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A thread on how Google extrapolates our content from @filtergrade (using our words/images from an article) into endless trapdoors that only exist to send users to pages with Shopping Ads and YouTube videos related to our content.
When a user searches for 'best 35mm film stocks' they see a featured snippet with our written content and photo thumbnails above. If the user clicks on an image thumbnail in the featured snippet, they're taken to a new page with Shopping Ads and Youtube videos prominently placed.
The user lands on this page. Would you click the tiny text link? Or one of the many images/videos surrounding it? Not only is this snippet taking the user away from our site while still using our written/photo content, but it's taking the user to a page of ads and Youtube videos.
Both shopping ads and Youtube put more money directly in Google's pocket. If the user never clicks our link to the article, we never make money. Meanwhile Google makes money from impressions, clicks on Shopping ads, and through Youtube ads if the user clicks to a video.
This is bad UX and is done by design. These featured snippets aren't new, and they've only evolved to benefit Google's properties. We also noticed when you mouse over the image carousel in the snippet, it shows our URL as if that's where you'll be taken when you click...
Instead the user ends up here.
This isn't the only example either. For the search 'best 35mm films' this featured snippet shows up from http://onfilmonly.com . When the user clicks a thumbnail, they're again taken to a page where Shopping Ads are primarily placed.
Seems unethical to original content creators, and is a terrible google search user experience. The user would be better served going to our article where we go into detail about their query instead of an endless loop of shopping results. @dannysullivan @JohnMu what do you think?
Forgot to share this earlier, but here's one more example of the featured snippet directing the user to shopping ads using the content from our article. When the user clicks an image in the featured snippet, they go to this Google Images results page.
