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It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

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Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#251

Post by tuvistavie »

JohnFen wrote: post #242
sodosopa wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the opposite. I started using DDG when I moved to Brave but after a month, I found I would go to DDG, search page after page and get frustrated and open google and have my result on page one or two.

I've heard others say similar things. That's simply not my experience. I wonder if it depends on the sorts of searches that we each tend to perform?

For me English has been working decently on DDG but last time I tried I had a really hard time getting decent results in other languages.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#252

Post by IronWolve »

It kinda makes sense google thinks using a Pareto distribution (Matthew Effect) is correct, people search on popular topics, so popular results are typically the correct one.

BUT... now we have a big problem with what google filters and promotes. It has altered its search engine to ignore search modifiers in some of its products. Such examples, Google wants to be in the TV/Entertainment business so its promoting hollywood above content creators. And many results favor CNN/NBC on its platforms, even with "exact title searches". Its using its business models to override consumers wants.

Its like google turned the search into a BuzzFeed top 10 generator.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#253

Post by jamiek88 »

kickscondor wrote: post #51
bopbop wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I get updates on the groups project? Wiby seems amazing - the first three surprise me links were a human powered ornithopter, lego maniacs and a guide to knife throwing. Thank you for sharing!

The group mostly converses on micro.blog. I cover the various conversations and new discoveries on my site (kickscondor.com). Do you just want to follow along? Or do you have some ideas to share? This is a very new group that has sprung up in the last few months.

I was just reading along this thread and wracking my brains trying to think of this one site that I had seen which curated interesting websites and up popped your comment and I was like ding ding ding then back down the rabbit hole!

Glad this is becoming more organized and I will follow along with interest.

It brings back a little of the wonder of the old web.

A smaller subset somehow seems bigger, more infinite.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#254

Post by tannhaeuser »

josefresco wrote: post #223
tannhaeuser wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if your site is perfect according to Search Console/Webmaster Tools, that won't get you listed on Google Search.

Google Search Console will tell you what pages were submitted (via sitemap) and what pages are indexed as well as any errors.

Yes but they don't show up in the fscking search results even for highly matching searches.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#255

Post by elihu »

Liquix wrote: post #148
wyck wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, i'm having to go several pages deep and even then not finding anything relevant, I've started to use other search engines and reddit to actually find useful info.

Google poured billions into their search engine for two decades to make it better . Now that have a ridiculous amount of money and power, the search results get.... objectively worse . Which brings us to the elephant in the room: what are Google's motives behind this (clearly intentional) change? Could something as innocent as training a new neural net or testing a buggy version of the algorithm on subsets of users.…

One possibility is that Google hasn't gotten worse, but the spammers have come up with new techniques that Google hasn't adapted to.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#256

Post by zandorg »

lsiebert wrote: post #225

Unfortunately google is the only way to search old usenet archives from the web, since they bought out such archives. That search leaves much to be desired. Only the relevance search has results for usenet posts, you can't order by date, and other then using date ranges, there's no way to only see usenet posts. For example searching for "gamer" before 1/1/2000: relevance https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/%22ga…

Well Usenet provider Giganews has 10 years of Usenet, but I don't know if they kept it from 1990 or... just threw it away.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#258

Post by andyburke »

zepearl wrote: post #239
Liquix wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally and perhaps unrelated - has anyone else noticed a decrease in the accuracy and general quality of Google search over the past 2-4 months? They've had to have been utilizing ML to 'improve' searches for some time now, but the quality of the results has decreased suddenly and inexplicably (for me).

Personally, my impression is that since at least ~1-4 years, the google searches return less exact matches especially when I search for an exact match of an error message, or multiple exact matches involving the same error message (when I start to become desperate I usually tend to split the error into 2 parts...). On the other hand the non-exact hits that it returns push me from time to time in the right direction.…

Hello fellow 40 year old. I run DDG as my daily, but similarly have a hard time finding exact matches for error messages. I am suspicious, however, that I've learned how to use Google's search controls (", +, etc.) and I'm not sure they work the same on DDG. I also can't find a reference on DDG for how to control advanced searches.

So ... although I feel like we might be having the same issue, I'm not sure I'm using DDG correctly enough to say it's a problem.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#259

Post by Const-me »

I think google applies arbitrary undocumented filters to their output. I have noticed it more than once, e.g. see this comments thread, couple weeks old: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19420383

Personally, a year ago I have switched the defaults to duckduckgo.com on my devices, works OK for me so far.

Re: It seems that Google is forgetting the old web

#260

Post by ngold »

kickscondor wrote: post #17

While it's become impossible to browse the wider Web with Google, it's getting a bit easier elsewhere. A few helpful search engines: * https://millionshort.com/ * https://wiby.me/ * https://pinboard.in/search/ A recent movement to build personal Yahoo!-style directories: * https://href.cool/ (my own project) * https://indieseek.xyz/ * https://districts.neocities.org/ * https://the.dailywebthing.com/ The above resourc…

Great search engine resources. Thanks.
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