(Please don't read this as a defense of Google on the whole.)

We built our entire company for that 1%.

A funnier example: searching for Amazon gives Temu as the first result. Searching for Temu gives Shein as the first result. Searching for Shein gives Shein as the first result! ...but only because they outbid everyone else for the ad spot on their own name, resulting in Double Shein: https://i.imgur.com/0buR8Hq.png

- No ads, with correct midjourney.com as the top result, about half the time

- A legit ad for midjourney.com with the title "Your Imagination, Unlocked", the other half the time. It's the only ad, and the correct midjourney.com is also still directly below it as the first organic result

So both seem fine for me. I've never seen ads on Google with the kind of formatting shown by OP either.

Obviously everybody's search experience is different, based on geography, profile, who else is running ads for those keywords, Google runs different formatting experiences as A/B testing, etc.

That seems about as good as it could be.

Edit: I guess I should say that I do agree that the quality of Google Search is pretty poor these days, so I directionally agree even though I can't reproduce this issue. Still, it's interesting to see how much our searches differ. I can't imagine what algorithm in Google decided to give me great results and you trash.

For comparison DDG gave me the site as third link, which only just made the bottom of the screen.

DDG often gives me useless Ebay links which remind me of the early days of search.

Perhaps these single data points are useless?

I've been using internet since '98, and I somehow developed this elusive skill of knowing how to navigate all these ads, seo farms, paid content, murky websites, and getting straight to the answer, no matter what the question was.

For a long time I didn't thought of that as a special power. I thought it was natural, like driving a car, or speaking English. And I occasionally got surprised seeing someone trying to find something online and spending minutes, if not hours to get to the right place.

Last couple of years I found it to be way, way harder. And it's noticeably getting worse almost on a daily basis right now.

Recently I've tried perplexity and it was absolutely amazing. I know this may sound like a sales pitch, but I was really blown away by the user experience. Except it sometimes says "results cannot be found or I am not suppose to show them to you". Well, fair game, I wouldn't be able to find these results on google either.

I've seen a lot of change in the industry last 30 years, things we took for granted or thought would stay there forever. I genuinely think Google is finished as a search engine for the web. The only problem is that we don't have a solid contender yet. Perplexity is close tho.

Searching for Midjourney finds Midjourney with direct links to sections of their website. uBlock Origin blocks ads. All is well.

There are tons of other examples like this. It’s very easy to get tricked by Google ads if you aren’t suspecting a scam.

What an embarrassment Google has become, but I guess that sweet-sweet ad money trumps everything else.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/Oxo4FJl.png

I bought a kagi shirt in the initial batch, got it, and then after one wash it unraveled. Your support team was great and gave me a coupon for a replacement shirt, which I ordered, yet it never shipped. Could I get that shirt :D

"Google (www.google.com) is a pure search engine - no weather, no news feed, no links to sponsors, no ads, no distractions, no portal litter. Nothing but a fast-loading search site. Reward them with a visit."

[0] https://i.redd.it/uea6u7c4oje31.jpg

Does Kagi have a better localized experience?

Ideally Google would offer some kind of ad free option, perhaps on a higher tier of the Google One plans.

Weird

I recall a Googler once suggesting to me that Googlers seeing ads might look like ad fraud to advertisers, so I'm not positive Googlers dogfood how bad this is either.

My dad was trying to get an ESTA visa a couple years ago and ended up paying twice the actual price, because he can't discern what's the official site or not.

Yes they do. Their search already sucks in normal circumstances—I remember searching for “Pinboard” (the bookmarking service) and had to scroll by thirteen pinball (the game) apps before starting to see Pinboard apps—but you can type in the exact name of the app you want had have an ad for a competitor above it. Not only is it allowed, it’s encouraged.

If, back then, Yahoo and Altavista were minimalist and Google was a garish nightmare of ads and flashing gifs and nested banners and affiliate buttons, I would still have happily used it for the results.

Google's search interface is still reasonably clean IMO. Nowhere near its minimal best. Yes there are ads and "sponsored results" and shopping frames and all that crap, but they really aren't everything that's wrong with Google Search.

Quality of results and inability to specify queries beyond vague suggestions are the worst things.

"No, coffee is not mostly water. That appears to be a misconception based on a popular television show. Coffee is actually about 98% water."

And EVEN if they do install a blocker, 9 times out of 10 it'll be AdBlock Plus and not uBlock Origin [1]. You know, the one that allows companies to PAY to have their ads whitelisted.

This doesn't even cover browsing on a smartphone which unless you're running Android Firefox which supports browser extensions, you have very few options.

[1] Notice I said uBlock Origin and NOT uBlock.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

If Kagi ever starts showing ads to me, a paying customer, I'll ditch it too. If I get the feeling that Kagi is selling my search history, I'll ditch it too.

Keep being awesome, Kagi CEO

Lets call it what it is, a cancer, one that literally enables countless bad actors and purely for a search engine's own profit. In theory theres a time and place for ads, but maliciously inline and disguised as the actual results people want arent it.

How do you tolerate the web without an ad blocker?

In other words, nobody is bidding to reach your eyeballs specifically.

This could be a market inefficiency. OR, it could be you're actually a terrible lead for midjourney-type products, and the market is working correctly.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/hlF6OoU

> ..."we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."

- "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine", Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page[1]

They weren't wrong!

[1] http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Not sure why they get very different result.

They basically had this big money dial, and rather than crank it to 11, they were fiercely protective of the core user experience.

They kept ads mostly to the side (unobtrusive), only served them on queries where there was a high probability of commercial intent, and only promoted ads above organic results if the predicted CTR was extremely high.

I remember being delighted more than once when the ad system surfaced the product I wanted when organic results did not.

Now…? You get all spam above the fold.

The Ads Quality PM back then was Nick Fox, who I just learned became SVP for ads and search last year. Which means he is at least indirectly responsible for the OP. Not entirely sure what to make of that.

When OP searches for Midjourney as a Midjourney user, Google’s algorithm infers he might want to consider an alternative because why would an existing user search for the product they’re already using.

We see evidence supporting this given no Midjourney ad showed up for a direct keyword match query; and only alternatives triggered.

This is kinda like Amazon retargeting you with alternative toasters after you just bought a new toaster. Most people think this is stupid. Well, the most likely cohort to buy a new toaster is a person that just bought one because they’re not satisfied with their purchase.