Google "altering billions of queries a day" reports WIRED

This looks...

[ronin]

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.

Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations.

It’s [...] a guaranteed way to harm everyone except Google.

Source: [wired.com...]

[aristotle]

If this is really true, then it's totally unacceptable. And there should be a huge backlash and a public boycott of google.

[tangor]

Will have to prove it true, first, then get that info out, second. Might get the first step done, but getting the second on the web might be difficult! We already know the info tap is subject to tampering.

[Shepherd]

*unverified slide from the hearing:

[twitter.com...]

[Wilburforce]

This looks as if someone is conflating organic results with advertiser results. It seems to me very unlikely that Google would show organic results that substitute a brand-specific search for a general product search, and - except where the product is only available from a very limited number of suppliers - isn't suggested by organic results.

What the unverified slide shows is what other search terms might bring up your advertisement if you pay for placement for (e.g.) "kid's clothing".

Hardly sensational.

[superclown2]

This is an extremely serious allegation that could destroy trust in Google worldwide if it became widely known. Google employs a whole battery of lawyers (many of whom previously worked for the US government, but that's another story) so I wonder why they don't sue. Some may say that they might prefer to sweep it under the carpet but surely a company that does no evil has nothing to hide?

[Soulofmonk]

WIRED removed the story they posted earlier, against Google God.

[wired.com ]

EDITOR’S NOTE 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed.

[edited by: not2easy at 8:58 pm (utc) on Oct 7, 2023]
[edit reason] splice cleanup [/edit]

[Fluff_Nutz]

I do wonder if they were forced to remove it rather than actually wanting to remove it. Despite what G said on Twitter, we all know that they are committing unlawful activities.

[EditorialGuy]

I do wonder if they were forced to remove it rather than actually wanting to remove it.

WIRED's publisher, Condé Nast, is a highly respected media company that actually does have editorial standards. IMO, the fact that the story got very little traction in other media suggests that the author went a little too far out on his or her skis and the editors (or perhaps the company's lawyers) had publisher's remorse.

[tangor]

When lawyers get involved things evolve ... and not always positively. Meanwhile, libel and slander proceedings will get one's attention!

[chewy]

Bless Archive.org !

[web.archive.org...]

(Funny how Wired killed the article but didn't somehow manage to kill the Wayback Machine from exposing this..)

Has anyone reached out to Megan Gray for an update? A quick check on her tells me she may be on to something - and she may also have the "stuff" to push facts where others are pushing fictions.

Sadly and very unfortunately, I have been expecting this kind of news to "break" sooner or later - and no surprise that it got removed.

No surprise either that this didn't clarify organic or paid traffic. Perhaps Megan was referring to both?

So here's my take:

With Google's significant cutbacks in intentionally disclosed search query data - first through the GA3 "not provided" removal of supposed queries that contained personally identifiable content (ya right!) which somehow increased to from a 10% "not bad" status to a near 100% "really bad" status - with the same thing happening with AdWord / Advertising search queries, it is quite conceivable that they are doing exactly what is being discussed in the Wired piece.

Heck, they're digging in the sofa for spare change, how is it that they would NOT be secretly doing this?

Plus, of course, as we all understand the strategic use of negative keywords - why wouldn't they ALSO kill the signals needed as negatives (as seen through STR / SQR type reports) as doing this was one of very few ways to stop this nonsense?

(Funny, I believe I was taught this exact technique by Google reps, back when they were actually skilled advisors instead of unskilled marketeers...)

I don't have any good words for this purported query substitution practice - but to me this is either Query Pooching (for profit) or Query Poaching - and it needs to be figured out -- and stopped.

How do we prove and or disprove this theory? Seems +Kids +clothing is not a particularly good example?

Good luck to us all.

[Wilburforce]

Read my previous post.

[chewy]

Wilburforce, I take your point - perhaps I'm slightly conflating this "story" with the larger point about how people on the outside of Google learned to rely on certain critical things that were gradually and permanently taken away, with nothing available to compensate for this removal. Sure, people who have been at it for some time know how and why to compensate. But crap - isn't a lot of what they are doing highly unfair and swerving quickly to illegal monopolistic behavior? New wine in old bottles, right?

They will always say "conditions vary" as a defense, and some part of it is true - but why are they always THEIR conditions and not the professional / consumer users?

Meanwhile, if Wired said this article didn't meet their standards, I will be a bit surprised if they don't come back with something that does. Probably shouldn't get my hopes up.

[Wilburforce]

@chewy

I think Wired probably withdrew the story because they could see that the "conversion" referred to paid advertisements, not to organic results.

Without in any way wishing to defend Google, I think the problem for those of us who come from a time when backlinks and keywords were they way search worked, is that machine learning throws all the rules out of the window. The focus has moved from matching a page to a search to matching a page to a searcher, and the machine knows every searcher in detail, while the webmaster can only tailor his bait in the dark.