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How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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What annoys me most is that you'll get that product carousel at the top of sponsored products that aren't what you want, then 3 or 4 results of sponsored links, then maybe you get the actual thing in the 5th real result.
It's a really bad search experience.
That's my experience of it too, and yet the Google users I know refuse to try anything else because they insist every other search engine gives useless results while Google gets it right. Perhaps it depends what kinds of things you tend to search for, but I usually do better with Duck Duck Go, and sometimes even with Bing. People's love for Google search at this point has to be based in how it used to be, not how it is today.
I've thought the same thing, and I've concluded there must be a significant percentage of people who use search engines in a completely different way than I do. Like my dad saying to his tablet, "Ok google, play [song from the 1960s]." If people think this is what a search engine is supposed to do, then I imagine a search engine that actually behaves like a search engine would be pretty disappointing.
I think this is it. Google has done an incredible job of making sure you can accomplish a huge amount with very little friction… so long as you do it with their products and give them your data. If that fits your goal, there’s no denying that going all-in on Google is going to work well for you.
If all you want is a place to enter text and get a page of links, not so much.
Usually Amazon is my first search stop then Google. I find I need to disable my ad blockers to be able to use the sponsored links. I often am searching for a solution product not a specific item so I'm curious about the options. Then I narrow down into specific items which Google does a pretty good job of I find for me.
I often use search within Google Maps to find locations hours, reviews on a experience, and a location or business' website.
I've recently switched to Duck Duck Go and FF and I find it might be a familiarity to the types of localized results I miss as I'm still pretty plugged into the Google eco system and duck duck go doesn't seem to hit the mark as closely for me.