You can find anything on Google these days

It is Google’s aim to make all the knowledge of the world findable, but is it also Google’s aim to own all the information of the world?

One day I wanted to find out about upcoming events in Amsterdam pop concert venue Paradiso and because I assumed the URL might not be paradiso.nl, I googled the venue’s name.

I ended up never going to the venue’s website, because Google puts together a sidebar (show above) that contains the following information:

• Photos of the venue
• A map of the location of the venue
• The name of the venue
• A link to the website of the venue
• Directions to the venue
• Reviews of the venue
• A description of the venue (taken from Wikipedia)
• The address
• Opening hours
• Seating capacity
• Phone number
• A list of upcoming concerts (date, time, band name)
• A FAQ
• More reviews, this time from elsewhere on the web
• Links to the venue’s social media
• Links to nearby venues

That is a very complete description. That is pretty much everything you would expect to find on the website itself. In many cases, you do not even need to go to the website anymore.

Is this good or bad?

This smells of the old days of portals, when a portal owner like Altavista or Yahoo pretended to be a safe, curated gateway to the internet, but in reality never really wanted its visitors to leave its site.

All of Paradiso’s side hustles remain invisible this way (currently, Paradiso has none). Instead, visitors spend more time with Google, which may be time spent looking at and perhaps even clicking on the ads Google displays.

The organisation whose website gets cannibalised for the juicy bits by Google may even prefer it this way – all the boilerplate in a handy, readable format on Google and all the details on your own website for those who are really interested.

Except would you not really rather have that sidebar displayed with search phrases like “fun night out amsterdam” instead of only with searches for your name?

(I accidentally searched that phrase. Brrr, the listicles! Read that in the same tone of voice as “oh, the horror!” please.)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 21st, 2020 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Web design + usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.