Google Search can be a fantastic platform allowing you to search for pretty much anything in a manner of seconds with the only inconvenience being some odd annoying ads at times. As fantastic as Google is though, they realised that they don’t always get it right which is why they are introducing two new features – one as a warning when they believe their search results may not be accurate and the second to add more verification to advertisers.
The first feature is one that Google believes shouldn’t show up too often, as they believe most of their search results are pretty good. When it can’t come up with enough matches to what a user is looking for, the company will now display the following message “It looks like there aren’t any great matches for your search,” before prompting users with suggestions that may help get better results, along with other related searches to try.
It’s a simple, yet useful message that should at least help people know when their searches are not getting great matches, though you could argue that getting fewer matches just means your search was more specific and possibly got you the right results. Still, it’s better than nothing.
Arguably the bigger problem with Google search currcently are the adverts. While most of them are pretty non-invasive and an easily just be skipped over, the truth is that you aren’t always so sure of the validity of the advertiser. As a result, Google announced in a new blog post, that it will task all of its advertisers with verification of their identities and countries of origin, much the same with what it does for political ads.
This change will make it easier for people to understand who the advertiser is behind the ads they see from Google and help them make more informed decisions when using our advertising controls. It will also help support the health of the digital advertising ecosystem by detecting bad actors and limiting their attempts to misrepresent themselves
Before running an ad, buyers will now need to provide personal identification and business incorporation documents or other documentation that proves their identity and country of origin. Users can then see the identity by clicking an “about the advertiser” option beside the promotion. The company has already started this verification process but indicates that it may take several years to gather all this information from existing advertisers and so users will only slowly see these details over the years, although most of the major advertisers should be pretty quick in looking to update their information
Last Updated: April 24, 2020
