I find it interesting that people still haven't learned when trying to post "proof" of Google's underhanded ways. Google could be changing the ads returned because it's detecting that we are hitting it at unnatural frequency. Who knows this black box anymore?

Post screenshots! Literally no one will have the same search experience as you as the dozens of replies here indicate. It's /impossible/ to replicate whatever anyone says about their search experience anymore, so the best solution for presenting it is to screenshot it

I must be missing something. I see zero in-results ads and page after page of what appears to be actual conference listings.

Can someone seeing ads post screenshots? Maybe to imgur? I am not running an ad blocker, and I don't see any ads, just what look like relevant results.

I've never seen anything like this. It's unsearchable. I clicked out to like page 11 and still got no organic results

Can you explain where the ads are? I must be missing something, I don't see a single ad. I get:

"Scholarly articles for cancer genetics conferences" with several links to Google Scholar.

City of Hope Clinical Cancer Genetics | Annual Conference

CGC Annual Meeting 2022 - Cancer Genomics Consortium

Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics - Gordon Research Conferences

A few more links to the "City of Hope" conference

Genetics in Clinical Cancer Care - Controversies, Insights & Scalable ... (Uchicago.edu)

EACR Conference on Cancer Genomics

Conferences - Ambry Genetics

Oh wait, I get a single (possibly relevant?) ad at the very, very bottom - 2022 Cancer Conference - Attend the 40th Annual CFS®

I find myself unsurprised, primarily because so much cancer "fundraising" et al feels very scammy, even (if not especially) the ones that are widely thought to be "legit?"

I'm flagging this, not because I think the topic necessarily isn't appropriate for HN, but because the link isn't. It's well known that Google results vary from person to person, so the link won't accurately demonstrate whatever the issue is for most people. Document it with screenshots or a link archiving service and post a link to those instead.

I tried Chrome, Firefox and Edge with default and incognito/private/inprivate sessions. My Chrome default is logged into a google account. I get varying results. None that I see match the original post ("only returns ads") but I see from 0-8 ads on the first page.

All three incognito result sets are the same: first "Scholarly articles", then 9 quality organic search results, then a "People also ask" section, one more search result, then three marked "Ad" advertising for medical conferences, and finally "Related searches" at the bottom of page 1.

The signed in Chrome has the same except omitting the "People also ask" and the three ads.

The default Firefox has 5 additional ads at the top of the page but is otherwise the same as the incognito results.

The default Edge has 4 ads at the top of the page and no ads at the bottom, with the other parts being the same as the incognito results.

Pointed out the issue of it being impossible to reproduce/share search results to Danny Sullivan (Google’s Public Liaison of Search) on HN few weeks ago, specifically from my prior comment:

>> Conclusion: To me, if you cannot share a search result and get the EXACT same search results (and possibly ability to see different ones AND annotations of why they are different) — how this not a bug; how can anyone independently test Google’s search quality? [1]

Which was result of me trying to document a few Google search bugs — only to have Google repeatedly and randomly giving me different search results by just reloading the page.

Hopefully Google will finally listen and make it easy to reproduce, share, and compare search results.

__________________________

[1] Related prior HN comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32354078

I'm with the other throwaway account - I'm logged in and my first result is a cancer genetic conference https://www.cityofhope.org/academics/health-professional-edu...

For me, on the first page, the only hit marked "Ad" is the last one, and it's for something at the Mayo Clinic. (I'm not logged in.)

First I got 4 consecutive ads as result, people started asking for proof. I refreshed the page to take a screenshot it showed me just one ad. I refreshed it again and its not showing me any ad.

Whats the sorcery and how do I convince HN that I am not trolling anyone here.

Search does show non ad links for me, however I find other searches I make on Google pretty much shows me a list of ads with a couple of non ad hits at the bottom. This is the reason I switched to DuckDuckGo a few months back.

On a similar note: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32530424

I tried logged in and incognito and it seems fine to me. Maybe like 5 ads sprinkled throughout and the rest are organic search results.

I wonder if anyone who upvoted this post actually tried it first.

Be better HN, don't just upvote a post that matches your view of google.

I am getting relevant results with or without an ad blocker, incognito or regular, from a cell phone on home wifi.

Screenshot?

I think the variability of the results everyone is reporting is as damning as the original report of all ads.

Surely there is not variable truth about the topic.

It also probably exposes how G no longer needs to rely on your cooperation being logged in and not having changed the default enabled personalized results setting.

I must be in the "B" test. No ads for me.

no?

Google search is garbage.

Literally no ads at all. Try posting a screenshot.