Comment by tomhallett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomhallett | Hacker News Reader

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There are 4 levels to how Google could give preferential treatment:

* To pages which are fast. This is based on measurement of a specified benchmark, regardless of the implementation used to achieve those results.

* To pages which meet an AMP specification (do this, don't do this, etc) and are validated to conform to the spec. Publishers can bring their own hardware (CDN/Servers) and their own code (serverside language, javascript framework) to do it. Google's AMP servers as the defacto/reference implementation, but publishers/competitors are free to deviate from it. (Look at prebid.js as an example).

* To pages which use the AMP Framework code as-is (serverside and clientside) provided by the Google Team, but you can bring your own hardware or have to use a set of accredited hosting providers.

* To pages which use AMP and are hosted by Google.

Obviously the last one is the "simplest" in regards to getting it off the ground, but AMP has been around long enough and Google has enough resources that they could definitely do one of the other options which go much more to the open web.

Note: if you first thought says "verification of any of these things is way too hard and it's so subjective, so we shouldn't even try", then I'd recommend looking at Google's policies for when you can use their "skippable ads" (TrueView) on your video player. It's very manual and up to a lot of human interpretation when you get into the weeds: https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/3522024?hl=en#tr...

Or if you think "maintaining a list of approved vendors is too hard of a problem", look at their list of approved vendors for Advertising: https://developers.google.com/third-party-ads/googleads-vend...

_Requiring_ any arbitrary metric or technology stack to be allowed at the top of the google search result is utterly antithetical to the idea of a search engine providing the "best" result for a search.

Having a faster site than a competitor should be a boost, but if their content is better, they should win the better ranking.

Google requiring Google's own technology is pretty blatant abuse everyone can understand.

There are a few different concepts going on here:

1) Which metrics get used in the algorithm? My list was tightly scoped to a process/ecosystem about tracking the metric of page speed.

2) How is that metric used in the algorithm? Boosting in the score in general? Is the top carousel treated differently?

3) It's also possible the application of the metric can change what is required from that metric. For example: Google regular results require one page speed option, but Google mobile carousel requires a more stringent page speed option.

Personally, I am fine with page speed being used as a metric in search results. Context: The main usecase for AMP, and the publishers who support it, are related to news (versus stack overflow, etc). So there is a lot of room for "kim kardashian birthday party" to have very similar content where page speed is a great metric to optimize between them.

I am less fine with Google requiring their hosted version of it - especially in the medium/long term once the project has gotten over its experimental phase and proven market adoption.

There is no clear ordering as you are already talking about two dimensions.

Should a page with a fraction of a fraction of a percent better content that takes 20s to load and is barely functional on a mobile browser take precedence over something that actually works better for me as an end user?

> Should a page with a fraction of a fraction of a percent better content that takes 20s to load and is barely functional on a mobile browser take precedence over something that actually works better for me as an end user?

Yeah, but that is asking a serious question looking for a serious answer. Ranking things is a challenge.

If Google's answer is "got to have AMP" then we might suspect the question was the rather less profound "how do we make the internet good for Google?".

In 2016, when Google implemented the Page Speed Update[1] 70% of global cellular network connections were at 3G speeds or slower[2].

In this context, I don't believe it was antithetical an an input for the best search results for searchers, the majority whom benefited from fast pages.

I can't find an updated stat for 2020 but I assume it's low enough that it is no longer makes sense as an input.

[1] https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads...

[2] https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and...

_Requiring_ any arbitrary metric or technology stack to be allowed at the top of the google search result is utterly antithetical to the idea of a search engine providing the "best" result for a search.

Google don't run Google Search as a public service. They'll rank pages to generate as much money for Google as possible - that's a balance between quality of results to keep users coming back, making sure the ranking order is bad enough that users have to click adverts instead of only using the search results, and making sure the ranking order is opaque enough to encourage companies to buy adverts rather than simply invest more in SEO.

The final point is the relevant one here - Google need to change the rules regularly in order to hamper company's SEO efforts, which makes them buy more adverts until they can make it back to the top of the SERPs again.

I agree, I’d prefer to see the most relevant useful information, not the fastest thing to render which will overload my dopamine reward circuits so I keen surfing the web.

A slower more useful experience for me please.

If it has to be this way, give us an option to prioritise page load times or relevance.

Even better: Indicate page speed in the search results and adopt the users' preference. I know I would prefer to click fast sites.

That would be visual noise, there's more useful information to show if you want to increase visual overhead, such as the WOT extension icons

Well I very strongly disagree that it would be visual noise. For me the priorities are:

1. website name so I can recongize it

2. page speed

3. page date

....

476. excerpt from the page text.

I consider the excerpt to be useless visual noise almost always, the page speed would be much more useful for me.

> I consider the excerpt to be useless visual noise almost always

When searching for keywords (especially acronyms) with multiple distinct usages, excerpts provide context.

Additionally, they're a valuable tool to filter out junk.

That's why I said "almost always", because almost always I don't search for acronyms.

It doesn't have to be visual noise; it can just be hidden away in some personal preferences setting. That means most people would use Google's default settings, but it would be nice if you could override that.

Google likes to attach your searches to your account, doesn't it? This means they should be able to personalise your search results based on your own preferences. It's weird that they don't do that.

> * To pages which are fast. This is based on measurement of a specified benchmark, regardless of the implementation used to achieve those results.

I believe they've been doing this for quite some time. It hasn't been great for convincing people to keep their pages fast, though.

Add a turtle icon to slow web pages. On hover, say "This page is ranked lower because it is slow".

People will keep their pages fast in less than 1 month.

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