Google Will Re-Assess its New-Look Desktop Search Display After Criticism

[rcjordan]

" the format makes it much harder for users to distinguish between paid ads and actual, earned results."

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/google-will-re-assess-its-new-look-desktop-search-display-after-criticism-o/571063/

[Drastic]

No shit, that was obv the goal wasn't it? Hope they do change it though, it is the suck.

[rcjordan]

Yeah, I ran across it before the news got out. Definitely took a minute to sort out the ads.

[ergophobe]

As a friend of mine who is not at all internet savvy (as in, does not have internet at home and does not have a smart phone - goes to the library to research things on the web) said:

"What Google ads? I don't get ads when I search in Google."

And that was with the old layout

Search Engine Land has a nice graphic showing how Google has progressively made ads look more and more like organic SERPs
https://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2019/06/GoogleAds_Timeline_FNL2.001.png

Ironically, my ad blocker was blocking it so when I went to the page on their site that shows it, I couldn't see it. Had to go incognito.
https://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-google-bing-254332

[ergophobe]

Of course, for people on The Core, they are easy to target in your user stylesheet. I used to have extra shading, but don't anymore. But the new layout has them labelled pretty well.

.ads-ad {background-color: #ccc }

should do it. There must be browser extensions for that too. Let's see...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/perceptual-ad-highlighter/mahgiflleahghaapkboihnbhdplhnchp?hl=en-US

I can't find an equivalent for FF

[littleman]

>FF

If you want just a good adblocker, uBlock Origin does a nice job.

[ergophobe]

I have uBlock Origin. It doesn't block ads in the SERPs does it? Maybe it's a settings thing. I always see Google ads.

[littleman]

Yeah, it must be in your settings.  They are definitely being blocked for me.

[ergophobe]

Settings. I forgot that on the browser I use to access Google services, I unblocked Google.

[rcjordan]

Hmmmm...

Alphabet shares decline on revenue miss; YouTube ad, cloud revenues finally revealed - MarketWatch
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/alphabet-shares-rise-on-earnings-beat-2020-02-03