Article: “Google Search Is Dying” - https://dkb.io/post/google-search-is-dying
The premise of this blog post is that Google Search is dying
because people are less trusting of its search results. In 1998, Google founders Sergey Brin and
Lawrence Page said:
“We expect that advertising
funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and
away from the needs of the consumers…Furthermore, advertising income often
provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.”
It seems the Google founders predicted the impact that ads are
now having on their very own search engine, which the author posits is causing the
death of Google search.
The author states that Reddit is now the most popular search
engine, but because Reddit does not have a search engine feature, users search
on Google with “reddit” appended to their search. Interestingly, 15 years after its launch,
Reddit continues to grow in terms of Google search volume.
Why are more users continuing to add “reddit” to their
Google searches? Because they believe Google
search results are too inauthentic to trust. The first few results the user sees are ads,
followed by SEO optimized sites filled with affiliate ads and links (try
searching for a recipe to see this in its full glory!). Of course, SEO encourages ‘gaming’ of the system,
and everything feels commercialized.
Users are craving authenticity. Since they can’t find that in Google search
results, they have to append “reddit,” “hacker news,” “stack overview,” or
another community they trust to their Google search to find critical feedback
from an authentic user.
The future of digital marketing will look very different if
users stop using Google search in the same way…aka if Google Search dies.
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