I’m afraid this says it all, and I mean it. We know Facebook is pay-to-play and Google is definitely heading in that direction. For some searches (try looking for a career coach), it arrived there a long time ago.
In case Mastodon embeds go awry in the future, here is what I wrote:
I didn’t even touch anything on the #Google home page on one of those rare occasions when I visited, and it transitioned to this. No, I’m not putting money into your scheme. And I know why you are making Google search worse: to force us into paying for it. Google is basically morphing into another pay to play platform.
The copy reads ‘Be found with Google Ads’, the implication being that if you don’t advertise, you won’t be found. The same reason Facebook forces you to pay to boost, so you can be seen or have enough engagement since they intentionally wrecked their organic sharing in the early 2010s.
All the more reason to continue supporting Mojeek and giving them feedback to improve their search quality. The web should not about who can pay the most, even if Google, Facebook et al are intent on turning it into an arena that only promotes the rich. We already know that for years Google News has biased itself to big media operations at the expense of independents, even when the independent press broke the story. The same phenomenon is happening to its search, especially as it funds fake sites to make things worse, and even has directives to make search worse. If you don’t pay, you don’t get seen, and Google’s enshittification continues.
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I haven’t seen anything on Google search, probably because I use Firefox and, except for YouTube I block everything. However, you make a good point with search, especially when you’re hoping your content gets indexed. I’ve had an up and down relationship with them since 2012; It’s a daunting feat, but I keep trying.
I believe they index well, Mitch, but they censor and hide a lot from legitimate sites, because they hate free speech when it reveals uncomfortable truths about them. The post right after this one contains a good example. My relationship with Google has been resoundingly negative since the second half of the 2000s and, on this blog, this 2011 incident was one of the first times I had documented how they lie.