Google’s search engine is flooding users with hidden ads and prioritizing big brands over quality sources — with less than half of the results it generates meeting the intended query’s needs, according to a new report released Monday.
Financial website WalletHub found that the world’s most popular search engine — which has been criticized for one of its key features failing to display results for the attempted assassination of Donald Trump — displays only advertisers in the top 10 results more than a third of the time.
Meanwhile, nearly 60% of the results are not transparent, according to the research portion of the report, which analyzed 48 of the most popular credit card and banking terms searched by consumers on Google to identify the best financial products.
Google, which is facing a landmark antitrust lawsuit over its alleged monopoly on search, is the dominant player in the sector with a 90% market share.
Customer satisfaction is declining rapidly, with 63% of respondents saying Google search results were better last year, according to WalletHub.
“Google is walking back the progress it has made,” WalletHub CEO Odysseas Papadimitriou told the Post before the report was released.
“I think there’s a breaking point that consumers can reach…where they say, ‘I have to go somewhere else.'”
WalletHub CEO Odysseas Papadimitriou compared the search engine to a social media algorithm. REUTERS
According to WalletHub, only 41% of Google’s top 10 search results met user intent, while 71% believe the tool is biased toward big brands.
Although users think Google is doing the work to find the best match for their queries, that’s not actually the case, Papadimitriou said.
Instead, Google’s search algorithm relies on user engagement data: seeing what users click on, then recommending that content to future users.
The end product may be an echo chamber of erroneous results.
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For example, if a user believes that the Earth is flat and searches Google for “Why is the Earth flat?”, they may get results confirming the Earth’s flatness.
“It may make people feel satisfied, but it’s a mistake because they don’t turn to a search engine the way they turn to a social network — to hear what they want to hear,” Papadimitriou told the Post. “They turn to a search engine to look for facts.”
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The large number of ads can also make it difficult for users to differentiate between sponsored ads and organic searches.
WalletHub found that 58% of relevant search results that only display ads are not transparent about the topic.
The search engine has become filled with ads, WalletHub CEO said. AP
These ads can cost users dearly. According to WalletHub, the most recommended product in the top five relevant search results could cost consumers an average of $202.
Papadimitriou said he believes Google’s tendency to serve ads is why users have started adding the phrase “Reddit” to the end of their searches, so that the social network, which is home to many open question-and-answer forums, will offer answers.
Since users began searching for the phrase “Reddit” more often, Google, based on its user engagement data, has begun recommending Reddit content more often, Papadimitriou said.
But he said that bringing Reddit up in search results isn’t a real solution. It’s more like saying, “I’m bleeding. I’m going to put a coat over the wound so people don’t see the blood.”
According to WalletHub, Google’s search engine favors big brands over independent creators. WalletHub
“People say, ‘Look, we don’t want ads. We want to hear independent, honest voices, and Reddit is one of the places where we know that’s happening,’” he said. “But Reddit has its own problems.”
The report found that 84% of people would prefer better results from lesser-known brands rather than more well-known brands.
For some research, this method of favoring big brands is not so bad.
For example, when users perform a simple search for “tomatoes,” a large brand might show content about “cucumbers,” while a small brand might show content about “tomatoes.” Users will then know to click on the small brand.
But when users are doing more complex searches (for health or financial questions, for example), they don’t always have the knowledge and expertise to understand which result is best. So they turn to big brands.
“We could end up in a situation where Google can get content from a few big companies. And that’s a sad situation for the web,” Papadimitriou said. “I think that’s going to be the end of Google at this point, because people are going to [want] the open web. Real experts, real companies.”
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