[HN Gopher] Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet
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Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet
Author : cdme
Score : 140 points
Date : 2023-10-02 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| tedunangst wrote:
| > Say you search for "children's clothing." Google converts it,
| without your knowledge, to a search for "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,"
| making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with
| a different query
|
| Wait. Is this example from the court testimony, or something the
| author made up?
| [deleted]
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416694.pdf
|
| Page 14
|
| "Query Rewriter interprets query"
| rodonn wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the author is misinterpreting what she saw.
|
| 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?
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| its usually from user behaviour and how the advertiser setup
| the keywords for the product. If users searching for
| "children's clothing" start having a high conversion for
| "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" then more and more of their ads will
| start appearing when searching for children's clothing.
|
| Google (and also the advertiser) have list of keywords that
| work well for products and then keep testing new keywords
| edmundsauto wrote:
| This actually makes sense to me - conversion is possibly
| the most clear signal that the query intent was answered.
| While there is a financial incentive for Google to make
| this happen, it also results in improved user experience -
| in the less cynical days I might call this a "win win".
| jeffbee wrote:
| Query re-write is probably one of the top keys to search
| quality, at any search engine.
| eastbound wrote:
| Is it, though? I reckon it's commonly accepted. I reckon
| there are cases that can be highlighted. As I'm sure it's
| possible to make the case that some trickle-down policies
| work. But in the end, plural forms or synonyms do not
| equate to the original word.
| bloppe wrote:
| You can just surround a word with double quotes if you
| need exact matches. It's nice having synonyms otherwise.
| eitland wrote:
| Haven't worked reliably in Google since somewhere around
| 2012 AFAIK.
|
| Edit: Downvote all you want but this is documented.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I use it all the time. My biggest issue is I frequently
| get 0 search results with it on specific searches. It may
| not always have a result, but I don't get returned
| results that don't include the quoted portion.
| eitland wrote:
| As I write above it doesn't work _reliably_.
|
| 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.
| the-rc wrote:
| The problem is that you're assuming search is
| deterministic.
| hedora wrote:
| Searching for "children's clothing" gives 100% spam (== store
| front landing blurbs or things that are labeled "sponsored").
| Searching "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" gives some organic results
| and some spam.
|
| So, it's now worse than the previous alleged behavior.
|
| Great.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Exactly. "Children's clothing" is a completely useless
| search until the search engine joins it with a million
| signals you failed to type. I can't even begin to imagine
| how people believe every page in the internet could
| possibly be ranked in a useful way without those extra
| implicit terms.
| vore wrote:
| This really really doesn't pass the sniff test. It would be
| extremely obvious if your searches were being so egregiously
| converted.
| jjulius wrote:
| >It would be extremely obvious...
|
| I don't think this is necessarily true.
| lozenge wrote:
| If you search for children's clothing, you get multiple
| different companies. The query obviously hasn't been
| modified to just include one brand.
| jjulius wrote:
| That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I wouldn't
| expect results manipulated as such to be "extremely
| obvious" to your average person.
| vore wrote:
| That's what you should be saying, because that's what the
| article is claiming. If you're arguing they would rewrite
| queries less obviously, that's a much weaker claim than
| what the author is making.
|
| 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?
| jjulius wrote:
| >That's what you should be saying, because that's what
| the article is claiming.
|
| 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.
| vore wrote:
| Refute what the article is saying, not your generous
| interpretation of it. If the author wanted to make such
| an extraordinary claim, they should have presented
| extraordinary evidence.
| jjulius wrote:
| ... what are you even talking about? _You_ said...
|
| >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?
| hedora wrote:
| You get companies, but they are all resellers. The
| listings are all worded like advertisements and stuffed
| with thumbnails, etc, in the style of banner ads.
|
| 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.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| It sounds like the author is massively extrapolating from one
| slide that was only shown for a brief moment. A slide that we
| can't see. I am extremely skeptical that Google would make such
| an egregious substitution and I'd need to see some actual
| evidence for this.
| daft_pink wrote:
| People will think I work for the company or am getting a
| commission or something, but just want to say that Kagi is
| awesome and a great replacement for google.
|
| Also, in Google's defense, Amazon is obviously doing the same
| thing. Why is it so hard to search for the lowest price item on
| Amazon. Obviously Amazon doesn't want you to comparison shop and
| spend more $'s especially on their ads.
| atulvi wrote:
| surprised pikachu face
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I once used Google Lens to try to identify a weird defect to some
| grass in my yard. Instead, I got a bunch of results trying to
| sell me grass seed. This article doesn't tell me much I didn't
| already expect but it's interesting and hopeful to hear this is
| coming up in court!
| mbauman wrote:
| It is so extraordinarily valuable that folks like Megan Gray have
| been attending these trials. This story would be so much more
| compelling if we could also see that slide -- but as a closed
| trial only those with the time and ability to actually go to the
| courthouse can see it.
|
| On the same day this slide was presented, she also tweeted:
| https://nitter.net/megangrA/status/1704244948378194289
|
| > I am so livid at what just happened re public access in the
| Google Search antitrust case right now that I don't trust myself
| to tweet about it yet. Back later.
| Crash0v3rid3 wrote:
| Megan made so many assumptions in that article based on a slide
| and single quote that we can't even see.
|
| How about they actually provide some evidence before making
| such claims?
| the-rc wrote:
| Concrete question: how does the query rewriting service talk
| to the ads DB to do what's alleged?
| mbauman wrote:
| We don't know how many assumptions Megan made or even who was
| testifying and what they assumed or what evidence was
| presented in court. Yes, that's problematic.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Paywalled:
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%...
| Exuma wrote:
| This is fucking awesome. 12ft is a hilarious name.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| This company cannot die fast enough. Lets all hope OpenAI makes
| Google Search obsolete.
| eastbound wrote:
| It could be the cause why Google tries to monetize fast and
| now, at the expense of extremely fast enshitification.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| For most of what I use Google for, OpenAI would not be in any
| way helpful.
|
| I enjoy searching for opinion/editorial articles on
| random/obscure topics. I enjoy finding when a niche sport I
| enjoy gets coverage in mainstream newspapers/broadcasters.
| vore wrote:
| I don't think replacing one problem with a slightly different
| problem beholden to the same interests in the end solves
| anything.
| NegativeK wrote:
| Replacing Google search, with all of its disgusting warts, with
| OpenAI's chatbot is a dystopian shitscape that I want no part
| in.
|
| ChatGPT has no citations.
| worik wrote:
| Depends what you use it for.
|
| > ChatGPT has no citations.
|
| I use three programming languages every day, and lookup
| syntax details often
|
| Using Google (any search engine) returns acres of SEO driven
| garbage and astro turf
|
| Chat GPT has been a huge boon, essentially no B.S.
|
| No need for citations, the compiler keeps them honest.
|
| I used Bing search, via Skype for a while (it has been
| degraded recently IMO) it read web pages for me, summerised
| them, and returned links with it
|
| So I think LLM mediated search is a definite possibility for
| disrupting the enshitification of Internet search
| eitland wrote:
| > No need for citations, the compiler keeps them honest.
|
| But in ldj[...]s preferred future Google is dead and when
| they are and Microsofts AI only gives you the answers and
| not the sources they can just keep cranking the prices and
| there is nothing one can do since you'll never know were
| they got it.
| bloppe wrote:
| Not defending Google, but this definitely reads like an article
| written by a lawyer with a vested interest in DuckDuckGo.
| jacooper wrote:
| Which isnt even independent!
|
| Its crazy to see people advocate for duckduckgo while brave
| search exists, is more privacy respecting and is actually
| independent.
| skilled wrote:
| Brave sells the shit they scrape for AI training/inference...
| with no way to opt-out. How is that even remotely close to
| "privacy respecting"?
| jacooper wrote:
| So? What does that have to do with anything user privacy
| related?
|
| As if google and bing don't scrap the web for Ai learning
| material?
| skilled wrote:
| Last time I checked you can block Google and Bing. Brave
| doesn't offer this feature.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _while brave search exists, is more privacy respecting and
| is actually independent_
|
| Brave lost a lot of goodwill by going crypto. Now that Kagi
| has a superior product, there isn't a great reason to choose
| Brave other than not wanting to pay.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| DDG also do in-line ads like Google, which are scummy as
| hell.
|
| I use them, but that single factor means I don't like them.
| worik wrote:
| > Which isnt even independent!
|
| What do you mean?
|
| Who is pulling Duckduckgo's strings?
| jacooper wrote:
| Duckduckgo is basically bing with another UI.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > a lawyer with a vested interest in DuckDuckGo.
|
| Downvoters obviously do not know who Megan Gray is.
| worik wrote:
| I have never heard of them
|
| https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/people/megan-gray
|
| That Megan Gray?
| jsnell wrote:
| As per the article itself "[previously] an executive for
| DuckDuckGo", which seems more relevant than what's on that
| Stanford page.
|
| I mean, I hadn't heard of them either. But they did state
| their bias up front in the article, and bloppe's
| description isn't unfair.
| tmaly wrote:
| I am wondering if and when this change happened.
|
| I seem to recall the search results got progressively worse over
| the last few years.
| CodeCompost wrote:
| I've been trying out Kagi since the HN post from just under two
| weeks ago. Enjoying it so far.
|
| The post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37603905
| binkHN wrote:
| I noticed the same with the search results in the Google Play
| Store. When you use search to try to find an app that matches
| your search term, you almost always get very unrelated apps in
| the results, and the only good explanation to it is that the
| unrelated apps that you're seeing provide more revenue to Google
| in comparison to the actual app that you want.
| StillBored wrote:
| How much of that is just the vendors putting keywords in their
| search match dialogs to broaden their scope?
|
| The example I used to hit all the time, was searching for RDP
| in apple/android/etc app market spaces, the first few hits
| aren't even capable of RDP and are 3rd parties selling their
| proprietary screen sharing app rather than actual RDP clients.
| The app stores seem to have equated RDP or VNC with "screen
| sharing" and say ~80% of the results don't even support the
| protocol in question.
|
| Although, without my phone handy I just dumped it into the web
| based interface and it actually returned a half dozen RDP
| clients at the top, but then in the second ten, was netflix,
| facebook, ms teams and various other apps completely unrelated
| to even screen sharing.
|
| Looks like if you pay enough you can show up in every single
| query.
| eitland wrote:
| Same happens in Apple App Store BTW:
|
| The first result in the results page is never what I search
| for.
|
| It is possibly just an ad but I can't remember it being market
| as one and it feels very off in what is supposed to be a
| premium paid offering as opposed to Googles ad financed
| ecosystem.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Or the "unrelated" apps have bought ads on a wide range of
| keywords so that they appear in many search results?
|
| Like when I search Craigslist for a BMW car and see ads for
| Mercedes and Audi cars because people posting those ads stick
| "BMW" in their ad copy. I flag those ads on the basis that they
| are abusing the search algorithm.
| binkHN wrote:
| I'd love to say the unrelated apps bought ads, but that's not
| the case. The Play Store clearly denotes when there's an ad
| in your search results, but the vast majority of the
| unrelated apps have no ads.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Feels like a good justification as to why the meme of "Google
| search query results are worse now" might actually be true.
| grotorea wrote:
| Doesn't that meme also mostly applies to other search engines?
| Is everyone doing this?
| eitland wrote:
| kagi.com and even run-by-a-single-Swede-from his-living-room
| search.marginalia.nu keeps proving on a daily basis that many
| of the snags in modern Google is totally avoidable.
| hn72774 wrote:
| Noticed the same on Amazon. Searched for Honey Oat Crunch. The
| first result was honey, then nestle crunch bars. The third result
| was the Whole Foods brand cereal. Had to click on that listing,
| scroll to the bottom, scroll through 3 carousels of other
| products to find the Cascadian Farms brand I wanted.
|
| Then I tried buying the lower priced Whole Foods brand and it had
| a limit of 3 and a $9.99 delivery fee which offset any savings.
| Do I drive there to buy it? Is the price the same in store?
|
| At that point, screw it, not going to buy it at all. Too much
| work just to find what I want. Customer obsession is dead at
| Amazon.
| bombela wrote:
| > This system reduces search engine quality for users and drives
| up advertiser expenses. Google can get away with it because these
| manipulations are imperceptible to the user and advertiser
|
| I sure have been noticing. At this point finding anything on the
| web feels like a lost cause.
|
| Besides duckduckgo (bing) which is not even that great either.
| What other option do we have?
| jacooper wrote:
| Brave search is really good, its my main search engine, and i
| found it to be better than kagi with better AI integration.
|
| They are also integrating their own chat ai which is also
| privacy respecting.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Kagi search is a paid search engine that delivers higher
| quality results with no ads. I'm currently using the free trial
| (you get 100 searches for free) and enjoying it.
|
| https://kagi.com/
| ethanbond wrote:
| Also been really enjoying Kagi, just converted to the $10/mo
| unlimited searches plan even before my trial ran out because
| it's such a breath of fresh air!
| wombat-man wrote:
| It's amazing. I searched for a recipe and didn't end up with
| some bloggers life story.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| How does a search engine control this? Did it extract it?
| Does it search some recipe database instead? I'm confused
| how using Kagi netted this as this seemed to just be a
| defect from SEO. Is it just that Kagi doesn't promote pages
| like that so you end up getting the ones that don't have
| it?
| wombat-man wrote:
| No, it just had an allrecipes result at the top. Maybe
| they mark some recipe websites as good? Maybe they put
| less importance on quantity of text. Maybe they are not
| motivated to send me to a page where I need to scroll
| through a blog post (and ads) to get to the
| ingredients/steps.
| jorams wrote:
| One of the things they do is have the number of trackers
| on a website affect its ranking (negatively). I imagine
| that is an effective signal in cases like this.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Kagi also uses Bing
| ybc37 wrote:
| According to this page [1], they do use external sources
| (Google, Mojeek, Yandex and more), but not Bing ;)
|
| They also have their (two) own indexes.
|
| Tbh, for me (as small town dev) it feels like magic how
| fast those different sources are combined, additionally
| with user search preferences like raising or blocking
| certain domains. Insides welcome :)
|
| Edit: Here [2] are some benchmarks and general strategies
| they pursue. Would love to read more details.
|
| [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-
| sources.htm...
|
| [2] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-
| speed.html
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Browsing with a Pihole really is eye-opening for the "drives up
| advertiser expenses" bit; I'll Google a thing, click the (very
| subtle) ad, get a Pihole block, then go down to the actual
| first result to get to the same spot.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Crowdsourcing on Reddit, gone are the days when you could
| answer a question with 'let me google that for you.' So you'll
| see the same questions appear repeatedly in subreddits as
| previous answers are lost.
|
| Personally, I maintain an extensive bookmark hierarchy and a
| collection of rss feeds. I also buy more books instead of
| reading blogs. medium.com with their subscription baiting
| articles are PiHoled as the signal to noise ratio is so low
| that I find it's a net negative.
|
| I'm also looking forward to locally running a LLM as my own
| personal search engine.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| The Reddit redesign hid the sidebar, where many subreddits
| had a FAQ. Now, only that tiny percentage that uses
| old.reddit.com will see the FAQ, Wiki and all those other
| treasure troves of information the community had built up. I
| suspected - and continue to suspect - that Reddit _wants_ the
| same questions to appear over and over again, as that seems
| like the very definition of engagement.
|
| I have also seen mods claim that when people post a question,
| it isn't necessarily because they couldn't answer it
| themselves, but because they're just seeking interaction with
| other members of the community. Therefore, old-school net
| users who refer people to FAQs are cruelly denying them an
| outlet for socializing.
| seejayseesjays wrote:
| the SEO folks are starting to pollute reddit threads, too.
| pierat wrote:
| Yandex works VERY WELL for me for general stuff. Goods,
| reviews, piracy, etc. All super nice.
|
| Things that are location-based do bad, cause they're Russian.
| They optimize for Russian location stuff.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Try Yandex and Kagi. First for breadth, second for depth
| eastbound wrote:
| How is Yandex, whose stock stopped being traded on the day of
| the Russian war, is still able to browse the entire Western
| universe? I'm not expressing a moral opinion, just surprised
| the West lets them do it.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| They are based in EU actually))) Afaik the ru part is a
| 'subsidiary', at least on paper
| ceejayoz wrote:
| None of the (Western) sanctions include widespread internet
| blocks/filtering, nor would it really be to the West's
| benefit to do so.
| figassis wrote:
| We've been wondering why query operators no longer work, or why
| you can't quote text to require it in results anymore. There have
| been many explanations. Well, now we know, it would have broken
| this algorithm, so google dropped it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I have no idea if they do it to for ad reasons, but Google has
| been creatively interpreting search queries for a long while now.
| I think it's one of (maybe the primary) the reasons why Google
| search quality has fallen so much.
|
| It's not a huge stretch to think that while they're at it, they
| would take into account advertisers. Again, not saying they are
| -- only that it wouldn't be that shocking.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| We now have direct evidence that the ads people interfere with
| the product to bolster sales at the expense of the users:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675467
|
| It's a near certainty this is happening in all parts of Google.
| tiltowait wrote:
| I don't know if it still does it, but an enormous pet peeve of
| mine was how Google would conflate NSTableView and UITableView
| in search results.
|
| They're quite distinct!
| kbenson wrote:
| I can't tell if you're trying to make some subtle point
| through sarcasm, because I don't know how those (which I
| understand to be Apple UI components) relate to searches and
| I'm not sure if that's because I just don't have the context
| or if them being unrelated is _the point_.
| distract8901 wrote:
| The point is that they're unrelated, but Google "helpfully"
| interprets your search to show you things it thinks you
| want instead of what you asked for.
| kbenson wrote:
| That is the obvious interpretation, which for some reason
| _completely_ eluded me. My mind somehow went down a
| rabbit hole of whole google structured markup, but those
| are Apple UI terms, so I couldn 't see how it mattered
| unless it was in some iOS google search app, and at that
| point I was already in a thought prison of my own assumed
| context, even though this is so obvious in retrospect.
| Thanks!
| Crash0v3rid3 wrote:
| The author is making so many assumptions based on a single quote
| from a slide.
|
| There is zero evidence for what they are accusing Google of
| doing.
| ranting-moth wrote:
| It feels like Google is just running their brand to the ground
| trying to maximize the profits.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Semantic search doesn't work by replacing words with synonyms. It
| just uses embeddings where queries using synonyms map to near
| points in a vector space.
|
| I doubt the actual queries would be manipulated and this author
| provides no proof other than "trust me bro."
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| [flagged]
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