Legend has it that 252 licks bring you to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop. How many ads does it take to reach the center of a recipe on Google?
Go ahead. Guess how many ads are shown on Google’s first search result for “egg salad”.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610770ea9c21ff57ccb6a6a9/626b142b12b6a18016d591ea_CleanShot%202022-04-28%20at%2015.23.59%402x.png)
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610770ea9c21ff57ccb6a6a9/626b149eb94e315da667232c_CleanShot%202022-04-28%20at%2015.26.14%402x.png)
Sometimes, there's not a single piece of non-ad content! And no, we still haven’t even reached the recipe…
The answer? 15 ads before you reach the recipe. Two ads on the recipe! And two ads after the recipe, for a total of 19 ads.
Searchers were so confounded that they dumped ¼ cup of dried dill into their mayonnaise.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610770ea9c21ff57ccb6a6a9/626b1366a4d0ccaced9b1869_EQcwpaYGRYqH-NzPWiyr81ZhPkvi55HPnmOEb0ve8DHW3XtnVlAPL-K14XZ5w9Df0dsir1XzSJhcCtfyCJvYI8t9R0kCY4dkrwrdv3jVoUJkUS5m6eI_8gfeEnaT3Pumk2FcLCSOEr6uXBhwgg.png)
Is this recipe an outlier? Or do egg salad lovers simply love ads?
To find out, we paid 500 Surgers on our labeling platform to search for a recipe and count the number of ads on the first 3 Google results.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610770ea9c21ff57ccb6a6a9/626b1367a4d0cc764f9b1878_HGiCORqOLlrKqwaXvATprx3UX3bp9WaOLIhU7hVxHUxqAPSgIpQfg27VUNavASPluWMhLXiyrbT-bPur7t1nKItxe900qu5f59ount0yxPCGdSiWYUA4NyVmssvZpGL3eb0tDtNPhIa_TwpJIA.png)
The answer? On average, each page contained 8.7 ads.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610770ea9c21ff57ccb6a6a9/626b1366445f861f0e36009f_wFLBJSU2S5fpKraMwsEcz9gMbrH9VKMBgzwPCw-CR5zRvq1wcEB_uNRqBFb6owa-ue0L1PDRZmJr7NjJzUV1VywRe4D1uO9q1w5bx1zNvM9Dy3Vk3X5GFjzm-WfoA0Glo2EV7ehc4RDfPOc71Q.png)
And yes, one page – the first search result for “fried rice and chicken” – contained a whopping 32! Witness its glory:
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610770ea9c21ff57ccb6a6a9/626b1978df36175c5fc9db35_CleanShot%202022-04-28%20at%2015.46.57%402x.png)
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610770ea9c21ff57ccb6a6a9/626b1a072f83e69ccfb9456c_CleanShot%202022-04-28%20at%2015.49.13%402x.png)
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/610770ea9c21ff57ccb6a6a9/626b1a4f2857f3ed6bd2007a_CleanShot%202022-04-28%20at%2015.50.35%402x.png)
If you need to bleach your eyes, here’s a beaver carrying a carrot and a head of lettuce back to his home.
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At Surge, we're building a human data platform, and our mission is to align AI with human intelligence and values – whether it’s training large language models to be safe and informative, capturing human judgment in hate speech models, or moving News Feed-style systems beyond engagement and clicks.
So imagine searching for an egg salad recipe. What if we could build new, state-of-the-art AI engines that help us actually achieve our goals – making lunch in 10 minutes – instead of rewarding SEO farms containing 500+ words and 20+ ads?
Google Search is Falling Behind
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