How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet | WIRED
Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. 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 that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all.
It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.
Why would Google want to do this? First, the generated results to the latter query are more likely to be shopping-oriented, triggering your subsequent behavior much like the candy display at a grocery store’s checkout. Second, that latter query will automatically generate the keyword ads placed on the search engine results page by stores like TJ Maxx, which pay Google every time you click on them. In short, it’s a guaranteed way to line Google’s pockets.
It’s also a guaranteed way to harm everyone except Google. 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, and the company has effectively captured more than 90 percent market share.
I hate this so much. I remember being able to use Google and search terms to find just about anything. Sometimes I could remember the exact title or quote a line from the thing I was looking for and I’d find it.
Now it’s just useless. I know capitalism ruins everything it touches, but it feels especially perverse when you’re trying to find your way online. It feels like somebody changed all the road signs on me.
I can’t google anything anymore. It definitely feels like the algorithm simplifies my queries so to streamline my results, making them useless, but I never thought it was straight up changing my query behind the scenes. This resonates so strongly with my lived experience.
we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.
What year was that published?
1998
I’ve been using Kagi on a trial basis lately and have found it much more pleasant than modern Google. I’ll probably spend $10/month to subscribe and gain access to their actually-useful AI features (such as summarizer).
Any random SearXNG instance is good, too.
Heard about Kagi yesterday, it’s been pretty good?
It’s really good! It has a ton of power user features: you can prioritize or deprioritize different websites, auto-summarize any page (or video or podcast or PDF, even!), or ask questions about results and get good, coherent answers (I think it’s using Claude 2 for this).
Beyond that, though, it generally just shows you The Things You Want To See, delivered quickly and ordered reasonably.
