Wait. Is this example from the court testimony, or something the author made up?
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?
Google (and also the advertiser) have list of keywords that work well for products and then keep testing new keywords
Edit: Downvote all you want but this is documented.
And as I think everyone on HN knows "my Google" isn't "your Google".
Even if it works reliably for you doesn't mean it does for me and many others.
I am not assuming search is deterministic.
But even in a generally non-deterministic system, some things should always stay true.
For example: When doublequotes means "exact match", any item that doesn't contain an exact match should not be shown.
I also understand that a webpage might have changed since it was indexed, but I have a really hard time believing all the false matches I have wasted time on over the years relates to websites suddenly changing between the time when they were indexed and the time when I visited them.
It works as expected in competitors with far far far less resources.
The reason they don't fix it is either because they aren't competent to do it or because they don't want to give me correct results.
There is no need to make up excuses for a company the size of Google.
Edit: at this point I should be happy. The faster Google destroys itself, the faster real competition can get a chance and the web can heal.
If you believe that this or similar issues will destroy Google, I guess we'll see.
If what you write is correct they actually want me to have almost as bad results on Google as the ones I get on Bing.
I'll take your word for it.
So, it's now worse than the previous alleged behavior.
Great.
Running that query through a GPT to transform it into "Popular brand among this bucket of users that spends a lot on ads" + "storefront" is completely useless, because now you have "enhanced" the query itself to a narrow subset of indices. All the fashion, sustainability, diy blogs are immediately filtered out in the query itself. The "frontend" now does not even have a chance at drawing from different buckets to form SERPs - every result is storefront now.
This is the issue discussed in OP. There is one implicit question here. Not only how much we need to tweak input queries to get the search engine to actually cast a wide net and allow discoverability, but whether that is possible at all.
I don't think this is necessarily true.
None of the results point to manufacturers, reviews or other classes of articles.
Ironically, you get better results with the thing they apparently used to rewrite to.
I'm sure the average person would notice if their query for "children's clothing" was converted to "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear". Have you ever seen your query converted to such a narrow query targeting a specific brand like the article alleges? Surely you would notice that you're only getting NIKOLAI-brand kidswear results?
What's with the aggression? All I'm saying is that I don't expect the average end-user to notice something "extremely obvious" like that. Simple as that.
I'm taking no position on whether or not Google is actively doing this, nor am I completely confident that I have or haven't experienced it in spite of noticing very single-brand-heavy results for non-branded queries in the past. I'm only pointing out that the average end-user is a lot less adept at seeing "obvious" things in situations like these than many of us are.
Edit: Put it this way - You and I might notice something, but that's because we're involved in this industry whether directly or tangentially, to varying degrees. I don't expect others to notice something like this if it's not something that they generally care about.
>It would be extremely obvious if your searches were being so egregiously converted.
... and then all I said was that I don't think it would be so obvious to the average end-user.
That's it. I made no comment on the article, let alone any kind of interpretation of it.
Why are you being so aggressive?
the slice of the quote you responded with:
> It would be extremely obvious [...]
and the full claim with full proper context:
> It would be [...] obvious if your searches were [...] egregiously converted.
the key word being "egregiously", which is a response to the level of severity the author is making in their claim. trying to be an enforcer of conversational tone by repeatedly claiming how responses that you don't want to engage in are "aggressive" isn't conducive to productive discussion. no one's being overtly hostile, outside of you trying to hijack a discussion to exclusively entertain a nonsequitor.
At no point have I quoted the article or explicitly suggested that what is said in the article is not taking place.
>... all of this stemming from you taking a quote out of context to make a point that no one was making.
OP made a point clear, that "it would be extremely obvious if your searches were being so egregiously converted". Whether or not I quote the full sentence doesn't change the fact that, no, I do not believe that average end users would find it "extremely obvious [that] ... their searches were being so egregiously converted". And that's literally all I've said here - that I don't think end users would be as perceptive of something like this as OP would think.
>... the key word being "egregiously", which is a response to the level of severity the author is making in their claim.
Whether or not I quote the word "egregiously" does not change my point, nor does it suggest that I've decided to ignore the word and "downgrade" what's said in the article because of it.
I'm struggling to understand how you both seem to be unable to understand something so simple. Feel free to disagree with what I said, but don't twist my words around if you don't like that point.
>trying to be an enforcer of conversational tone by repeatedly claiming how responses that you don't want to engage in are "aggressive" isn't conducive to productive discussion. no one's being overtly hostile, outside of you trying to hijack a discussion to exclusively entertain a nonsequitor.
Responding to me with, "That's what you should be saying," and, "Refute what the article is saying, not your generous interpretation of it," is aggressive, if not rude at the very least. It demonstrates that OP (and you, now) are both missing the point (willfully, it seems, since I have to keep repeating myself over something so simplistic) and are twisting my words, or how I've chosen to quote a passage, around. I know that it's pretty uncouth to trot this out, but my initial comment has a good number of upvotes (so does the comment you just replied to), so there are people out there who have a better understanding of my comment than y'all seem to have.
I am not downgrading anything - I genuinely believe that it's not so obvious to the average end user, no matter how egregious it might be. And that's a refutation of OP's comment, not the article.