You get companies, but they are all resellers. The listings are all worded like advertisements and stuffed with thumbnails, etc, in the style of banner ads.
None of the results point to manufacturers, reviews or other classes of articles.
Ironically, you get better results with the thing they apparently used to rewrite to.
That's what you should be saying, because that's what the article is claiming. If you're arguing they would rewrite queries less obviously, that's a much weaker claim than what the author is making.
I'm sure the average person would notice if their query for "children's clothing" was converted to "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear". Have you ever seen your query converted to such a narrow query targeting a specific brand like the article alleges? Surely you would notice that you're only getting NIKOLAI-brand kidswear results?
>That's what you should be saying, because that's what the article is claiming.
What's with the aggression? All I'm saying is that I don't expect the average end-user to notice something "extremely obvious" like that. Simple as that.
I'm taking no position on whether or not Google is actively doing this, nor am I completely confident that I have or haven't experienced it in spite of noticing very single-brand-heavy results for non-branded queries in the past. I'm only pointing out that the average end-user is a lot less adept at seeing "obvious" things in situations like these than many of us are.
Edit: Put it this way - You and I might notice something, but that's because we're involved in this industry whether directly or tangentially, to varying degrees. I don't expect others to notice something like this if it's not something that they generally care about.
Refute what the article is saying, not your generous interpretation of it. If the author wanted to make such an extraordinary claim, they should have presented extraordinary evidence.
because you're taking the authors ridiculous claim and downgrading it to be reasonable instead of critiquing the original claim, all of this stemming from you taking a quote out of context to make a point that no one was making.
the slice of the quote you responded with:
> It would be extremely obvious [...]
and the full claim with full proper context:
> It would be [...] obvious if your searches were [...] egregiously converted.
the key word being "egregiously", which is a response to the level of severity the author is making in their claim. trying to be an enforcer of conversational tone by repeatedly claiming how responses that you don't want to engage in are "aggressive" isn't conducive to productive discussion. no one's being overtly hostile, outside of you trying to hijack a discussion to exclusively entertain a nonsequitor.
>because you're taking the authors ridiculous claim and downgrading it to be reasonable instead...
At no point have I quoted the article or explicitly suggested that what is said in the article is not taking place.
>... all of this stemming from you taking a quote out of context to make a point that no one was making.
OP made a point clear, that "it would be extremely obvious if your searches were being so egregiously converted". Whether or not I quote the full sentence doesn't change the fact that, no, I do not believe that average end users would find it "extremely obvious [that] ... their searches were being so egregiously converted". And that's literally all I've said here - that I don't think end users would be as perceptive of something like this as OP would think.
>... the key word being "egregiously", which is a response to the level of severity the author is making in their claim.
Whether or not I quote the word "egregiously" does not change my point, nor does it suggest that I've decided to ignore the word and "downgrade" what's said in the article because of it.
I'm struggling to understand how you both seem to be unable to understand something so simple. Feel free to disagree with what I said, but don't twist my words around if you don't like that point.
>trying to be an enforcer of conversational tone by repeatedly claiming how responses that you don't want to engage in are "aggressive" isn't conducive to productive discussion. no one's being overtly hostile, outside of you trying to hijack a discussion to exclusively entertain a nonsequitor.
Responding to me with, "That's what you should be saying," and, "Refute what the article is saying, not your generous interpretation of it," is aggressive, if not rude at the very least. It demonstrates that OP (and you, now) are both missing the point (willfully, it seems, since I have to keep repeating myself over something so simplistic) and are twisting my words, or how I've chosen to quote a passage, around. I know that it's pretty uncouth to trot this out, but my initial comment has a good number of upvotes (so does the comment you just replied to), so there are people out there who have a better understanding of my comment than y'all seem to have.
I am not downgrading anything - I genuinely believe that it's not so obvious to the average end user, no matter how egregious it might be. And that's a refutation of OP's comment, not the article.
