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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but have a bit of schadenfreude here. Part of what happened was that Google used to send a fair amount of organic traffic to smaller sites. And many of those smaller sites had Adsense ads.

Google's changes in search shifted much of the traffic that went to smaller sites to larger, more established sites. Ones where the cost per impression/click are higher for Google.

So, part of it is self inflicted. They did, of course, get benefits out of that in the form of less low quality sites in their ad inventory. But some babies went out with that bathwater.

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> Google's changes in search shifted much of the traffic that went to smaller sites to larger, more established sites. Ones where the cost per impression/click are higher for Google.

Do you have a reference that Google detuned their search for profit purposes? I'm happy to believe that Google did do evil, but I would like some evidence. This kind of change sounds short sighted.

>Do you have a reference that Google detuned their search for profit purposes?

That's not what I said at all...I was saying their costs were higher as a result. They detuned it to reduce the number of low quality sites appearing in Google search results. I am speculating on one particular side effect that had. I have no proof, because only Google would have the data needed to prove that.

> That's not what I said at all...I was saying their costs were higher as a result.

Ah, thanks. Sorry I misunderstood what you'd written.

> They detuned it to reduce the number of low quality sites appearing in Google search results.

Interestingly Google Search results have degraded heavily over the years, and for many topics almost entirely consist of bullshit SEO sites and arbitrary-keyword-generation sites (http://foo-shit.com/freude-des-schadens = automatically generated page about "freude-des-schadens").

Agreed. My anecdotal experience is that the number of low quality sites has increased dramatically.

I put this down partly to the "freshness" algorithm. You get shown the most appalling crap on the grounds that it appeared within the past few hours.

If you're a share cropper in the news blogosphere, it's stupid to spend an hour checking facts or making phone calls because then you'll be 50th to post. Post any old crap and you reap the financial rewards of "freshness".

I exaggerate only slightly....

During the FTC investigation it came out that Google started with a goal and then kept changing the questions for raters until they got the data they wanted. Apparently they needed the rater data to approve the search algorithm.

There is a sweet spot where results don't suck and are better than Bing so users don't leave and ad clicks increase. Personally, I am 100% sure Google has found it.

I agree with this. Another tactic they've optimized is pushing the organics down for many searches such that only ads and Google content remain above the fold.

I think they may be at the point where the obvious dramatic optimizations are all played out. It also doesn't help that the high margin desktop traffic (versus lower margin mobile) is waning.

Eventually, that slows the trend where their ad revenue growth has been outpacing general internet growth.

The trouble is that investors are still expecting the same trajectory. Reverting to revenue growth solely driven by traffic growth will be a bitter pill.

Google announced many years ago (might have been like 8 or something) that it will start to emphasize more on "brands" in the search engine. That focus on bigger sites has only steadily increased.

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