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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Nah, they're definitely doing this. I searched for my itch fame page on Google with my username, and it didn't come up in the search. But sure enough things I could buy came up in the search.
Then I went to duckduckgo and searched the exact same thing and my page was first I. The results, it even had all of my games as search result hits as well.
Google is most definitely showing you search results other than what you searched for.
I'm so reluctant to agree with you... I imagine Google threatened legal action in this case
*itch game page
Does lemmy.world not let you edit your comments?
Test
Edit: yes, you can
Must be a connect thing. I can't seem to edit my comments from this App.
Works fine for me
Hmm, maybe I need to update
Sometimes it doesn't for some reason.
Yes, speaking from experience building ads on Google.
You're tracked with an anonymized id. If they're able to remotely tell any of your past activity or similar searches by others searching for the same term, then they will alter results.
This is especially true for any paid ads that appear since companies can bid to appear higher on competitor terms or names.
I can even say "if someone downloaded x-z specific apps on their phones, then consider them interested in my ad".
Or, another explanation is that more people are interested in things they can buy than in you (and I understand how hard it might be to believe in that), and Google algorithms "know" that
Pretty sure when I search my username plus a specific website I should get back results from that website...
Tbh it sounds like you didn't search for the website, but just put the term itch.io into the search box. Special characters like a dot get completely ignored in the search, so you searched for "itch io username" which will give massively different results depending on the username.
If you search for the site properly by using site:itch.io then Google will only show you results from that site and nothing else.
Lots of complaints about the Google results often come down to user errors.
K, then why did a different search engine give me correct results while Google gave me advertisements? Nevermind that a different person in this thread is telling you they uses to work advertising for Google, and they so infact change the search results.