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How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet - WIRED (www.wired.com)

submitted 9 months ago by ijeff@lemdro.id to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Google may be altering billions of search queries daily to generate results that increase purchases.

Testimony in an antitrust case revealed an internal Google slide about changes to its search algorithm, involving "semantic matching" to generate more commercial results.

Google covertly changes user queries, substituting them with ones that generate more revenue for the company and display shopping-oriented results.

This manipulation benefits Google's profits but harms search quality and raises advertiser costs.

Despite legal challenges, Google's market dominance allows it to continue these practices, impacting users' ability to access unbiased information.

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[-] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 11 points 9 months ago

Even though results have gotten worse, every time I've tried another search engine the results have been even worse than Google.

[-] dan@upvote.au 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Have you tried Kagi? It's a paid service (which is good for people that don't like ads) and the results seem pretty good. They have a trial plan where you can do 100 searches. Where possible, it prioritises small sites that don't always appear in Google results at all, and it has far less SEO spam than Google.

[-] macallik@kbin.social 11 points 9 months ago

It feels like every other post on privacy and technology is someone pushing the (paid) search engine Kagi nowadays...

[-] dan@upvote.au 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm not affiliated with Kagi or anything, it's just refreshing to have a fresh approach to search engines that doesn't involve using advertising to pay for it. I haven't actually paid for a plan yet, but I do have a trial account, and it seems like a pretty good product.

[-] Linssiili@sopuli.xyz 5 points 9 months ago

Probably, since every other post is about search engines, and many of us have been cursing the ever-worsening search results from google, with no real alternative (that actually provides better results than google).

Now that there is finally an ad-free product that performs like Google did 5-10 years ago, of course, I want others to have the same experience and not get frustrated when they can't find the information they're seeking.

[-] YuzuDrink@beehaw.org 5 points 9 months ago

I really need to try them and see how many searches I actually use. Even their higher paid tiers seem like way too few searches to me. But I have no actual idea.

[-] dan@upvote.au 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I would have agreed in the past, but they have an unlimited plan for $10/month now, which is why I'm more interested.

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I get that search is expensive to run, but $120 USD/yr is a lot.

Maybe it's worth cancelling something to pay for it, but idk. I won't even look at metered tiers. Knowing my scarcity aversion, I'd never use it. I didn't use a single Neeva trial search since I was hoarding them like Max Ethers from Final Fantasy.

[-] dan@upvote.au 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah. It's definitely expensive, which is why I haven't signed up for a subscription yet. Still thinking about it.

[-] acastcandream@beehaw.org 2 points 9 months ago

That's $120/yr is worth less to me than my privacy and desire to decouple from google tbh

[-] tlf@feddit.de 1 points 8 months ago

Thank you for the recommendation, if a product delivers what i expect for it's price I'm gonna be using it. The trial searches will hopefully help me evaluate that

[-] Crotaro@beehaw.org 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yes, that's unfortunately true, too. It probably comes with how sites will try to optimise as much as possible for search engines to find them, even if it means that it's no longer useful (like those posts on social media that include every conceivable tag instead of the ones that actually fit thematically to the post)

There's this project for a paid search engine, Kagi, that tries to make results more useful again by not needing to favour advertisements. I haven't tested their trial offer too much because I keep forgetting it exists, so I cannot say how much better the results really are, yet.

Edit: Big lol, I just read the other replies in this comment chain and yeah I guess by now you are aware of this Kagi project hah.