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Comment by trevin | Hacker News Reader

On top of all these other changes, Google's "Knowledge Graph" and other Google-owned properties are taking up more and more of the search results than ever before. Google Shopping, YouTube, Google+ and Adwords all take up more screen real estate with every Google update and design tweak.

Look at this query for example: https://www.google.com/search?q=telescopes

I see 20 links to ads and Google owned properties and only 2 to actual 3rd party websites. That's insane. (edit: That's above the fold, on page load...more 3rd party listings if you keep scrolling but most users don't)

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It's not surprising that commercial queries produce ads.

"what are telescopes", "astronomy", "skywatching", "how to use a telescope", "telescope construction", and "telescope history" on the other hand are all web results and no ads.

Hand-picking a highly-commercial query and using it to generalize about all queries is kind of BS.

Looking at my past weeks worth of search history there are very few commercial intent queries. And when I was doing commercial intent queries (buying some rock climbing equipment) Google Shopping ads were actually pretty helpful in doing my research because it allows you to rank the results of different retailers together which is something I previously had to do by going to each individual site and checking their prices.

It misses sellers that haven't chosen to advertise on Google Shopping but all of my go-to online shops for gear (Backcountry, Moosejaw, REI, EMS, gearx, gear co-op, Campsaver, etc.) are doing it so it works quite well for me.

Google Shopping ads were actually pretty helpful in doing my research because it allows you to rank the results of different retailers together which is something I previously had to do by going to each individual site and checking their prices.

You browsed ADS, companies have paid to be included there and the price you paid in the end included the Google tax. A company that might have had the best price /shipping options maybe didn't want to advertise on Google or others included their most expensive /high margin items given the advertising cost. You got or will get screwed, because advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

Also, don't you agree that in general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines?

note: some will get this post ;).

I'm confused, are you arguing that ads are too high on search result pages, or that non-ad informative pages are?

Is this just a case of "whichever is the case at the time, I can twist it to support my point."?

I know I was browsing ads. I said "Google Shopping ads were actually pretty useful". I also didn't say that was the only source I looked at. It just happened to have all of my go-to gear companies in a handy ranked list. Amazon isn't in that list -- I check them manually.

The prices are actually the same whether you get to the vendor through Google shopping ads or not. The company's prices in aggregate are affected by their revenue spent on Google advertising.

Whether I get screwed or not is my problem. I'm saying it was a useful tool to have in my research.

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