[listmaking]

More precisely, the slide shows, for an advertiser who is bidding on the keywords “+kids +clothing” and has this sort of broad match enabled, three columns of examples of searches that would also match:

1. (because of [kids → children]) ads with keywords “+kids +clothing” would also match searches like “clothing for young child” and “newborn children's clothing”

2. (because of [kids clothing → kidswear]) ads with keywords “+kids +clothing” would also match searches like ”nikolai kidswear” and “kidswear outlet”

3. (because of [clothing → apparel / outlet]) ads with keywords “+kids +clothing” would also match searches like “creative apparel for kids” and “kids outfits”

That is what the slide's title (“Advertisers benefit via closing recall gaps”) refers to: the gaps in recall (matching) are being closed, by being broader.

The WIRED article misunderstood the slide, and was entirely based on the premise that if you searched for “children’s clothing” you'd get results for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear” which is not true (and would indeed have been “startling”, not to mention obvious, if it were true). In fact, the organic (non-ads) part of the search results in Google are always completely independent of anything in ads, something that the Search team in Google have maintained for several decades as a fundamental principle.

[soraminazuki]

> In fact, the organic (non-ads) part of the search results in Google are always completely independent of anything in ads, something that the Search team in Google have maintained for several decades as a fundamental principle.

Are you sure? There's an email from the ads team proposing multiple measures to increase the number of search queries so they can reach their target revenue. One of the mentioned measures include "ranking tweaks."

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-09/416646.pdf

[listmaking]

Well, it's a line I've heard a few times over the years, and it's also being stated externally (https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297 says “The organic (IE: non-sponsored) results you see in Search are not affected by our ads systems.”) so I'm fairly sure it's still true.

That email thread you linked is between the Ads and Chrome (not Search) teams, is about the number of search queries (not the results of search queries), and “ranking tweaks” there refers to the ranking that Chrome uses to show the suggestions in the omnibox (address bar). (To get a sense of these “ranking tweaks”, try this experiment in a (new?) Chrome profile with default settings: type "flowers" in the Chrome address bar and don't hit Enter, and look at the suggestions: what mix of search suggestions, entities, and bookmarks/history do you see? Try again with other commercial queries like “insurance” and “mortgage”, and also some less commercial queries like, I don't know, “Minnesota” or “economics”.)

(And FWIW, I think that whole email thread actually shows Google in a “good” light relative to the popular impression here on HN as a company whose every action is some Machiavellian scheme to increase ads revenue: it shows that Chrome actually launched something to production before its negative impact on revenue became a concern, that Ads leads had to work hard to persuade them to either roll back or find some other way to undo the decrease in search query volume, that starting to include search query volume as a launch criterion would be a “cultural shift” for Chrome, etc: that Ads having an influence on Chrome is a rare occurrence.)

[jollofricepeas]

Jesus. Wow just wow.

Yours should be the top comment

Why are people not talking about this document more?

“I also don’t want the message to be we’re doing this because the Ads team needs more revenue…but what is the best for Google overall?”

Clearly, the ads team has influence over search to the point of saying more-or-less screw culture and team morale, let’s do what’s best for Google overall which is hitting our quarterly targets.

[oakhaven]

What's "the street" they're referring to?

[figassis]

And I looked at the article at the time, and then showed my righteous indignation on HN. An example of why it’s important to dog deeper before commenting.