from Hacker News

In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

by randfish on 3/22/21, 5:19 PM with 399 comments

by BitwiseFool on 3/22/21, 5:41 PM
Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional.
There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic Search drove this decline.
by sharkweek on 3/22/21, 5:48 PM
Many moons ago, I put a ton of work into a (now defunct) content site that provided specific information in a small vertical. Each post took hours, but I enjoyed writing the articles, and the revenue from the ads was enough to enjoy a little extra cash every month (we're talking just about enough to cover a car payment, for context).
Google decided they liked a lot of the content and started providing it in their knowledge graph. It was initially great to be validated and the link to my content at the top of the search result was pretty cool to see. But it did tank traffic, as Google scraping my content and giving it away at the top of their search result page meant people didn't need to navigate to my site.
Felt pretty terrible, if I'm being honest, but I also have always subscribed to understanding the risks for relying on other networks for my own benefit.
BUT!!!
As a regular user of search engines, I love getting the answer super fast without necessarily having to guess what sort of ad-trap I'll have to navigate to get the answer I'm looking for on some random content site.
As a user, when I'm asking some non-critical question, it's nice to just get a snappy answer. I appreciate it.
The problem of course arises when content creators stop making the content for Google to scrape and index, what then?
by thomascgalvin on 3/22/21, 5:44 PM
If Google ever started including copy-pasteable code from Stack Overflow, I might never follow a link from Google again.
Which I think says a lot about how Google is used now. I don't use Google to find web pages, I use it to find an answer to a pressing question. When I'm looking for something to read, I go to a content aggregator like HN or Reddit.
Of course this isn't sustainable. If Google is just presenting other sites' data "for" them, and thus depriving them of traffic and revenue, eventually there won't be any incentive to create the content Google is scraping. Long term, this seems self-defeating for Google, just as its ruinous to the sites they scrape.
by Jonnax on 3/22/21, 5:35 PM
I would say that's about right for me.
I Google things for information which I can glean from the search results more than looking for a website.
Like what's the definition of a word or a quick calculation is easier than opening the calculator.
There's even a metronome if you search metronome.
by bartread on 3/22/21, 5:47 PM
I suspect a bunch of people might jump on the bandwagon that this is Google repackaging others' content into search snippets and robbing their sites of traffic.
No doubt there's some truth to that, but I'd like to indulge in a slightly different flavour of Google bashing on this occasion.
The reason I often don't click through on search results is that the search results are garbage - either irrelevant or poor quality. I'm in the midst of refurbing and redecorating my house. Often I'll need to do some research on topics related to that, and when I do that I often find I need to refine my search query to find anything of relevance, even sometimes digging through several pages of results manually to find a really useful page.
And then there's work: I still haven't found any answers on this, but one of the things that's on my mind about becoming a more senior business leader is that I feel like I'm changing as a person. I feel like the way I think about problems and people is changing. That's to some extent to be expected, but the issue is I'm feeling ambivalent about some of the changes I perceive.
So it's about the effect that leadership has on the leader (selfish, I realise).
But when I start searching around this topic, what does Google want to show me? Pages and pages of results about change management or, when it's being marginally less of a village idiot, pages and pages of results about leadership styles and changing leadership style. Neither of these is what I'm talking about.
A human will understand that, but Google doesn't, and I'm finding that increasingly to be a problem when I'm looking for information: either, (i) my results are overwhelmed with low-grade spammy SEO'd to hell and back content, or (ii) Google's AI is too bloody stupid and pig-ignorant to understand what I'm talking about.
Hence I don't click through on the search results the majority of the time.
by ketzo on 3/22/21, 5:35 PM
This seems like... a really big deal? I know that we're all sort of living in a world where "put ads on your high-traffic site" is a deeply outdated revenue model, but it's still quite a popular one, depending on what corner of the internet you're in.
by thaumasiotes on 3/22/21, 8:35 PM
I'm confused by the top comment using this headline to complain about the quality of results. The quality of results is obviously irrelevant to the fact that most searches do not result in clicks. Google specifically tries to answer your question on the result page:
"nifarious" - oh, it's spelled "nefarious"
"1000 USD in CHF" - aha, about 1000 swiss francs
4 tablespoons in cups - 1/4 cup
"how old is taylor swift" - 31 years; this shows up in the suggested search dropdown, so you don't even need to hit the result page
by mattacular on 3/22/21, 5:53 PM
Google has become a really bad search engine for anything besides the most superficial information about a broad range of topics, especially ones that are commercial in nature (which it is extremely good at... go figure). I spent a while trying to find the name of a contemporary artist whose name I forgot by querying those key words along with various things about the thematic etc qualities of their work and all Google could tell me was about Claude Monet. Gave up and searched some of the same keywords on Twitter of all places and instantly found the artist I was looking for.
by dragonwriter on 3/22/21, 6:24 PM
> 2/3rds of Google Searches Now End Without a Click
Isn't that the whole point of Google providing it's own interpretation (sometimes several of them) of an answer to the search query ahead of the classic search results: give users what they are likely to be looking for without requiring another click?
> zero-click search problem
As a user, I see zero-click searches as a benefit, not a problem. It's a problem for people trying to use Google as a “clickstream” to waste my time and try to get a crack at my money, but then, that's exactly why it is a benefit to me.
by allochthon on 3/22/21, 5:38 PM
Often I'm looking for a Wikipedia page, and it seems that in the past year or so Wikipedia pages have been moved way down on the first page of search results, especially if the topic is a medical one.
by Jerry2 on 3/22/21, 5:59 PM
Anyone have any opinions on the state of image search? What do you use?
I find Google Image search, which I used to love, filled with absolute garbage now. 90% of links are to Pinterest which greets you with usual overlays, signup modals etc. I use DDG's image search because I find Google's search unusable.
Also, Yandex image search is probably the best reverse image search on the market. It's crazy how much better it is than Google.
by searchableguy on 3/22/21, 5:44 PM
Google provides instant answers for most medical queries, calculations, celebrities, sports, news, weather, how-tos, definitions, reviews, map, shopping, images, etc. Most people don't search outside of queries that google can answer from their own sources frequently so this seems plausible.
by kickopotomus on 3/22/21, 6:25 PM
Could someone here shed some light on the possible copyright implications of how Google now rips excerpts from web pages and displays them directly on the search results page? A cursory search shows that there have been a few lawsuits in the past[1][2] but they seem mostly related to the act of indexing/caching web pages and the display of thumbnails.
However, Google's new method of extracting and displaying possible answers to queries from external sources instead of simply linking to those sources feels like it falls outside of the bounds of fair use.
[1]: https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33810.html
[2]: https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/copyright-law/a-b....
by andrewmcwatters on 3/22/21, 6:14 PM
About a decade ago or so, I remember complaining about Google's search result quality having already declined then. Specifically, I think my complaint was that the search results were a lot higher quality in the mid-2000s, and then from then on, the search results ended up becoming progressively more sanitized and crafted.
So, I mean, we're way, way past Google's heyday. It's not even close. But it's interesting to me that I can recall having those discussions that many years ago, and that people still complain about the same issue today.
In fact, just about every other search engine is better in my opinion.
by JasonFruit on 3/22/21, 6:21 PM
All of my Google searches have now ended. I use DuckDuckGo exclusively, and while there was a time when I used to add !g to about every tenth search, I have not felt that need more than about once a week for several months now. DuckDuckGo is simply enough improved, and Google enough worsened, that it's not worth it anymore. From my point of view, Google has blown the vast advantage they had, and is now second-best.
by fractionalhare on 3/22/21, 6:13 PM
The author speculates that this is a direct side effect of Google searches being monetized by ads, and therefore targeting multiple searches.
I don't think that's the case. I think this has more to do with the fact that Google now deliberately surfaces as much information - including summaries, answers, tools and widgets - in the search results page itself, which incentivizes searching without a subsequent click. Google very much wants you to end your search journey on google.com, but I think that's because they believe it will keep people coming back. I do not think Google directly tries to keep people searching for the same thing.
This may still raise interesting antitrust concerns though.
by sebringj on 3/22/21, 6:14 PM
I think this is mostly due to the immediate messaging they give on the topic that is sufficient and no further click is needed. Meaning the little drop down suggestions more often than not for me has the full content I want. For example, "What is the meaning of temporal?" or 'Who wrote "Wild Thing?"'. Google has inline calculators and an amazing array of usefulness without needing a website to go to in so many cases growing more and more. What is kind of sad/funny about this is its making the search results themselves less useful in which it was built on, giving less incentive to give this AI food.
by bob1029 on 3/22/21, 6:49 PM
I think the issue here is really simple. Google has learned that it is more profitable to infer the intent of a query & tell people what to think up front based upon a carefully crafted set of advertiser criteria. It is difficult to appease your paying customers when you give the non-paying customers direct access to the most likely match for their query and allow them to draw their own conclusions from the information.
Put differently, there is a conflict of interest inherent in the very nature of Google's business. It can only become a steeper death spiral from here if the motive continues to be profit above all else.
by rawtxapp on 3/22/21, 5:37 PM
So are we trusting similarweb's data on Google itself? How trustworthy is it? How do they get their data? I've seen similarweb be off by magnitudes vs alexa for estimating traffic on some sites I own.
by Robotbeat on 3/22/21, 5:45 PM
Half of my Googles are literally just using Google as a calculator.
by MattGaiser on 3/22/21, 5:47 PM
Google provides tons of data itself. I search stock prices on it. No clicks there. I search weather on it. No click there.
There are all sorts a little utilities that are now just part of Google.
by bttrfl on 3/22/21, 8:53 PM
If I were to build my own search engine:
- I'd make sure that multipurpose sites get lower ranks, ecommerce with a blog would get worse rank than a stand alone blog or an ecommerce. this would eliminate all the content marketing and owners would have to focus on their core business
- I would put a cap on amount of content that increases rank. A website with a million recipes harvested from other sites won't be better than a blog with 10 quality recipes.
- I would downgrade rank for use of third-party cookies, invasive ads etc.
- I would give users an option to "mute" a website
- Randomise top results to make sure no one can "occupy" top spots.
by forgotpwd16 on 3/23/21, 11:30 PM
It should be noted that Google (applies to other search engines) searches aren't just web searches anymore. Rather Google is frequently used as knowledge engine similar to WolframAlpha albeit not in that level (yet). Specifically a click-less Google search can be:
```
    spell checking (term "wrng wrd")
    dictionary (term "define word")
    word translation (term "random in greek")
    calculator (term "1+1")
    unit conversion (term "1m in ft")
    weather (term "weather tokyo")
    sport scores (term "uefa scores", or ufc, nba, ...)
    map instructions (term "instructions to nearest city")
```
For fun search any of the aforementioned terms alone (besides the first one) and with term mentioned in parentheses. Also lots of searches return card information (e.g. "spell checker" or "Issac Newton") or snippets which are seen when searching for instructions. That is when searching something encyclopedic where one-line summary or some simple instructions will suffice means someone will not go ahead and open Wikipedia or any other site.
by ProAm on 3/22/21, 5:35 PM
You provide the content, they'll accept the revenue
by newsbinator on 3/22/21, 5:44 PM
2/3rds of my Google searches are:
* current time [city]
* [city] weather
* [city] covid
by at-fates-hands on 3/22/21, 5:50 PM
I now use google as a last resort. I start on DDG or Bing and go from there. If those are dead ends, I will reluctantly use Google as a means of last resort.
There are so many ads and now every time I search for something on Google, the first five results aren't even related to what I'm looking for. You search for "hifi headphones" and you get eight of the top ten searches are something like, "The top 10 hifi headphones." in an article from three or four years ago. Or "What you need to know about buying hifi headphones." informational articles. Not to mention the obligatory Amazon product link stuffing at the top of any product search results.
Google's results are just so convoluted, its a real PIA to try and wade through everything they're advertising in order to get to an actual product or manufacturing website these days - I just gave up a few years ago. Too much advertising and not enough organic results to be useful anymore.
by squarefoot on 3/22/21, 9:40 PM
Not going to change, since Google has become a huge advertising container with less and less value wrt genuine information about products. If I search for a product to buy, I usually add the "price" word to it so that the search engines includes shops selling that product. All fine, but if I want to read reviews (real ones, not the usual paid fakes) or blogs in which a product features, compatibility etc. are discussed, which is very common in IT hardware, I don't want Google to throw at me a pageful of its top sponsors. No thanks, I don't care, I'm perfectly able to find a place where to shop; what I want from a search engine depicting itself as intelligent is to know when I want technical information and stop defaulting nearly every damn result to a shop to buy from.
by thrower123 on 3/22/21, 6:50 PM
This is what Google has been trying to do, right? As they keep scraping more and more information out of the sites that they index and then provide thumbnail answers in the results page, there's no reason to click on anything.
If I google for the weather in Chicago, I'm not going to click on a link to weather.com for it, because the seven day forecast is right there.
If I google for information about a person, Google scrapes Wikipedia and puts that right in the results page sidebar.
Flight information, bus schedules, anything that looks like a calculation, a whole bevy of other things, Google just preempts any results and shows inline at the top of the search page. Why would you click through to anything?
by superasn on 3/22/21, 6:29 PM
This is going to be happening more and more as technologies like GPT-3 get better and better.
I remember seeing a demo which accurately answered a lot of search questions like who killed Mahatma gandhi, etc just using the GPT-3 model(1). I'm sure Google must have even better models than this and it only makes sense for them to answer the questions directly when there is sufficient confidence level.
(1) https://twitter.com/paraschopra/status/1284801028676653060?l...
by altspace on 3/23/21, 1:46 AM
A lot of time I get my answer in the “people also ask”section of the google search result. The section has exactly the paragraph with the relevant information. Maybe, search results are getting better?
by davide_v on 3/22/21, 5:51 PM
It's actually something good (expecially for Google) since the information found is now usually in the results itself instead of inside a website. If you notice, in the last years, Google shows you lists extracted from articles, makes calculations directly, answer simple questions like age, shows a lot of Wikipedia info for any person/movie on the right, etc, etc. It's not because there is more ads or because the results are irrelevant, actually I'm never disappointed by the results.
by Robotbeat on 3/22/21, 5:47 PM
It’s not all bad. I consider it a feature that Google usually pulls the right information from Wikipedia. It doesn’t harm Wikipedia, which is free anyway, but reduces their bandwidth load.
by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on 3/23/21, 8:31 AM
They really should pay wikipedia.
by SomewhatLikely on 3/22/21, 6:21 PM
Article says clicks to other Google properties don't count as clicks. I would be curious how many searches end up in a click to YouTube. I know my fraction has gone up over time as it's more likely someone has put up a video about some finer point of one of my hobbies than it is they post a blog. At least in these cases the content creator can often still monetize these searches.
by sinemetu11 on 3/22/21, 6:59 PM
Do AMP clicks count as no click since the user didn't leave google?
And how many are no click because google has presented semi-correct but not really correct information at the top of the results so the user finds what they think they're looking for without actually clicking?
Seems like google is doing just fine so I'd imagine both of the above scenarios account for a significant portion.
by emrah on 3/23/21, 6:13 AM
Google's zero-click answers are really good, especially if I search for a fact.
While it's true that this is possibly killing sites by preventing traffic flow, it's one way to battle content padding for the sake of grabbing traffic.
It might be an interesting move if Google were to pay a small fee to sites whose information was useful for a particular search, like those I chose to expand.
by MAXPOOL on 3/22/21, 6:29 PM
Search is the most important application of AI inside Google. It's the raison d'être for data collection. So why the search quality decreases?
My current hypothesis is:
Users who click ads and generate ad revenue like this garbage. Google learns to serve this outlier group of users. Killing the experience for everyone else is just a side effect.
by Beached on 3/22/21, 7:18 PM
looking over the comments here, people seem to be assuming this is because of googles scraping and presenting of data on the search results page. but knowing my experiences with google search over the past few years, I immediately assumed this was because google search is getting worse and worse every day.
after reading the article, the author doesn't correlate the findings with a cause, so who knows what the real reason for this is. but I know for me at least, it now takes me 3, 4 or 5 searches to find an abstract with something that looks even close. maybe I such at google searches, but after doing hundreds a day for over 12 years, I feel google search just got reaaaal shitty some time in the past few years.
ddg use to not even be close to google in result quality, now, imo, they are on par with each other. and that is largely due to googles decline, ddg only got slightly better.
by xnx on 3/22/21, 7:22 PM
This seems like very good progress. I'm continually impressed by how fast I can find the answers I'm looking for from Google. Google is working hard from being somewhere to get pointers to places that might contain the information you want to giving you the answers directly. Truly amazing.
by marcodiego on 3/22/21, 6:55 PM
Alternatives I've been using: searx[0] and millionshort[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx
[1] https://millionshort.com/
by lmeyerov on 3/22/21, 6:17 PM
I googled for 'soc 2 multitenancy requirements' this morning then gave up and went to bing....
by oblib on 3/22/21, 10:44 PM
That doesn't surprise me. I look up answers to questions and definitions of words using google and seldom click through because I get what I need in the results. Not sure that's 2/3 of my usage of Google but that may not be far off.
by latenightcoding on 3/22/21, 5:41 PM
Quoting part of a comment I posted on HN in 2018:
"love monetizing niche search engines and other data products, but it looks like Google will eventually get into any industry where the main source of traffic is organic search, I wonder what is next."
by TeeMassive on 3/23/21, 1:14 AM
Today I was working on an old project and I had to create a tfsignore file. I only got links to gitignore, even if I added 'TFS' as a keyword. In finally ended up directly searching SO and found the Microsoft documentation.
by thepete2 on 3/22/21, 5:43 PM
That's definitely a tendency that you'd expect when sites are engineered for engagement and everybody starts out at google. I guess it also means google completely controls the experience of most people on the internet.
by truxten on 3/22/21, 5:55 PM
I wonder if you'll see more domain specific content aggregators/search engines pop up as people (like myself) because increasingly dissatisfied with the almost populist nature of a lot of Google's search results.
by jeffbee on 3/22/21, 5:40 PM
This "panel" must be highly biased, right? Only Google itself knows the real answer to this question. The data in the article comes from 100 million people dumb enough to infect their devices with malware.
by zimpenfish on 3/23/21, 11:38 AM
Anecdata: I was searching for macOS stuff last week (trying to get something working because Big Sur has changed a bunch of stuff) and, most of the time, the top results where from 2011-15. Completely useless.
by ev1 on 3/22/21, 6:09 PM
As a developer: This seems questionable.
As a user: thank fuck i dont need to click through to those piece of shit sites that are nothing but spam and ad farms that front load fake description and title content
by vernie on 3/22/21, 10:40 PM
It's quite common for teenagers on TikTok to use a screenshot of the often-wrong snippet at the top of the Google results page as evidence in whatever crusade they're currently on.
by scudd on 3/22/21, 6:36 PM
I admit I sometimes use google search as a spell check that's a simple Ctrl + T away. I'm not proud, but it's so simple to access when you're already in the browser.
by danmg on 3/22/21, 9:03 PM
Most queries don't require further action.
You can glean the information you were looking for from the results themselves. This is particularly true when you use google as a spell checker.
by boromi on 3/22/21, 5:41 PM
Google anything... more than half the page is irrelevant adds.
by vishnumohandas on 3/22/21, 5:42 PM
On one hand I’m sad that Google as the Oracle is killing businesses and lives.
On the other hand I’m excited about other portals that will open up. This just cannot be how things end.
by egberts on 3/23/21, 11:51 AM
Meanwhile, plugging in unfamiliar phone numbers no longer produces useful results at Google.com, as they WANT you to click in for more information.
by Mauricebranagh on 3/22/21, 5:48 PM
How much is this due to mobile search quite often I do a search with auto complete on my phone - then add a modifier to get the search you want.
by kome on 3/22/21, 5:53 PM
In other words, the future of the internet (or what remains of it) it's the desktop.
Mobiles phones are a walled garden for megacorps.
by rvba on 3/23/21, 1:03 AM
The worst is that Google doesnt care, since they dont fix old bugs, they only ship new products that fail.
by wnevets on 3/22/21, 5:51 PM
As a consumer I absolutely that google provides the answers I need without having to click on any sites.
by lolive on 3/22/21, 5:47 PM
In 2014, the Google Knowledge Graph was a good way for Google to redirect Wikipedia page views to its own ecosystem. Good job Google! https://wikipediocracy.com/2014/01/06/googles-knowledge-grap...
by _y5hn on 3/22/21, 10:07 PM
Bogus metric when search results might contain enough answer to majority of sincere queries.
by criddell on 3/22/21, 5:46 PM
> the zero-click search problem is likely to rise even more
I have a hard time seeing this as a problem.
by Siira on 3/22/21, 11:19 PM
I find this a very good result. It's especially good on bad network connections.
by zupreme on 3/22/21, 11:52 PM
If the article mentioned the data having been filtered to not include automated queries I missed it.
I would not be surprised if the vast majority of today’s Google searches are not being made by machines, scripts, etc.
Desktop vs mobile was mentioned but that doesn’t necessarily prove that the traffic is “human”.
by RedComet on 3/23/21, 3:42 AM
Google search results have been pitiful the last few years.
by paulpauper on 3/22/21, 6:33 PM
google search results are nothing but content farms and other mostly useless shit unless you search for things that are STEM-related or academic-related.
by gergi on 3/22/21, 11:11 PM
In the article, what does CTR stand for? Did miss it?
by zuhayeer on 3/22/21, 10:20 PM
What's disappointing about this is how inaccurate some of the information is. For example, we even go the extra step of adding the OccupationSchema meta tag on Levels.fyi for salary data to be shown on queries. However, Google only uses the base salary component and not the total key, which highly misleads people into taking what's shown as 'per year' as the total compensation, especially since there isn't even a clarification for it on the salary cards.
Still think it does make for a better user experience overall, just wish they'd add these details to some of these Search schemas they themselves adopted for the purpose of getting more pinpointed info.
by tyingq on 3/22/21, 5:55 PM
I wonder if an AMP click counts as a click or not.
by rantwasp on 3/22/21, 6:44 PM
of course there is no click. a lot of search traffic is machines (machines don’t click) + a lot of the results come in on the SERP.
by secondcoming on 3/22/21, 11:29 PM
I find myself going to page 2 more and more.
by rongenre on 3/22/21, 11:36 PM
It would be great if a nonprofit decided to come up with its own internet index and duplicate the functionality of circa-2000 google.
Imagine it could be done for under 10M?
by devops000 on 3/23/21, 8:15 AM
The other 1/3 are bot clicks ads.
by AimForTheBushes on 3/22/21, 5:52 PM
I usually append 'reddit' to my google searches. It doesn't necessary provide better results but I love the plain text format.
by cambalache on 3/22/21, 10:14 PM
90% of my Google queries is "Search terms + Reddit".Usually I end up with better quality info. Reddit is missing a great opportunity there, especially because its search engine sucks (They should use algolia or something). If they were more visionary they could use their internal search as a starting point for a generic web searcher.
by airhead969 on 3/22/21, 5:40 PM
Don't ogle Google, https://duckduckgo.com instead.
by croes on 3/22/21, 5:40 PM
At some point Google will overdo it and they will be split up.