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

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (7 children)

That sucks, but I argue that it's even worse. Not only do they tweak your results to make more money, but because google has a monopoly on web advertising, and (like it or not) advertising is the main internet funding model, google gets to decide whether or not your website gets to generate revenue at all. They literally have an approval process for serving ads, and it is responsible for the proliferation of LLM-generated blogspam. Here's a thing I wrote about it in which I tried to get my already-useful and high-quality website approved for ads, complete with a before and after approval, if you're curious. The after is a wreck.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That was a really well written, and more than mildly disturbing. Thanks? Yeah, thanks. I enjoyed it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

As someone with no web experience beyond using a string of notepad documents renamed into html files, this is both horrifying and completely fascinating. And very well written, like ya said.

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