How Google alters search queries to get at your wallet

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

by cdme • 3 years ago

207 122 3 years ago

wired.com

Terr_• 3 years ago

Paywalled: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%...

Exuma• 3 years ago

This is fucking awesome. 12ft is a hilarious name.

atulvi• 3 years ago

surprised pikachu face

philipwhiuk• 3 years ago

Feels like a good justification as to why the meme of "Google search query results are worse now" might actually be true.

grotorea• 3 years ago

Doesn't that meme also mostly applies to other search engines? Is everyone doing this?

eitland8• 3 years ago

kagi.com and even run-by-a-single-Swede-from his-living-room search.marginalia.nu keeps proving on a daily basis that many of the snags in modern Google is totally avoidable.

bombela• 3 years ago

This system reduces search engine quality for users and drives up advertiser expenses. Google can get away with it because these manipulations are imperceptible to the user and advertiser

I sure have been noticing. At this point finding anything on the web feels like a lost cause.

Besides duckduckgo (bing) which is not even that great either. What other option do we have?

dmitrygr• 3 years ago

Try Yandex and Kagi. First for breadth, second for depth

eastbound3• 3 years ago

How is Yandex, whose stock stopped being traded on the day of the Russian war, is still able to browse the entire Western universe? I’m not expressing a moral opinion, just surprised the West lets them do it.

jacooper5• 3 years ago

Brave search is really good, its my main search engine, and i found it to be better than kagi with better AI integration.

They are also integrating their own chat ai which is also privacy respecting.

mjamesaustin• 3 years ago

Kagi search is a paid search engine that delivers higher quality results with no ads. I'm currently using the free trial (you get 100 searches for free) and enjoying it.

https://kagi.com/

ethanbond• 3 years ago

Also been really enjoying Kagi, just converted to the $10/mo unlimited searches plan even before my trial ran out because it's such a breath of fresh air!

wombat-man2• 3 years ago

It's amazing. I searched for a recipe and didn't end up with some bloggers life story.

laweijfmvo• 3 years ago

Kagi also uses Bing

cjbgkagh• 3 years ago

Crowdsourcing on Reddit, gone are the days when you could answer a question with ‘let me google that for you.’ So you’ll see the same questions appear repeatedly in subreddits as previous answers are lost.

Personally, I maintain an extensive bookmark hierarchy and a collection of rss feeds. I also buy more books instead of reading blogs. medium.com with their subscription baiting articles are PiHoled as the signal to noise ratio is so low that I find it’s a net negative.

I’m also looking forward to locally running a LLM as my own personal search engine.

seejayseesjays• 3 years ago

the SEO folks are starting to pollute reddit threads, too.

OfSanguineFire• 3 years ago

The Reddit redesign hid the sidebar, where many subreddits had a FAQ. Now, only that tiny percentage that uses old.reddit.com will see the FAQ, Wiki and all those other treasure troves of information the community had built up. I suspected – and continue to suspect – that Reddit wants the same questions to appear over and over again, as that seems like the very definition of engagement.

I have also seen mods claim that when people post a question, it isn’t necessarily because they couldn’t answer it themselves, but because they’re just seeking interaction with other members of the community. Therefore, old-school net users who refer people to FAQs are cruelly denying them an outlet for socializing.

ceejayoz2• 3 years ago

Browsing with a Pihole really is eye-opening for the "drives up advertiser expenses" bit; I'll Google a thing, click the (very subtle) ad, get a Pihole block, then go down to the actual first result to get to the same spot.

fireflash38• 3 years ago

Right? Google target. Top results: ads for target. Halfway down the page? The search result which goes to the same place. Why would I need or want to click the ad if I know exactly where I'm trying to go?

pierat• 3 years ago

Yandex works VERY WELL for me for general stuff. Goods, reviews, piracy, etc. All super nice.

Things that are location-based do bad, cause they're Russian. They optimize for Russian location stuff.

charcircuit• 3 years ago

Semantic search doesn't work by replacing words with synonyms. It just uses embeddings where queries using synonyms map to near points in a vector space.

I doubt the actual queries would be manipulated and this author provides no proof other than "trust me bro."

tedunangst• 3 years ago

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

Wait. Is this example from the court testimony, or something the author made up?

mvdtnz• 3 years ago

It sounds like the author is massively extrapolating from one slide that was only shown for a brief moment. A slide that we can't see. I am extremely skeptical that Google would make such an egregious substitution and I'd need to see some actual evidence for this.

rodonn3• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure the author is misinterpreting what she saw.

Here is a thing that Google does do: The user searches for "children's clothing". An advertiser has created a search ad for the keyword "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear". If the advertiser has enabled "broad match" for their ad, then their ad will be eligible to be shown on the user's page in one of the advertising slots, even though there are no words in common between the user's query and the advertiser's keyword.

Does anyone have evidence of Google manipulating the user's query to affect the organic search results shown to the user?

jeffbee3• 3 years ago

Query re-write is probably one of the top keys to search quality, at any search engine.

ganeshkrishnan• 3 years ago

its usually from user behaviour and how the advertiser setup the keywords for the product. If users searching for "children's clothing" start having a high conversion for "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" then more and more of their ads will start appearing when searching for children's clothing.

Google (and also the advertiser) have list of keywords that work well for products and then keep testing new keywords

hedora2• 3 years ago

Searching for "children's clothing" gives 100% spam (== store front landing blurbs or things that are labeled "sponsored"). Searching "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" gives some organic results and some spam.

So, it's now worse than the previous alleged behavior.

Great.

rodonn3• 3 years ago

Looks like her claim was in fact false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37802116

vore4• 3 years ago

This really really doesn't pass the sniff test. It would be extremely obvious if your searches were being so egregiously converted.

jjulius5• 3 years ago

It would be extremely obvious...

I don't think this is necessarily true.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 3 years ago

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416694.pdf

Page 14

"Query Rewriter interprets query"

somsak2• 3 years ago

If this article is based on these four words, I'm not sure how you could label that anything other than a massive misrepresentation.

1vuio0pswjnm72• 3 years ago

According to someone attending the trial, the testimony given today explains what's happening in further detail.

https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1708892621433672072

mbauman2• 3 years ago

It is so extraordinarily valuable that folks like Megan Gray have been attending these trials. This story would be so much more compelling if we could also see that slide — but as a closed trial only those with the time and ability to actually go to the courthouse can see it.

On the same day this slide was presented, she also tweeted: https://nitter.net/megangrA/status/1704244948378194289

I am so livid at what just happened re public access in the Google Search antitrust case right now that I don’t trust myself to tweet about it yet. Back later.

Crash0v3rid33• 3 years ago

Megan made so many assumptions in that article based on a slide and single quote that we can't even see.

How about they actually provide some evidence before making such claims?

the-rc4• 3 years ago

Concrete question: how does the query rewriting service talk to the ads DB to do what's alleged?

mbauman2• 3 years ago

We don’t know how many assumptions Megan made or even who was testifying and what they assumed or what evidence was presented in court. Yes, that’s problematic.

w1nst0nsm1th2• 3 years ago

It happens it is actually an evidence or key exhibit, in an anti-trust trial.

She could be surely sued by Google by reporting false events.

So I guess we can trust her reporting.

bloppe2• 3 years ago

Not defending Google, but this definitely reads like an article written by a lawyer with a vested interest in DuckDuckGo.

jacooper5• 3 years ago

Which isnt even independent!

Its crazy to see people advocate for duckduckgo while brave search exists, is more privacy respecting and is actually independent.

skilled2• 3 years ago

Brave sells the shit they scrape for AI training/inference... with no way to opt-out. How is that even remotely close to "privacy respecting"?

worik3• 3 years ago

Which isnt even independent!

What do you mean?

Who is pulling Duckduckgo's strings?

hotnfresh• 3 years ago

DDG also do in-line ads like Google, which are scummy as hell.

I use them, but that single factor means I don’t like them.

JumpCrisscross• 3 years ago

while brave search exists, is more privacy respecting and is actually independent

Brave lost goodwill by going crypto. Now that Kagi has a superior product, there isn't a good reason to choose Brave other than not wanting to pay.

jeffbee3• 3 years ago

a lawyer with a vested interest in DuckDuckGo.

Downvoters obviously do not know who Megan Gray is.

worik3• 3 years ago

I have never heard of them

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/people/megan-gray

That Megan Gray?

binkHN2• 3 years ago

I noticed the same with the search results in the Google Play Store. When you use search to try to find an app that matches your search term, you almost always get very unrelated apps in the results, and the only good explanation to it is that the unrelated apps that you're seeing provide more revenue to Google in comparison to the actual app that you want.

SoftTalker• 3 years ago

Or the "unrelated" apps have bought ads on a wide range of keywords so that they appear in many search results?

Like when I search Craigslist for a BMW car and see ads for Mercedes and Audi cars because people posting those ads stick "BMW" in their ad copy. I flag those ads on the basis that they are abusing the search algorithm.

binkHN2• 3 years ago

I'd love to say the unrelated apps bought ads, but that's not the case. The Play Store clearly denotes when there's an ad in your search results, but the vast majority of the unrelated apps have no ads.

StillBored• 3 years ago

How much of that is just the vendors putting keywords in their search match dialogs to broaden their scope?

The example I used to hit all the time, was searching for RDP in apple/android/etc app market spaces, the first few hits aren't even capable of RDP and are 3rd parties selling their proprietary screen sharing app rather than actual RDP clients. The app stores seem to have equated RDP or VNC with "screen sharing" and say ~80% of the results don't even support the protocol in question.

Although, without my phone handy I just dumped it into the web based interface and it actually returned a half dozen RDP clients at the top, but then in the second ten, was netflix, facebook, ms teams and various other apps completely unrelated to even screen sharing.

Looks like if you pay enough you can show up in every single query.

eitland8• 3 years ago

Same happens in Apple App Store BTW:

The first result in the results page is never what I search for.

It is possibly just an ad but I can't remember it being market as one and it feels very off in what is supposed to be a premium paid offering as opposed to Googles ad financed ecosystem.

ldjkfkdsjnv• 3 years ago

This company cannot die fast enough. Lets all hope OpenAI makes Google Search obsolete.

vore4• 3 years ago

I don't think replacing one problem with a slightly different problem beholden to the same interests in the end solves anything.

NegativeK• 3 years ago

Replacing Google search, with all of its disgusting warts, with OpenAI's chatbot is a dystopian shitscape that I want no part in.

ChatGPT has no citations.

worik3• 3 years ago

Depends what you use it for.

ChatGPT has no citations.

I use three programming languages every day, and lookup syntax details often

Using Google (any search engine) returns acres of SEO driven garbage and astro turf

Chat GPT has been a huge boon, essentially no B.S.

No need for citations, the compiler keeps them honest.

I used Bing search, via Skype for a while (it has been degraded recently IMO) it read web pages for me, summerised them, and returned links with it

So I think LLM mediated search is a definite possibility for disrupting the enshitification of Internet search

eastbound3• 3 years ago

It could be the cause why Google tries to monetize fast and now, at the expense of extremely fast enshitification.

TRiG_Ireland• 3 years ago

For most of what I use Google for, OpenAI would not be in any way helpful.

I enjoy searching for opinion/editorial articles on random/obscure topics. I enjoy finding when a niche sport I enjoy gets coverage in mainstream newspapers/broadcasters.

JohnFen• 3 years ago

I have no idea if they do it to for ad reasons, but Google has been creatively interpreting search queries for a long while now. I think it's one of (maybe the primary) the reasons why Google search quality has fallen so much.

It's not a huge stretch to think that while they're at it, they would take into account advertisers. Again, not saying they are -- only that it wouldn't be that shocking.

mostlysimilar• 3 years ago

We now have direct evidence that the ads people interfere with the product to bolster sales at the expense of the users:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675467

It's a near certainty this is happening in all parts of Google.

tiltowait• 3 years ago

I don’t know if it still does it, but an enormous pet peeve of mine was how Google would conflate NSTableView and UITableView in search results.

They’re quite distinct!

kbenson2• 3 years ago

I can't tell if you're trying to make some subtle point through sarcasm, because I don't know how those (which I understand to be Apple UI components) relate to searches and I'm not sure if that's because I just don't have the context or if them being unrelated is the point.

yafbum• 3 years ago

You can wrap search terms in quotes for exact results

CodeCompost3• 3 years ago

I've been trying out Kagi since the HN post from just under two weeks ago. Enjoying it so far.

The post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37603905

figassis3• 3 years ago

I've been on DDG for a while now. Do you think Kagi is considerable better? If so, how? Genunely interested as I'm on the fence.

CodeCompost3• 3 years ago

I had been using DDG for a while now and sometimes still fell back on Google for searches. I would say that Kagi so far has been as good as the Google of about 2-3 years ago.

The primary reason why I switched over is the argument "nothing is free". I am hoping that paying for a search service means they'll respect my privacy. I'm on a monthly plan so at the first whiff of controversy I'm out.

So far so good, but I'm keeping an eye on it.

chankstein382• 3 years ago

I once used Google Lens to try to identify a weird defect to some grass in my yard. Instead, I got a bunch of results trying to sell me grass seed. This article doesn't tell me much I didn't already expect but it's interesting and hopeful to hear this is coming up in court!

Crash0v3rid33• 3 years ago

The author is making so many assumptions based on a single quote from a slide.

There is zero evidence for what they are accusing Google of doing.

ranting-moth• 3 years ago

It feels like Google is just running their brand to the ground trying to maximize the profits.

daft_pink• 3 years ago

People will think I work for the company or am getting a commission or something, but just want to say that Kagi is awesome and a great replacement for google.

Also, in Google's defense, Amazon is obviously doing the same thing. Why is it so hard to search for the lowest price item on Amazon. Obviously Amazon doesn't want you to comparison shop and spend more $'s especially on their ads.

tmaly• 3 years ago

I am wondering if and when this change happened.

I seem to recall the search results got progressively worse over the last few years.

hn72774• 3 years ago

Noticed the same on Amazon. Searched for Honey Oat Crunch. The first result was honey, then nestle crunch bars. The third result was the Whole Foods brand cereal. Had to click on that listing, scroll to the bottom, scroll through 3 carousels of other products to find the Cascadian Farms brand I wanted.

Then I tried buying the lower priced Whole Foods brand and it had a limit of 3 and a $9.99 delivery fee which offset any savings. Do I drive there to buy it? Is the price the same in store?

At that point, screw it, not going to buy it at all. Too much work just to find what I want. Customer obsession is dead at Amazon.

figassis3• 3 years ago

We’ve been wondering why query operators no longer work, or why you can’t quote text to require it in results anymore. There have been many explanations. Well, now we know, it would have broken this algorithm, so google dropped it.

RamblingCTO• 3 years ago

I really hope that one day we'll get back to a better web. Amazon providing you real options, not extorting you and their sellers. Instagram providing you with content you actually like, not rage and engagement bait. Google showing you interesting and relevant stuff on the web. At this point Idiocracy is not a dystopia anymore I'm afraid. We're pushed to consume bullshit everywhere. Our daily services are dictating our behaviour, instead of enabling us. But I don't know what to do I'm afraid.

BinaryCoder• 3 years ago

Wired retracted their article: "After careful review of the op-ed, "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed."

How Google alters search queries to get at your wallet

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