelrunyon
Google's "quality guidelines" prohibits scraping other sites and covering the
first half of your site with ads.

Google's results these days tend to scrape the information from most sites +
list ads on >50% of the listings page.

Really frustrating when Google doesn't even follow their own guidelines.

~~~
Klathmon
That's because those guidelines aren't meant for them.

Google is saying that if you don't follow their guidelines, you "shouldn't" be
included in their search results. They aren't saying you are committing some
kind of atrocity, just that pages that do that provide bad results from
searches.

Of course google doesn't want scraped results showing up in their search
results. Would you want your search engine to show results from other search
engines which show results from other search engines which show results from a
page with a snippet which points to the real source?

They aren't "not following their own rules" any more than a train is braking
the rules by being on the tracks in spite of the "stay off the train tracks"
sign.

~~~
tyingq
From Google's post about the "too many ads above the fold" update:

 _" As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints from users that
if...it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the
experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want
to see content right away"_[1]

So, they recognize pages that are heavy with ads at the top, which push down
the actual content, aren't a good user experience. That's exactly what I get
when I search Google...a bunch of ads or other self-serving stuff on top, that
pushes down the content (actual organic results) that I'm looking for.

[1][https://search.googleblog.com/2012/01/page-layout-
algorithm-...](https://search.googleblog.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-
improvement.html)

~~~
true_religion
To me the ads are the content as well. Often times the tip search result is
the same as the top advertisement.

~~~
malchow
My mother has exactly one way to get to the Nordstrom e-commerce site: search
Google for Nordstrom, and then click on the first authoritative-looking
Nordstrom search result, which is an AdWords ad, landing her at the home page.

Seems expensive for Nordstrom.

~~~
jessaustin
Would a browser extension that _just_ moved AdWords to the bottom of the page
be banned from the chrome web store?

I'm sort of tempted to try this, but if so I guess I should start backing up
my gmail account...

~~~
memmcgee
Are adblockers blocked from the Chrome store?

~~~
tyingq
Desktop extensions aren't, but perhaps GP is remembering a similar situation
with mobile ad blockers and the Play Store.
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/09/google-reverses-its-
decisi...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/09/google-reverses-its-decision-to-
ban-ad-blocking-apps-from-the-google-play-store/)

------
gdulli
> At the time of writing, the [google] queries “Larry David net worth” and
> “how much is Larry David worth?” both turned up the answer $900 million and
> credited Business Insider

> The Business Insider story says that “it has been estimated” that Larry
> David is worth up to $900 million [...] Then it cites CelebrityNetWorth’s
> lower number, $400 million, and quotes Larry David denying he was worth even
> $500 million

The most valuable asset Google could possibly develop at this point is
humility.

~~~
1_2__3
Google more than any other organization on the planet has bought at least some
of its own bullshit. For at least 6-7 years they've been consistently, 100%
sure that generally-useful AI (or something sufficiently approximately close)
is just a few short years away, and thus any investment in anything else (like
people) would be wasted.

They've sacrificed countless customers, products and services on this altar,
and will continue to do so probably indefinitely. They've decided they're
going to live or die by the AI. Humans work there only to build, configure and
maintain the machine. Every time I hear someone say "Google really needs to
hire some <people>" or "Google needs to train their <people>" better I shake
my head - it's like saying Ford should solve an efficiency problem with their
cars by building boats.

Google is not going to do that, ever, and Google is not going to learn
humility either. They're convinced they have it figured out, reality be
damned.

~~~
Danylon
1\. Google has been an AI company from the very beginning (information
retrieval).

2\. Google is investing and doing generally useful applied AI, not an AGI
moonshot.

3\. Google's AI researchers are not 100% sure that AGI is just a few short
years away.

4\. Major source of income is advertisements. A lot of non-technical people
work on this, allowing others to do more research and improve search.

5\. Like said, AI is Google's DNA from the start. They are the biggest AI
company in the world, and will die/be dethroned when they let AI research
wither.

6\. Avoid blanket humility, and lose hunger, innovation, dare. "At Hooli,
nothing is ever impossible".

------
gjm11
Here's a lovely snippet-box example I encountered just the other day (and
reported to Google; nothing's changed yet). Search for "tintinnabulum".
(Advance warning: You might want to avoid doing this at work or in a public
place.) The box at the top contains two things.

1\. Some text from the Wikipedia article, correctly informing you that a
tintinnabulum is a small bell on a pole in a Roman Catholic basilica
symbolizing its connection with the Pope.

2\. An image of a sculpture whose title happens to be "Tintinnabulum". The
sculpture is of a naked woman riding on a penis-with-legs. The penis has a
penis of its own, too. (Regrettably this doesn't continue recursively.)

I am fairly confident that nothing resembling that sculpture is to be found in
any Roman Catholic basilica symbolizing its connection with the Pope.

~~~
diggan
Judging by the Wikipedia page (but note I really have no idea/experience with
this subject in general), it seems to related to phallic figures, so it's no
shock that you get a picture with that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintinnabulum_(Ancient_Rome)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintinnabulum_\(Ancient_Rome\))

------
dahart
> Featured Snippets usually have a note that says “About this result,” while
> Knowledge Graph answers do not.

This seems like the potentially most interesting part to me. Excerpting data &
web sites to build a service without citing the source or giving credit seems
like it could be a copyright violation.

The snippets case at least cites the source, and has a link to get you there,
so even if it is damaging to a business it's probably legal.

While copyright does have exceptions carved out for copying small snippets of
a work, e.g., for educational purposes, there's no clear line for copying all
of a work in thousands of tiny slices that are published separately. Seems
like an area where copyright law is due for a change as a result of all things
digital.

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
In the case of the celebrity net worth site, though, it seems pretty clear
that he'd have a very thin case when it came to copyright. Just because it
took them a lot of effort to come up with the numbers doesn't make the end
result copyrightable - it is an estimation of a fact, and there is no
copyright possibility there. Even if they took the whole thing, there is
nothing non-obvious about a list of celebs and their estimated net worth. To
me, that seems to have been the biggest problem in their particular business:
they invested a lot of money into building something that it would be very
hard to protect someone from just taking it once it is done.

~~~
dahart
> Just because it took them a lot of effort to come up with the numbers
> doesn't make the end result copyrightable

You're bringing up a valid point - facts aren't copyrightable. And while I was
talking about the bigger picture, I'd have to agree that this argument may be
harder for the celebrity net worth site than others.

But

Compilations of facts are copyrightable, _and_ a large amount of effort spent
compiling the numbers does in fact strengthen their case. It's called the
"sweat of the brow doctrine", and copyright cases have been decided in favor
of people primarily due to their efforts.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow)

I speculate this doctrine does apply to sleuthing celebrity net worth from a
variety of sources. But nobody knowns until it goes to court, and it depends
on the quality of the lawyers as well as the nitty gritty details about how
celebrity net worth gather their data.

Either way, the bigger picture is that regardless of whether the celeb site
lives, there may a problem with the way Google is doing business.

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
From the Wikipedia article that you linked:

>The United States rejected this doctrine in the 1991 United States Supreme
Court case Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service;[4] until then it had
been upheld in a number of US copyright cases

(which is what I remembered from my IP law class ;-) )

~~~
dahart
Yes, that's correct, the Feist case was the first one rejected on those
grounds, and found that "A mechanical, non-selective collection of facts
(e.g., alphabetized phone numbers) cannot be protected by copyright."
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Copyright_limitations.2C_exceptions.2C_and_defenses))

But sweat of the brow doctrine still applies to collections of facts when some
creative work has been done, and does strengthen a case when there has been
more sweat.

The case of the celebrity net worth site is one that is not a mechanical
reproduction of facts. They are not a phone book, they are doing research and
estimating net worth using implications. Their work is not single-sourced, but
based on what they say is a wide variety of sources, some of which may not be
publicly available. Who knows, some of it might be unsubstantiated rumor, or
even "creative guessing". Just on the face of it, there is arguably enough
creative work in what they're doing to satisfy a copyright claim. I doubt
they're interested, and I don't think it'd be easy. I don't speak for them,
I'm not a lawyer, and I don't recommend it. But to my eyes, it's not out of
the realm of possibility.

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
Completely agree - would be interesting to see it judged!

I've often thought about this in the context of data collected by major sports
leagues. They sure are very vocal with their legalese about how they hold all
rights to use any of the data that they collect, but I have a strong suspicion
that if someone with deep pockets held their feet to the fire, they may not
like the result. The PGATour's ShotLink data is an example that comes to mind.

------
xutopia
I remember the days when we all feared Microsoft in the startup world for the
same reason we fear Google today.

~~~
amorphid
I bet we'll fear Amazon's AWS in the future.

~~~
djsumdog
I stopped shopping at Amazon after returning to the US. They're pretty much
the new Wal-Mart, except with mutant superpowers.

~~~
amorphid
I've definitely cut back in Amazon shopping. There's too much garbage on the
site. And it is nearly impossible to flag fraudulent items.

------
sly010
The examples in the article are all kind of acceptable, but I have asked
google some very factual question (e.g. can covariance be negative) where it
picked out the wrong answer from stack overflow that was clearly the opposite
of the truth. It confused the hell out of me.

~~~
tyingq
Google sometimes gives out pretty dangerous advice as well:
[http://imgur.com/a/bsP98](http://imgur.com/a/bsP98)

~~~
rchaud
It's frankly quite shocking that Google's ad results are displayed with pretty
much the same look and feel of their search results. Yes, the more tech-savvy
among us will see the "Ad" button in gold, and those with ad-blockers won't
see the ads at all.

But just a few years ago, Google's ads would appear in a sidebar, clearly
separated from the search results content.

Not everyone is able to tell the difference today, and I think Google exploits
this. I recently activated a new B2B website for an client and the senior
manager was an older gentleman in his 50s. He never uses the browser address
bar to navigate to websites, preferring instead to use the Google search box
on his homepage. He sent me a panicked email saying when he typed in the new
website's name, the Google search results showed competitors' names ahead of
his. This was well after Google had crawled the site and it was showing up on
the results page.

As it turned out, he did not understand that the first few results he was
seeing were ads. While he isn't a savvy user, I would wager that many, many
people are similar to him in that they don't exercise good judgement when
they're on the web and would easily be fooled into thinking that something
like "proton therapy" is a cure for cancer because it's at the top of the
search results.

~~~
thomasahle
They always (at least since 2007) had ads in the main search result column:
[http://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-
googl...](http://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-google-
bing-254332) They've certainly removed some of the distinguishing features
though.

~~~
tyingq
Here's a pre-2007 result. It's still at the top, but across both columns.

[http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4f2992c7eab8ea28690...](http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4f2992c7eab8ea286900000b-1200/these-
are-the-early-search-results-just-a-list-of-links-with-some-ads-on-the-sides-
and-the-top.jpg)

The point that they've slowly made changes over the years to make the ads look
less like ads is very clear though.

They've also generally done a lot of work to push the organic results down.
It's very easy to find queries where there's no organic result showing above
the fold, even on a fairly decent desktop monitor.

------
caust1c
I like to collect incorrect google cards:

[https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/659154907899936768](https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/659154907899936768)

[https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/811356518977138688](https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/811356518977138688)

Edit: Today

[https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/855193855422943234](https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/855193855422943234)

------
cronjobber
> “But then they went ahead and took the data anyway.”

The only question remaining for me is why Googlers still enjoy the respect of
their peers. It was fine in 2000, nobody knew how it would turn out. Today, we
need to start disrespecting the _kind of person_ that would still work for
that company.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
To be fair, and I was considering placing this as a reply to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14157988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14157988)

Google has incredible PR/marketing. And this isn't just a public-facing
engagement. Google seems to do an incredible amount of _inward_ marketing. The
same high quality rhetoric that sells a large amount of the public on the
notion that Google is a good company trying to make the world a better place
works even better on Googlers themselves.

Bear in mind, Googlers are provided food and amenities on campus, which keep
them surrounded by the Google mindset most of the time. One of the funniest
things recently, on another site, was getting a response from someone
condemning my post about pay equality by a "Googler with a Googler wife". Many
Googlers friends and family are also Googlers... that's where they spend all
of their time. So there are plenty of people at Google whose entire social
circle comprises of other Googlers. And that's _before_ you talk about the
fact that Google is paying them to be there.

That's a huge amount of social pressure, and a huge amount of bias in what
information they take in and how they interpret it. If their entire social and
financial structure is built around a single entity, I suspect it'd be fairly
difficult for the ordinary person in such a situation to leave. I don't fault
individual Googlers for the direction of the machine.

A movie called _The Circle_ comes out in eight days, and I suspect it will be
quite worthwhile on this.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUlr8Am4zQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUlr8Am4zQ0)

~~~
Animats
That's a movie now? Didn't know that was coming.

"Unleash the drones!"

------
ape4
The snippets aren't in the spirit of the web. The take traffic away from
independent sites.

~~~
bhartzer
Yes, they may not be in the spirit of the web. But if you have ever had a
featured snippet (or earned one), you'll know that they actually bring a lot
more traffic to your site.

They hardly take away traffic from sites, as people are saying. That's just
flat-out wrong.

~~~
sushisource
Except for the subject of the article who lost 65% of his traffic...

------
Neliquat
I find 2/3 to be insultingly wrong.

Example search: eye of round steak

Result: Eye of round is irredeemable cut of meat.

Wtf google.

~~~
mbell
> Eye of round is irredeemable cut of meat.

To be fair, that is actually fairly accurate.

~~~
chrischen
To be even more fair, I'm not getting that. I'm getting a Wikipedia excerpt.

~~~
parenthephobia
Google US gives [https://www.splendidtable.org/story/eye-of-round-is-one-
of-t...](https://www.splendidtable.org/story/eye-of-round-is-one-of-the-few-
unredeemable-cuts-of-meat)

Google UK gives
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_steak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_steak)

Possibly this is because in the UK (and presumably wherever you are) we don't
call that cut "eye of round" (it seems to be from roughly the same part of the
cow as our silverside), so we're googling to find out what it is, whilst in
the US people are googling to find out how to cook it.

------
elsewhen
i get the sense that google wants the featured snippets feature but are not
devoting enough resources to it. the following featured snippet has been
appearing for over 8 months, and i have sent feedback multiple times:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=apartments+for+rent+minneapo...](https://www.google.com/search?q=apartments+for+rent+minneapolis)

the featured snippet is completely incomprehensible (and embarrassing)... they
just don't seem to care enough.

~~~
patmcguire
They just scraped the first three days of the first three weeks of a
calendar...

~~~
elsewhen
exactly what a user wants who is looking for a list of available apartments
</s>

------
dhatch387
This amounts to copyright violation. CelebrityNetWorth went to great extent to
organize this data and holds copyright on their site. Google is duplicating
and redistributing this research without permission of the author.

~~~
tedivm
What's worse is that Google essentially uses its monopoly (or at least extreme
popularity) on search to essentially extort people into going along with stuff
like this. If the site in question actually filed a DMCA notice or requested a
takedown in a more tactful manner (assuming he could actually find someone to
talk to about it) Google would probably just tell them to update their
robots.txt file so that the site doesn't show up on the search result pages.

------
erickj
it seems like the better question is:

"is it a good idea to build a business around trivia answers?"

if your entire business model could be upended by a collection of 1 line
wikipedia edits, then it seems like the problem is in the inability to
forecast.

~~~
tyingq
That's one space that Google is gobbling up with this sort of thing. It's not
the only one.

Try: status flight 111 american airlines

That used to result in a visit to aa.com

Now they are way below the fold at around #6 or so.

Google isn't planning just to eat up traffic for trivia sites.

~~~
bpicolo
That looks to be a result of those flight radar sites doing heavy SEO for the
terms vs aa.com =/

~~~
tyingq
That explains #6, but the "below the fold" is because Google injects their
widget: [http://imgur.com/a/tr5cs](http://imgur.com/a/tr5cs)

It's handy, sure. But it does take away a customer interaction that AA used to
get.

~~~
richardwhiuk
how is protecting AA's customer interactions Google's responsibility?

from my perspective as a consumer, Google is providing the information I asked
for, in a clear simple straightforward manner.

~~~
mytherin
It isn't, but it is Google's responsibility not to infringe on the copyright
of other people/companies. Google is not displaying their own content in those
snippets. They are taking content from other websites, reformatting it and
putting it on their own website. By stealing that content and displaying it to
the user, the user now no longer needs to visit the website from which the
content originated. They are directly taking away potential customers/revenue
from these companies. It seems pretty clear that that's not entirely kosher.

~~~
Animats
Facts aren't copyrightable in the US. See _Feist vs. Rural Telephone_. If it's
a pure fact and exposed to public view, Google can take the data and repurpose
it.

------
jefe_
I get this, but in another sense, the answer is to offer people a reason to
visit the site beyond the number, build an app with features people who care
about celebrities' net-worth will enjoy, make something compelling so it's not
as one-dimensional and easy to sidestep. It's like the whole 'keep american
jobs' thing. I agree that American jobs are good, but many of the people
calling for 'bringing back jobs,' aren't asking for new jobs with new
technologies, efficiencies, and ways of doing things profitably, they want
things to go back to 'the way they were,' and that really can't be done. Cut
the losses try something new, keeping lessons learned.

~~~
fiter
Google's offering isn't self-sustaining. These numbers will not be updated
without the celebrity net worth company and Google will have to remove the
outdated snippets. The celebrity net worth company started because no one was
doing the leg work for the simple number.

Your suggestion to the celebrity net worth company rings hollow after reading
the article: the people Google to get the information and get the information
at the top. Now there is no opportunity for the celebrity net worth company to
offer a reason to visit the site! When the people had to visit the site, then
there was a chance for the site to drive further engagement.

------
awqrre
The snippets are always wrong if you think about the ad revenue that Google
steals and the copyright material that Google is using for profit. It sounds
like a class action lawsuit could fix that.

------
crispytx
Sponsored

Paul Graham's Net Worth Will Leave You Speechless

------
Gigablah
As discussed previously here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139621](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139621)

~~~
tyingq
Also related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885631)

------
hbcondo714
Search _software quality attributes in software engineering_ and Google will
return a featured snippet from a 8-year old Microsoft site.

------
AznHisoka
"I one-hundred-percent think we should be credited for them."

But in the Floyd Mayweather example, his site is mentioned in the blurb so in
a way he is credited with it.

If he doesnt want to be in the snippet, then tell bankrate and every site that
mention you to take down that mention.

if he doesnt want his site to be linked to from any snippet, just add Google
to your robots.txt

dont want to do any of the above? ah... now we see he doesnt really have a
legitimate complaint.

~~~
turc1656
Yeah, the issue here is that he doesn't want to block Google from indexing his
site because he wants to be ranked in the results, so he allows Google to
display information that is on his site. He would have to disallow
reproduction of his site's materials formally, or the much easier method of
robots.txt that you mention. Ideally, he would do both. But he knows that will
also kill traffic because then he's limited to other search providers like
(gasp) Bing.

This is all on him. Is what Google is doing shitty? Yeah. But at the same time
it's almost insane that this guy knew his research could be boiled down to a
single number (which is clearly displayed on his website) and his whole
business model was getting Google traffic. You can't rely on an informal
agreement with a titan of industry and expect to have any bargaining or
negotiating power.

------
msoad
Can website put some sort of copyright clause that disallows Google from doing
this?

~~~
teej
You can use:

    
    
         <meta name="googlebot" content="nosnippet">
    

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6229325?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6229325?hl=en)

~~~
bhartzer
Or, you can use your robots.txt file and disallow Googlebot from crawling your
site.

~~~
Safety1stClyde
If the business of your company involves Google advertising and getting hits
on Google searches, it's a bad idea to completely block Google from indexing
the site.

~~~
bhartzer
If your business model involves relying on Google for anything, then you need
another business model.

~~~
Safety1stClyde
Virtually every business model involving the internet relies at least partly
on Google, so while your comment may be true it isn't particularly helpful.

~~~
bhartzer
Helpful? actually I've been pitching this same idea (don't rely on Google
traffic for your business model) since 2004. I've seen too many businesses
FAIL and have to lay off employees because they relied on Google traffic.

------
bhartzer
Featured snippets are just that--they've taken a snippet from websites and are
displaying them at the top of the search results for certain queries. Google
doesn't say that the information is correct--they do ask for feedback (there's
a link to submit feedback).

Featured Snippets are not damaging to businesses. In fact, I've seen
businesses benefit greatly by getting a ton of more traffic by having them.
They get more leads and sales, and more ecommerce conversions.

If you’re trying to rank for the answer to a question like “What is Larry
David’s Net Worth?”, and the answer literally is a dollar figure or a “quick
answer”, then I have no problem with Google “stealing” your traffic. In fact,
if the answer is “$125 billion”, and Google can give searchers that answer
without having to go to your website, then sobeit. What do you expect that
visitor to do anyway when they get to your site? They’ll leave. They’ll hit
the back button. They’ll bounce, because your site is focused too much on
short, quick answers. How about creating some real content, content that will
make visitors stick on your website and view more than one page?

~~~
amelius
This doesn't justify Google scraping their database.

~~~
bhartzer
I don't see this as scraping, actually. They're taking part of the content
from a page and displaying it in their search results. They do that with the
site's title tag and meta description tag.

I would be more concerned about the Google cache (for scraping) rather than a
Featured Snippet.

Go ahead and get a featured snippet (or earn one) and you'll see the massive
traffic increase and trust your site will get.

If you're concerned about them scraping, really, then go ahead and just block
Googlebot from indexing the site.

~~~
Safety1stClyde
> Go ahead and get a featured snippet (or earn one) and you'll see the massive
> traffic increase and trust your site will get.

According to the article which we are supposedly discussing, the site in
question got its traffic reduced by half after the snippet was added to the
Google search results.

