from the got-what-they-were-looking-for-from-search-results-page? dept.
A few months ago, back in August, the Web passed a milestone in that less than half of Google searches result in even a single click onwards. In other words, the majority of searchers never left Google after seeing the results. That could be a warning that Google is transitioning from a search engine to more of a walled-garden. Or it could mean that the results aren't good any more and people move on to other engines after only a quick glance. If the former, where searches are no longer resulting in click through, then what should be the proper response from the Web at large?
From: Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click:
On desktop, things haven’t changed all that much in the last three years. Organic is down a few percent, paid and zero-click are up a bit, but June of 2019 isn’t far off January of 2016.
On mobile, where more than half of all searches take place, it’s a different story. Organic has fallen by almost 20%, while paid has nearly tripled and zero-click searches are up significantly. Even way back in January 2016, more than half of mobile searches ended without a click. Today’s, it’s almost 2/3rds.
Three trends are made clear by these numbers:
- The percent of searches available as organic traffic from Google is steadily declining, especially on mobile.
- Paid clicks tend to increase whenever Google makes changes to how those results are displayed, then slowly decline as searchers get more familiar with spotting and avoiding them.
- Google’s ongoing attempts to answer more searches without a click to any results OR a click to Google’s own properties are both proving successful. As a result, zero-click searches, and clicks that bring searchers to a Google-owned site keep rising.
And, from: Over 50% of Google searches result in no clicks, data shows:
Even worse, it seems this trend towards zero-click searches has seen steady growth since 2016. In the meantime, organic reach for third-party websites has continued to shrink. To be fair, it's not all that surprising that a large number of searches result in no clicks – especially when we factor in that Google has been shifting its attention to summing up results in snippets at the top of Search. While those might be easier to scan for users, they do eat into third-party websites' traffic. We've reached out to Google for comment, but have yet to hear back. We'll update this post accordingly, if we do. However, as Fishkin points out, a US congressional panel recently asked Google if it was true that less than 50 percent of searches lead to non-Google websites. It was a simple Yes-No question, but the Big G eschewed giving a direct response. Instead, it took a dig at the authenticity of the data cited – without denying it.
Previously:
Google Removes Image Search Buttons to Appease Getty Images (2018)
Google Kills Off Search-As-You-Type (2017)
HTTPS Introduced as Google Search Ranking Criterion (2014)
Google Downranking The Pirate Bay Searches (2014)
Related Stories
Fluffeh writes:
According to TorrentFreak, Google is downranking The Pirate Bay's website in its search results for a wide variety of queries, some of which are not linked to copyright-infringing content. Interestingly, the change mostly seems to affect TPB results via the Google.com domain, not other variants such as Google.ca and Google.co.uk.
It also seems that Google may only be downranking searches that are explicitly looking for copyright-infringing content, not searches that are simply looking for The Pirate Bay itself. It will be interesting to see whether this is a backhanded effort to appease the media companies, or a taste of things to come to all the Google domains.
Google has announced that HTTPS will be used as a lightweight ranking signal for search results; sites that use it will appear slightly higher (although they make clear that quality content is a higher signal).
Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports
When Google launched Google Instant Search back in 2010, the company called it a fundamental shift in search that would save searchers time when running searches on Google.
Instant Search displayed search results page to the user during the process of typing the actual search phrase the user was interested in.
In [the] best case, it would display the desired results earlier. In [the] worst case, it would throw a number of unrelated search results page at you while you tried to focus on typing your search query.
[...] I disabled Instant Search as soon as it came out. [It] was terribly annoying if you typed long queries quickly.
The feature could also jack up bandwidth [usage,] as more results pages may have had to be loaded during your typing of the search phrase you were interested in.
Starting [July 27], Google Instant Search is no more. The company has put the feature to rest, all thanks to the rise of mobile and the fact that Instant Search does not really work that well on mobile devices for a number of reasons.
Do any Soylentils still do searches from Google's landing page?
Once you get a Google result, have you then been typing into Google's page to refine your search?
I hated Mozilla's AwesomeBar and, when I encountered Instant Search (on the library's machine), I was irritated. (I do searches as URLs, from the Address Bar; it's one reason that I hate most Google "replacements", which are script-driven and don't show you a URL that you can repost.)
Google settled a lawsuit with Getty Images and announced a multiyear global licensing deal with the company. One part of the settlement is the removal of the "View Image" buttons in Google Images searches. This is not entirely crippling, as you can still usually open the largest version of the image using your web browser's context menu:
Google is making a change to image search today that sounds small but will have a big impact: it's removing the "view image" button that appeared when you clicked on a picture, which allowed you to open the image alone. The button was extremely useful for users, since when you're searching for a picture, there's a very good chance that you want to take it and use it for something. Now, you'll have to take additional steps to save an image.
The change is essentially meant to frustrate users. Google has long been under fire from photographers and publishers who felt that image search allowed people to steal their pictures, and the removal of the view image button is one of many changes being made in response. A deal to show copyright information and improve attribution of Getty photos was announced last week and included these changes.
Google is also removing "Search by Image" buttons, requiring users to drag an image into the search bar instead.
Also at Search Engine Land and 9to5Google.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:04AM
With Russia determining the outcome of American elections and generally taking over the world, everyone should be using Yandex by now, da?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:05AM (3 children)
With all the recent clickbait "stories."
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:32AM (1 child)
Hey, they got you to click and comment. Looks like their plan is working to me!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:42AM
What you say is very interesting, please tell me more.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 27 2019, @02:47PM
We needs us them ad dollar bills, yo. Or it could be that most people don't usually change the headline from whatever the original source's was and we usually leave the submitter's headline intact.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by D2 on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:19AM (15 children)
From TFA:
"...Or it could mean that the results aren't good any more and people move on to other engines after only a quick glance. "
No, that's not remotely what it means. As the linked quote and every analyst involved is saying, Google's getting good at directly providing the sought information ON THE GOOGLE RESULTS PAGE. There's no second search engine. If I google 'symptoms dengue fever' and get the symptoms on the results page, I'm done. The end.
SMH.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:34AM (6 children)
Your use-cases are not my use-cases.
The efficacy of today's Google search depends on what you are actually searching for. Here is one example: If you search for web pages or articles published more than a few years ago, you will have a hell of a time finding them even if you can recall the name of the author or the exact title. They are effectively gone from Google's perspective, and thus out of your reach. They even said as much five or so years back. In those cases, cross-searchers like DDG and Startpage and, maybe, Yandex.
Another example is that searching for numbers is all but impossible now and pattern searching was removed at least a decade ago from Google.
Then take the case of looking for project home pages for specific software packages. If the project is noteworthy enough, is usually easier and faster to find the project home page via Wikipedia than to waste effort and time dorking around with Google. AltaVista used to be best at that. However, it is gone and the market narrows.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:43AM (1 child)
I think that Google is, and has been for some time, transitioning to an "answer engine" instead of a search engine. Probably one of the best known ones for some time was Ask Jeeves, where you could ask it certain questions and it would answer it on top, with search being a secondary function. However, Ask Jeeves and many other answer engines learned that users of such services do not click ads. They expect to see the answer up top and are then satisfied, otherwise they will try another query, another service (like Wikipedia or a search engine), or give up to try "later." This is exacerbated by people doing quick lookups while on mobile because if they don't find what they are looking for, many will just give up and continue the conversation they were having that prompted that query in the first place. By cultivating such an answer engine, Google is hurting their click rate and search results for non-question queries.
As an aside, if you are looking for articles, you should try Google Scholar or another dedicated article search engine for the type of article you are looking for.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:25AM
I agree. It is a dangerous thing to do because people have less incentive being indexed, but google is turning into an assistant.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Walzmyn on Sunday October 27 2019, @11:41AM (3 children)
yeah.
But for every one case like yours how many hundred are just looking for the time of the Packers game or how many inches in a meter, which are all right on the Google results page? That's the source of the decline mentioned in TFA.
Although your use case may prove Google is becoming useless, it's not what's driving this.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:08PM (1 child)
I don't know. It could be both. Some people google just the weather one time and then get on the bus to go to work while a programmer hammers Google relentlessly. Without seeing IP Addresses (or other uniquely identifying information) it's hard to tell.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:55PM
And any decent statistical method will strip out the OCD programmers who read page 10 of their search results as anomalous outliers...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 27 2019, @04:41PM
I'll use it to check the spelling of a word.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:00AM (2 children)
Could it be that you actually did read the "dept line" and then felt the need for a more verbose explanation, with examples?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Funny) by canopic jug on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:35AM (1 child)
I'd be more worried about the assertion that viruses can cross boundaries like this:
If I google 'symptoms dengue fever' and get the symptoms on the results page, I'm done. The end.
Well, maybe not done the first time, there is a fairly high survival rate with modern treatment, but you'll sure feel like it's the end.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:42AM
Serves one right, if one trusts Google.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @09:56AM (1 child)
Weird, the past couple of times I used Google (I normally use duckquackarfwhatever for general searches) the results were, as they say, pish.
I found that I had to be very specific in what my search terms were, and even then, what I was looking for was on the second page, the link hidden amongst a whole pile of irrelevant garbage, just doing another test, a very specific search on a phrase which, at least four years ago, Google used to return the link to the newsgroup posting it appeared in, now only returns a whole pile of steampunk crap...which is so way off beam as far as the subject of the old newsgroup posting is concerned it isn't funny..
I have no doubt that if I was searching for some inane drivel about pop stars, hollywood nonentities, useless politicians (tautology, I know, I know...) or a.n.other trending degenerates and their fads-du-jour then Google might throw up said drivel without me having to delve further than their result page...unfortunately it appears that whatever dark magical jiggery-pokery they're using to do so isn't being applied equally to all their stored data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:17PM
Yep, I find I need to put everything in quotes otherwise it ignores 1/2 my words.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Sunday October 27 2019, @03:51PM
That's definitely what it means for me. If I want to know the score of the Notre Dame-Michigan game, I just google "Notre Dame" and the top result will be a live score of the game. No reason for me to click anything.
If I do the same in DuckDuckGo, I'll get a similar result, but it will be an hour or more old. The score will display, but it will be the first quarter instead of 4 minutes left to go in the 4th quarter.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:14PM
Google is fucking garbage if your search results are obscure or out of the ordinary. They ignore keywords I specify and even when those words are wrapped in quotes they still get ignored. The whole reason I'm using google is to track down obscure information or research purposes.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:52PM
Case in point: Highlight and right click SMH to Google search for it - result: Shake My Head observed in less than on second, page closed, mission accomplished.
Article author wanker level: incalculably high.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:25AM
On mobile, unless one searches for very specialized narrow domain or qualifies the query with a site, at least the first two pages worth of google results are exclusively ads in the vast majority of time. For the time during my commute, a good thing S/N exists. Otherwise I'd have to carry a printed book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:37AM (1 child)
I use google without clicking with "searches" that aren't meant to search anything. For example:
xx eur to usd
xx cm to inches
APPL stock
define stuff
I also sometimes look at search results and realize my search was not detailed enough or that a word has two contexts and I need to exclude one of those contexts.
It is possible that between these two activities, that is 50% of my searches. I know google likes to summarize results, dynamically quoting articles and such. That is what the article is hinting is the common cause, but in my case I find only ~10% of the time that those are good enough for my purposes
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Sunday October 27 2019, @11:25PM
I suggest using Wolfram Alpha instead for most of those kinds of queries: https://www.wolframalpha.com [wolframalpha.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:00AM (1 child)
Less than half of all Google searches contain a reference to the keyword you typed in unless you set "verbatim", which you cannot set as a default
It is just possible that the result you want is on page 5, but realistically, one glance at the first page shows you are stuffed by Google. Their algorithm has crashed and burned.
If there is there is a half decent search engine somewhere, I would switch tomorrow. Yes, I have tried DDG.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @03:20PM
I came here to say something like this. Their results have gone way downhill in the past couple years, as has their UI, which now appears to be dedicated to the cell phone optimized version. They even went so far as to remove the "cached" link. Since that transition they seem to be ignoring most of their old keyword and symbols, so I can't even get an exact match by sticking the string in quotes.
Google's gone far enough that they've actually opened up a hole for someone else to come along and eat their lunch. Unfortunately, I expect Silicon Valley has gone far enough into decline (see WeWork) that there isn't anyone left capable of doing so before they get drowned by their HR department, and since the rest of the world seems to be trying to transition to walled and censored internet there's probably no-one to take advantage of the opportunity.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:01AM (2 children)
Cannot take seriously, it contained piecharts.
(Score: 3, Funny) by inertnet on Sunday October 27 2019, @10:30AM
But there's no sugar coating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:54AM
Reminds me of an exploded pie chart I saw. I'm not going to get it exactly right but it was something like being titled "When can I use a pie chart?" and the entire pie was solid and labeled "telling people not to use a pie chart."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @11:41AM
That is not a walled garden. There aren't any walls.
That doesn't mean it's problem-free, of course. It is a little like when newspapers complained about getting listed by Google (because they'd rather... not be indexed and get referred traffic? People spent enormous effort trying to get what news sources were getting for free. I never understood this). Except for real this time. If Google takes your content, displays it on their own search results page, and thereby prevents that search from actually going to your website, that's denying you your own traffic and possible ad revenue. The solution of course is for Google to pay you if this happens, not for everyone to somehow try to prevent it.
But of course, Google having to pay other websites will just encourage them to try to provide that content themselves, sort of like when they copied lyrics from ... uh, whoever it is they copied them from, and then tried to pass them off as their own (complete with trap words [wikipedia.org]).
This is the sort of thing that is only really fixed properly by breaking up Google, so that these sorts of incentives don't happen. Search fundamentally needs to be separate from content.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Sunday October 27 2019, @12:03PM
For those seeking other possible search engines, there is a convenient list at Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines#General [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday October 27 2019, @12:07PM (1 child)
Firstly, for most searches, I use non-Google search engines (chiefly DDG). When I do use Google search, it's to find something for sale online, as Google is mostly good at presenting commercial opportunities to you - as opposed to informative or cultural results. And then, I copy-paste the URL in another tab, as opposed to clicking on the convenient link that takes your to Google's tracker before redirecting you to the URL you want. That way, Google never knows which sites I'm actually visiting.
It's a PITA, but any effort is worth doing to keep Google in the dark as much as possible.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Tuesday October 29 2019, @12:07AM
If you want Google's results but don't want to actually use Google, why not use Startpage [startpage.com]? It basically sends your query off to Google, then scrapes the results and sends them back to you, minus the trackers and other bullshit. Unless you mean you're actually interested in the ads?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @01:50PM
There is a fundamental problem with heavily weighting "new"-ness and click rank. If it is about the newest most popular content, then it is about the newest and most popular content, not the most accurate content.
When I read news and seem something interesting I go to youtube or wikipedia first a lot more than I used to. A lot of the top indexed sites on google just hire college english majors to write bullshit with select keywords. It is new and unique, but it is still written by bimbos with English majors.
Might as well be reading popular scam-science or fuck-whitey-ithonian magazines.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Sunday October 27 2019, @03:13PM (1 child)
From my own experience recently, searches for specific terms, names, or phrases return nothing but gibberish spam sites, or nothing at all. Not because Google is broken, but because the stuff just isn't out there. Other search engines don't do much better. While many of the searches are for somewhat uncommon stuff, they are usually things I would have expected to be out there SOMEWHERE in some form or another.
It used to be people put all kinds of random important, informative information on publicly accessible internet web sites. But since that does not usually bring in money, and web hosting costs money, most of those kinds of sites have vanished. Replaced with spam, clickbait, mindless social media babble, and the rest hidden behind logins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27 2019, @05:44PM
Most of the web content I am looking for ranges from 10 to 25 years ago.
Some of it is definitely still online. Others used to be in google's cache back when google still cached everything.
After their big cache purge a few years back a ton of culturally relevant information as well as old facebook pages, etc all disappeared.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Sunday October 27 2019, @06:22PM (1 child)
It used to be that no matter what I was searching for, Google would find it and place it at the top of the results page.
Nowadays, Google ignores half the keywords I specify to limit the search in the area in which I'm interested, and will parse the search phrase for meaning, and search for that instead, producing unwanted results. Say, e.g., I want to search for information about company A in my town. Google sees my search, figures out that company A produces whatchamacallits, does a search for whatchamacallits in my town, and displays results for company B, which also produces whatchamacallits.
Google has sacrificed result relevance for result quantity.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dr Spin on Sunday October 27 2019, @07:57PM
t used to be that no matter what I was searching for, Google would find it and place "Barnes and Noble" and "Alamo Car Rentals" on the results page instead.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday October 27 2019, @10:12PM
I don't use Google for search much anymore. Their sponsored links have choked out what I'm really interested in to about 4-5 pages deep. Often, it's even hard to find the good or service I'm looking for when I am looking to buy something. Amazon seems to have passed them by in that category.
But then, that's a threshhold that it seems all advertising-supported business models pass eventually. Cable TV passed it some time ago, and their customer base has de-camped en masse for streaming services and P2P that don't blast them with more commercials every hour than there are shows.
Washington DC delenda est.