Entire Google search result pages are now ads

I don't see any favicons on my desktop search, which is what the links reference.

Mobile favicons had been around for some time prior to those articles and continues to have them.

I go out of my way to avoid clicking on ad results and buying things that are heavily advertised (certain VPNs, audiobook services etc) because if they are trying that hard to push ads, it is almost certainly shit targeted towards uninformed consumers.

Those results are not the best value or most popular or highest rated or most comfortable or highest quality. They are the ones with the most money blow on internet ads.

To begin with the searcher never indicated they are interested in actually buying a mattress (for example by saying 'mattress price' or by clicking the shopping tab).

Now maybe Google infered that for them, right or wrong.

The problem then becomes that what is presented is not mattress-buying information which could for example consist of information about different mattress types, reviews and discussions (how many of you would be forced to actually type 'mattress reddit' in this scenario?). Instead it is a page full of ads. It does not help the searcher make a buying decision. It actually makes their job harder with so many options to choose from and very little condensed information to help with the choice. All those brains and AIs at Google "organizing the world's information" are nowhere to be seen as literally all the cognitive load is transferred back to the searcher.

What is wrong with that is that Google's mission states "organize the world's information" (and this was a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate that) while what Google actually did was "organize the world's ads". Sad thing about it is that there was a point in the past when that was not the case.

No. Mattress business is one giant hornet's nest where deception, false claims and high margin are norm. Most companies who sale mattress actually don't do squat of real research or improvement or even own design but they keep claiming to do so. Their entire business depends on attracting customers through false ad and making them spend $1000+ mattress which takes a fraction of cost to make it. Their major expenditure is literally these ads. There are few other businesses where organic results would be more appreciated by customers. I'd personally spent months in to digging through this garbage and ultimately settled on my chiropractor's recommandation while making sure he used exacly same mattress on his own bed. There is no sane way left to buy a mattress on Internet.

Yeah, and DDG’s results for “mattress” aren’t much better:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mattress

Basically a map listing three mattress stores, followed by two ads. Then finally a few non-ad results, but still stores selling mattresses.

If you’re on desktop, there’s a bonus ad on the right sidebar, below the definition.

Obviously not ones that are advertised? Isn’t that what organic search is for?

Only if you specifically want to buy from a company that wastes money on advertising, making the mattresses more expensive.

There is, not willing to pay for content.

That, or send your search data somewhere else.

Agreed, uBlock origin has become a necessity since the web has turned to toxic sludge.

But Google has gotten so unbelievably bad that even uBlock origin can't protect against the onslaught of SEO spam and downright crappy results. I'm wasting hours every week, sorting through Google's atrocious output.

Comparisons of mattress materials or brands, histories of different mattresses used by cultures, forums for mattress aficionados, tutorials for making your own or modifying mattresses, general mattress information or facts, other random weird shit the internet used to have about strangely niche subjects that have way more people dedicated to them then you'd expect you'd only discover by searching random terms then you find there's a whole world of weird things dedicated to this niche topic, say mattresses in this case, that you'd otherwise never know about.

Most definitely NOT the advertisers who wants to pay the biggest bugs or yielding huge ad click throughs. I would expect Google ranking reviews from more honest sites like consumer reports, BBB, chiropractor reviews etc and supported by articles in good newspapers or magazines. Mattress business is extremely high margine business with their major spend category being ads, not R&D or manufacturing. They almost entirely depends on glossy ads with ongoing war of making outrageously false claims among competitors. Ads are the last thing you want to depend on in this category to make your purchase decision that would impact you for may be half decade.

Whatever it is not multiple ads for sure.

If I'm a buyer, I would expect to see the most trafficked, most popular, most bought deep linked online mattress shopping page - as the first link. I'm ok if that is after one or two ads.

If the search engine was trustworthy then I will click on that deep linked product page, cursorily glance the user reviews to see if there are any red flags, if not, then quickly empty my wallet and be done with my shopping for a mattress.

Here's one closer to home: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2563358

Admittedly it's not the best example. But personally I'd weight sites offering unbiased information (some of which may indeed be happen to be merchants) higher than those trying to shove "the world's #1 mattress" down my throat.

> I'm curious what kinds of sites people think should be returned for a search term of "mattress", if not mattress shopping sites?

You'd never know it by the google results, but there are robust hobbyist communities dedicated to exposing the underlying information (and misinformation) about mattresses and the companies that make them. The Mattress Underground is a good example [0]

This is an interesting case in point - you might never even know what you're missing if google doesn't even hint that it exists, because it buries things under ads! A generalizable way to "hack" google into showing you useful results when a keyword is so polluted with SEO and ads is to add the word "forums" to your search string, although even that is no guarantee.

[0] https://www.themattressunderground.com/mattress-forum.html

Porn of course.

With infinite scrolling what's a page?

I'd like to see someone develop a search engine that was optimized for finding web sites based on categories, such as non-commercial, enthusiast, blog, academic, companies, merchants, etc..

My favorite google flavors are google scholar and google news, which seem to more or less do what they say.

Too many search engines seem to have crowded out the web search function with widgets for ads, local properties, wikipedia, media companies, etc..

apart from a small blurb from wikipedia on the right, DDG is the same as the google result.

With my adblocker off it doesn't seem all that different in having mostly ads and a map on the front of the page.

DDG is more of the same, just pushing the "we don't track you" story to the masses, which most of the time is completely irrelevant.

An actual new search engine that does its own indexing is sorely needed.