That’s wild. It’s possible that Google shows me relevant ads. But if it’s formatted anything like a sponsored result, I think my eyes just skip past it. Like after so many years I just have ad block built in to my retinas.

I wonder if one was actually useful, maybe I’d notice it?

Google are removing vast amounts of pages from their search indexes, leaving only "primary sources" that AI chat can reference.

So if you have a long-tail page ("obscure part number") then the only way to show it is buying an ad for it.

I’ve always wondered what % of ad clicks are just misclicks.

I've long suspected Amazon's search is so crappy because it makes their ads necessary to actually surface a product. I guess Google got the idea as well.

The worst part is I've seen search other video sites that used to surface exact titles stop working around the same time. I'm not sure how to reliably find things I know are there anymore.

Fascinating; they must be bidding on the part numbers as search keywords.

Now I wonder what the median CPC is for part numbers (I’d guess very cheap), and which one is the most expensive (no idea, super curious).

I’ve had this exact experience a couple of times in the past few weeks. Their “sponsored” ads of a kind of product that I was looking for (based mainly on description for the use I was intending) gave better results than any AI model I tried to use to find a product that fit my specific use case.

Found it interesting that I’ve flipped my search tool usage in such a short time. I use models for most “searching” but then utilize Google Search as the last resort.

> So maybe this is a bit of good news?

How is it good news?

Consumer searches for $FOO. $FOO does not show up in the search results.

At this point, the search is useless to users.

This is exactly what the ad network is meant to do, and their ability to monetize this ability means competitor's ads (like meta) become less valuable.

Is this how we fix google search? Make advertisers have to provide ads that are actually helpful search results, sort of like https://xkcd.com/810/ but for search ads

I'd still try to get to the result a different way, even if it involves doing another search. Same with Amazon.

For me it didn’t find a file on GitHub with exact file name, but found it via llm summary.

the bigger question is why the heck did you use Google, was it only after you exhausted all other LLM options

Google successfully trained this human to click on ads.

Thankfully I never see any ads - ublock origin kills these off. That includes the horrible UI choices Google made on its search interface. A custom ublock origin rule filters away the pointless "others also searched for pink cats" while I was searching for epic skyscrapers. Evidently Google tries to link-lose me here, wasting my time.