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How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet (www.wired.com)
submitted 1 year ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.

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[-] theluddite@lemmy.ml 43 points 1 year ago

That sucks, but I argue that it's even worse. Not only do they tweak your results to make more money, but because google has a monopoly on web advertising, and (like it or not) advertising is the main internet funding model, google gets to decide whether or not your website gets to generate revenue at all. They literally have an approval process for serving ads, and it is responsible for the proliferation of LLM-generated blogspam. Here's a thing I wrote about it in which I tried to get my already-useful and high-quality website approved for ads, complete with a before and after approval, if you're curious. The after is a wreck.

[-] SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

That was a really well written, and more than mildly disturbing. Thanks? Yeah, thanks. I enjoyed it.

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

As someone with no web experience beyond using a string of notepad documents renamed into html files, this is both horrifying and completely fascinating. And very well written, like ya said.

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

Thank you for linking that excellent article. I’m finna share that with a bunch of people I know, because it’s wildly relevant to… lots of our lives.

Bonkers that it so suddenly is becoming this shitty

[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Well there's your problem. Google wants you to keep buying stuff, and you run an explicitly anti-capitalist blog. No ad revenue for you! /s

[-] theluddite@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

You joke, but also, too real. If I could bring myself to do it, the blog would have real ad revenue. I'd estimate at least a few hundred USD a month, and more if I added ads to the RSS feed, though I know a lot less about how those work. I try not to think too much about it.

[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've come to the conclusion that I have to put my money where my mouth is and pay for the websites I use. After all, running a website is not free, and it never was. Self-hosting, service-hosting, doesn't matter. Computer hardware costs money, internet service costs money, a good web developer costs money.

For decades we fooled ourselves into thinking that the internet is "free and open," and we still ardently defend it on that ground. And yet, that illusion was built off the back of the advertisement industry. We let them pay those costs for us, and now they want a return on their investment.

And don't get me wrong, ads were always poisoning the internet, for as long as I can remember. I saw "You're the one millionth visitor!" ads on computers in school. I've gotten viruses from insecure ad networks. I saw perfectly usable websites turn into an infinite billboard fighting to the death, with itself, for my attention.

Now I contribute to the Patreon my fediverse instance runs, the Patreons of creators whose content I like, and I plan to start up active donations to Wikipedia. I think it may not be possible to make the internet really free and open, maybe ever. But I think we could contribute to a healthier ecosystem if we - the users - took ads out of the equation of running a (non-profit-motivated) website.

[-] notfarenough@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago

At this point Bing is starting to look pretty good.

[-] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

That explains why I'm getting very odd specific results.

[-] xenomor@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

If accurate, this is a perfect example of the principle of ‘enshitification’ in action. That is, a good service or product becoming increasingly terrible as its development is continuously perverted by revenue related incentives.

[-] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

Indeed, it has the hallmark feature of enshittification: screwing over one party (the users) to benefit another (the advertisers), followed by screwing over the second party as well. I'm sure no advertiser wants to waste their ad budget showing ads to people who haven't indicated any interest in their product; if they wanted to spend their money that way, they'd have bought ads on the more generic search terms instead.

[-] lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 1 year ago

>search
>search with search term in quotes
>search with search term in quotes with "Verbatim" mode enabled
>"search" "with" "each" "individual" "word" "of" "search" "term" "in" "quotes"
>double-check that "Verbatim" mode is still enabled (it is)
>click first link out of frustration, do a manual text search of the page for some keywords from your search term
>keywords from search term are not in top search result
>try to find a cached version of the page that that search engine appears to be referencing (waste 20 mins)
>cached version also doesn't contain any keywords from your search term

iT's ThE aLgOrItHm

[-] Nommer@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago

DDG gives me better search results now. I was arguing with someone a few years back about how Google gives better results when searching for programming answers. Not anymore. I pretty much only use Google out of desperation when other searches failed.

[-] Gabu@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

DDG also ignores "sentences marked by quotes" and sometimes -negative search terms.

[-] query@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People shouldn't be paying to opt out of ads, websites should be paying their users for what they're exploiting them for.

[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There's no pleasure in saying it, but Youtube proves that they are comfortable having their cake and eating it too.

Show users ads? Check.
Make people buy Premium to get out of seeing ads? Check.
Pay their content creators (who are also users)? Check.
Exploiting those creators with manipulative metrics and dashboards? Check.
Slowly paying them less and less, and sometimes not paying them at all? Check.
Slowly raising the price of Premium? Check.
Eliminate ad blockers? Check.

[-] BallShapedMan@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Bring down Google.

Sent from my Pixel phone...

[-] 2d@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Hey, if you run GrapheneOS, you have a better phone for privacy than every other major phone

[-] BallShapedMan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I've heard. I'll do it, eventually. I'm told it's easy. I just haven't tried yet.

[-] DingoBilly@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

It's interesting how companies go through this loop of making a good product, making it even better until they become massive, then productively becoming shit and allowing the next company to come in and take their spot.

At this point Google is becoming more and more of a joke.

[-] CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I’m genuinely interested in trying out Kagi, it seems like a much better experience than whatever Google has to offer. With SEO being implemented everywhere it has gotten quite annoying that every time I search for something the first 5 results are some AI generated website that copies information from other sites.

[-] otterpop@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Try it, you won't regret it! I find myself not even reaching for Google anymore.

[-] CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I genuinely want to but I hate subscriptions simply because I’m poor at managing them which is why I’ve stuck with Google all this time.

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

I've recently found Qwant which I can recommend trying out. It's a European search engine with it's own index, independent from Google or Bing, privacy focused and free. The search results are pretty good, not sure if that's because it's just not affected by SEO focusing on Google.

The biggest issue I have with all of the alternatives is that Google Maps is just so much better than anything and integrating Maps results is extremely useful. Qwant integrates with OpenStreetMap but obviously that's just not the same.

[-] herr@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Qwant is unfortunately owned by Axel Springer, truly one of the worst German companies in existence. They're the publisher of the most popular (and unfortunately highly politically biased, filled to the brim with dishonest exaggerations and occasionally straight-up lies) German newspaper Bild.

Whatever comes out of Qwant if it actually becomes popular, you can rest assured it will be nothing good.

Just use DuckDuckGo and be done with it.

[-] misk@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

As much as I dislike Axel Springer, they seem to own just 20% of Qwant.

In my experience DDG kinda sucks, when I gave it a honest try (~1 month of having it as default) I kept going back to Google too much.

I don't have any trouble dumping services when they go bad. I'm on Lemmy after all.

[-] Engywuck@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Ah, shit... If only different search engines existed... /s

We all know that google is scummy/shit. Use something else instead of pretending to be shocked.

[-] pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

hah nice try google i will do everything i can to get something for free

[-] Gabu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Good fucking luck getting at my wallet - I don't think I've ever bought anything from ads. Also, I avoid Google whenever possible.

[-] herr@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

No one is immune to ads.

[-] plz1@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago

I think this is the 8th time this has been posted in the last week…

this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
157 points (95.9% liked)

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