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Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

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Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#261

Post by cowmoo728 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggestions I get, it seems many people work around this by appending reddit to their searches. If I search for "warmest winter coat" it's a bunch of untrustworthy content marketing until you try something like "warmest winter coat reddit" Unfortunately I prefer to avo…

The other thing I hate is the flood of reposts and blogspam around any announcement. Company 1 will give an interview to outlet A. Blogspam outlets B,C,D,E.... will publish "articles" that don't even link to the original but will highlight several out of context quotes, add minimal commentary that reads like it was generated by OpenAI, and hit publish. Then google appears to have a difficult time deciphering what the authoritative source should be.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#262

Post by tmp_anon_22 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #47
blackhaz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably my default search query for now to avoid all the marketing crap. But if this becomes the norm we will definitely see robots discussing their winter coat preferences.

You already need to be a little careful. I can't remember the specific search where I ran into it... but if you follow some user accounts recommending a specific brand you'll find that they have very shallow post histories. This happens on Amazon reviews all the time as well. What I end up doing is trying to find a post that isn't all-in on any specific solution... but lists pros and cons of multiple options, because…

There's been a steady increase in astroturfing and blogspam over the years on reddit to subs like /r/frugalmalefashion where small indie shops are able to pump and dumb objectively low quality wares. The mod team does the best they can but they can only do so much as the effort to surface good content costs way more then the effort to artificially boost bad content.

In a few years Reddit will be just like the generic google searches for everything but the most heroicly moderated or obscurely small subreddits.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#263

Post by flenserboy »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #126
micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggestions I get, it seems many people work around this by appending reddit to their searches. If I search for "warmest winter coat" it's a bunch of untrustworthy content marketing until you try something like "warmest winter coat reddit" Unfortunately I prefer to avo…

This is a reply to myself... but does anyone have ideas about how this can go away? Have we lost the internet to eternal marketing and data-mining arms races? Is this why people are flocking to search-opaque places like Discord? Sometimes I feel like that internet isn't for me anymore, and that's a little distressing.

The Eternal September always wins.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#264

Post by jdgoesmarching »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #126
micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggestions I get, it seems many people work around this by appending reddit to their searches. If I search for "warmest winter coat" it's a bunch of untrustworthy content marketing until you try something like "warmest winter coat reddit" Unfortunately I prefer to avo…

This is a reply to myself... but does anyone have ideas about how this can go away? Have we lost the internet to eternal marketing and data-mining arms races? Is this why people are flocking to search-opaque places like Discord? Sometimes I feel like that internet isn't for me anymore, and that's a little distressing.

This is the consequence of arranging a society around infinite financial corporate growth; everything is optimized to squeeze out every dollar for the balance sheet.

Ironically we’re watching this play out now with products and techs that market themselves as “decentralized.” Maybe after this phase the tech community will consider this isn’t something we can tech our way out of.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#265

Post by blt »

agentdrtran wrote: post #208
zinxq wrote: post #171

There's a whole class of searches that no longer have value because of SEO. Try "best exercise bike" or anything that can be similarly monetized and you will of course end up at a well-crafted page designed to monetize you. My deepest apologies for saying this, but for any type of query that has a monetization angle, I now add "site:www.reddit.com" to the query to find actual discussion about it. Normal Reddit discla…

It's staggering how much the results for any product query that isn't from Reddit or a site like Wirecutter is just unusable. I was recently looking for thin winter gloves and literally every page was an SEO referral scam.

Yeah, it's been happening for so long that it's easy to forget it wasn't always this way.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#266

Post by micromacrofoot »

root_axis wrote: post #189
micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggestions I get, it seems many people work around this by appending reddit to their searches. If I search for "warmest winter coat" it's a bunch of untrustworthy content marketing until you try something like "warmest winter coat reddit" Unfortunately I prefer to avo…

I don't get the appending reddit thing. I don't see why reddit is considered trustworthy, marketers have been planting "organic discussion" on reddit for years .

In my experience reddit comments are less likely to be marketing than Google results are. Still not entirely trustworthy, absolutely.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#267

Post by smallerfish »

fxtentacle wrote: post #106
fxtentacle wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is also my observation. They will show content that completely does not contain your query words if that content is just popular enough. The result is that niche technical topics get drowned out by related popular discussions. Also, I am by now 100% sure that Google has just stopped indexing the long tail. Like if I search for function names of public source code that I downloaded from GitHub, Google won't…

(same poster) BTW, amazon.com is in my opinion even more infuriating. I just searched for "Odense Marzipan" (which is a 100+ years old brand serving the royal danish court) and they show me pictures of gamepads made out of chocolate along with a note: Your search "odense marzipan" was automatically translated into "odicht marzipan". Then searching for "odicht" out of curiousity, they auto-correct it to "olight". So I…

Amazon is absolutely terrible. Try this search, for example: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=A1990+trackpad+replacement

There is an actual product (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084GKQB9T) with all of my keywords in the title. I found it via a google search because I gave up scrolling through Amazon.

I actively avoid shopping Amazon where possible these days, just because it's such a trashy experience.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#268

Post by dehrmann »

wffurr wrote: post #43

The topic here says "quantitatively". Does anyone have any actual statistics or quantitative data on the quality of Google search results? All of these threads devolve into anecdotes and reminisces about the "good old days" and complaining about Pinterest. None of which is in the least quantitative. I'd be interested to see some actual data or research on the subject, if it exists. Or maybe it's not Google that's got…

It'd be cool to have a tool that runs locally on my Firefox history and builds metrics like how often I have to refine my search query.

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#269

Post by _peeley »

When it comes to reaching actual content that isn't just an entry in an API doc somewhere, Google is basically just a vehicle for me to get to StackOverflow/Reddit at this point. For almost every search I've done without appending "reddit", the first page is full of bullshit zero-effort listicles. Like the other day I wanted to see what web frameworks Go has to offer, but when I search "golang web frameworks" I get a million links like "Top 10 Best Go Web Framework 2021!!" that are filled with obviously scraped or auto-generated content.

I get that SEO is kind of a race-to-the-bottom scenario, but I always wonder - how are these random sites in business? I understand that they get a good amount of traffic from said SEO and "advertising" pays good money for that traffic, but do advertisers really not grasp that people spend all of five seconds on these pages before going somewhere else?

Re: Ask HN: Has Google search become quantitatively worse?

#270

Post by njharman »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #126
micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggestions I get, it seems many people work around this by appending reddit to their searches. If I search for "warmest winter coat" it's a bunch of untrustworthy content marketing until you try something like "warmest winter coat reddit" Unfortunately I prefer to avo…

This is a reply to myself... but does anyone have ideas about how this can go away? Have we lost the internet to eternal marketing and data-mining arms races? Is this why people are flocking to search-opaque places like Discord? Sometimes I feel like that internet isn't for me anymore, and that's a little distressing.

profit optimized is the inevitable result of any system that has profit motivation

banning advertising would help for awhile, but other profit streams would be optimised and expand to fill void, such as data collection/mining

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