Tag Archives: Ads

Google is no longer a search engine

This is old news, but it’s a useful demonstration of what absolute garbage Google has become as a search engine. It is now an ad engine.

The scenario: I need to set up WordPress Multisite. I’ve done this several times, but since I only have to do the initial setup once every 2-3 years, it’s not something I have memorized. So… I google it! That’s what you do in the 21st century.

So, I went to Google and typed:

'WordPress Multisite installation' Google search

Now, the real solution to this that a smart search engine, which was designed for maximum usefulness as a search engine, would be to provide a link to the official WordPress documentation on the topic.

Is that what it returned? Of course not, silly! It returned four ads, which, depending on your window size, could take up the entire screen:

Google ad results
But then, the first “organic” result should be the official documentation, right?

Wrong!

The first organic result is a page from the dreadful wpbeginner.com, which is overflowing with the most verbose, poorly written, surface-level articles that are designed not to be genuinely useful but to ensure that Google’s search algorithm places them exactly where it did in these results.

Yes, of course, I did click the wpbeginner.com link, because I always do, and then I get annoyed with myself for falling into their trap. And multilingualpress.org is not much better… and also always near the top of the results.

Then, of course, before we finally get to the page I really was looking for, Google makes one last ditch effort to keep me from going where I want to go, by inserting its “People also ask” block, with quick answers scraped from real websites, designed specifically to keep you from actually venturing any deeper than Google’s search results page itself.

Thanks Google for doing your part to make the Internet suck.

P.S. What do you think happened when I clicked “I’m Feeling Lucky”?

OK, putting ads on my site was worth it just for this

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been running Google ads on my website for the better part of two years now. I do feel like a bit of a tool, but hey, it’s earned me a whopping $114 in cold hard cash so far. (OK, maybe that’s revealing too much about my low readership selective appeal.) But it was all worth it just to discover an ad for DopeKitz.com appearing on one of my music pages.

Now, the ad features some animation which is apparently JavaScript-driven from Google ads, because when I tried to save it to repost here, it was a JPEG (and if anyone out there has ever heard of an animated JPEG before, please let me know). So I’ll just have to recount the experience for you as best I can.

First, it says, in an EXTREME font (both distressed and metallic — a winning combination):

YOU A PRODUCER?

And then, in an even MORE EXTREME font (with randomly-sized, overlapping letters):

GOT HEAT?

Followed by an explosion of EXTREMENESS mixing multiple distressed fonts, and with a tantalizing sample of the mangled grammar to follow:

STEP YO’ GAME UP!

This then changes to the final frame, a still shot of the URL in bold black text: www.DOPEKITZ.com over a picture of a row of woofers.

Clicking the link takes you, of course, to DopeKitz.com, a place where design is alternately excessive or non-existent, and where the only apostrophes are in places where they don’t belong! A place that implores you to “Find out what some of the industrys Hottest producers Have already discovered.” (Yes, all apostrophes are optional and all H-words are capitalized.)

Don’t miss such outstanding products as “Killer Klapz 1 & 2” and “Monsta Drumz,” although my personal favorite is “Screwed Voicez.”

Whatever you do, just remember: “Dont Waste your DOE.”

(Incidentally I believe that was the only instance on the entire page of correct use of “your/you’re”; fortunately they’ve tempered it with errors in every other word in the sentence.)

John Hodgman in George Plimpton homage

As I flipped to “Talk of the Town” in the latest issue of the New Yorker, I was immediately taken aback by the full-page ad on the facing page.

The first thing I noticed was John Hodgman, (probably) better known as “The PC” in the recent Apple ads. Here he was not playing the straight man to Justin Long‘s cool, laid-back Mac, but rather hawking his own book, The Areas of My Expertise. But what really got me was the ad itself. It was a perfect send-up of the old George Plimpton ads for Intellivision in the early ’80s, wherein he compared Atari’s Home Run against Mattel’s Major League Baseball.

Here, Hodgman’s spoof pits Intellivision against “Complete World Knowledge.”

It’s a fairly obscure ad to parody, but I’m glad to see that I’m not the only person who caught the reference. John Hodgman’s own blog explains a bit more here and here.

And, since I understand the ephemeral nature of the Internet (better than I understand the definition of “ephemeral,” in fact), I’ve grabbed the two images from Flickr just so this post doesn’t become incomprehensible in a month. (Yes, I think my blog entries have more staying power than Flickr.)

George Plimpton in Intellivision ad
John Hodgman in John Hodgman ad