I ran into a similar thing last year when researching replacement LED spots for my ceiling lights. Most review sites used a similiar headline like "best LED spots in 2020" and they were all comparison tables featuring only products available on Amazon, most of them being manufactured by brands that noone probably ever heard of and that are only available on Amazon, and it was all the same basic crap. Not sure how but eventually I found much a better brand with higher-quality LEDs.
Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
61–70 of 289 posts
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#62Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.
I’ve found DuckDuckGo can be better at some searches, and at others far worse. I was recently trying to search up how to do something in Excel and every result from DDG was some “excel-help” website that was actually just parroting common search terms as the headers on non-articles full of ads. The entire search space has apparently been hijacked by what is essentially a fake help site. I see results like that on google too sometimes but not across a whole results page.
These sites seem to have emerged in earnest over the last 5 years or so, designed to present the appearance of relevant content to the search engine but existing only to serve ads.
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#63We're going to end up going back to community sites. Reddit is obviously the good example here, but you can guarantee if you find a 'racing bike' forum (or whatever), take the time to join up, search, ask - someone with a passion for it will give you a great, well researched list because they love it and take pride from knowing.
Exactly the same as when I ask my friend who's passionate about wine for his recommendation for a £15 bottle of red, and he'll happily waste 20 minutes of his day writing a list and sending me links. I know the pleasure he gets when I message and go "thank you! This is amazing!"
Also just to add - this is exactly why those "get paid to recommend things to your friends" startups never work. Because the minute we know that the 'friend' on Facebook who's shouting about the great bottle of wine is getting paid £1 per sale we deliberately don't buy it. (As opposed to the "next time you're in Tesco, pick up a bottle of XYZ, it's great" message - when we probably do.)
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's no short-term beneft, since they don't get a cut. But they do? IMHO some of the SEO techniques use direct payments to Google for keywords, results placement, etc.
You can buy an ad, but those are shown differently than actual results. You can't pay Google to improve your SEO.
I stand corrected, thanks
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#65Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.
I’ve found DuckDuckGo can be better at some searches, and at others far worse. I was recently trying to search up how to do something in Excel and every result from DDG was some “excel-help” website that was actually just parroting common search terms as the headers on non-articles full of ads. The entire search space has apparently been hijacked by what is essentially a fake help site. I see results like that on goo…
Most of DuckDuckGo's "10-pack" of traditional search results come from Bing: https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/?redir=1#:~:text...
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#66We're going to end up going back to community sites. Reddit is obviously the good example here, but you can guarantee if you find a 'racing bike' forum (or whatever), take the time to join up, search, ask - someone with a passion for it will give you a great, well researched list because they love it and take pride from knowing . Exactly the same as when I ask my friend who's passionate about wine for his recommendat…
I want you to be right but the GME and AMC nonsense doesn’t instill a lot of confidence that Reddit isn’t being gamed already by automated accounts. I’ve had my own comment altered a little and regurgitated by a bot before, which was extremely creepy.
But you are right that the signal to noise is at least better on Reddit.
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#67Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.
I take your point, but don’t you think you’re overstating things a bit? The internet is still incredibly useful and so is Google search (granted, it takes more effort and sophistication to avoid the spam).
I don't think its overstated. The web is broken and search especially so. Now days I look for curated list to find interesting webpages and topics.
Google ruined itself years ago, or maybe "we" ruined it.
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#68We're going to end up going back to community sites. Reddit is obviously the good example here, but you can guarantee if you find a 'racing bike' forum (or whatever), take the time to join up, search, ask - someone with a passion for it will give you a great, well researched list because they love it and take pride from knowing . Exactly the same as when I ask my friend who's passionate about wine for his recommendat…
I bet Reddit could take a big chunk of Stack Overflow's market share.
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Searching for “bicycle reviews” would give a far higher chance of finding what the user is after. Nope. Google will still give you dumb reviews pages full of “Check price on Amazon” affiliate links. What works for me is adding “site:reddit.com” or “forum” to search.
did you actually try that query? I just got lots of relatively high quality review sites/periodicals. I say "relatively" because even industry stalwarts like Bicycling Magazine, which has been around in print and/or online form for decades, are ad-driven and far from unbiased. But if you trust Consumer Reports or NY Times more, they're on the first page too.
just tried. Got surprisingly sane results :) But what I said I experienced over last year for practically anything else than bikes, all electronics stuff was item one, item two, no real opinions or substance, and invariably "check price on Amazon" buttons.
Re: Amazon has ruined search and Google is in on it
#70Google broke itself over a decade ago when they began giving you results either that their algorithms assumed you wanted or that they wanted you to have , period. Verbatim search hardly produces anything useful anymore, either. Search has been coopted, making the prime thing (past general connectivity) that made the internet so useful now all but worthless.
Yep; I can’t believe what used to be bar-none the most useful set of search results will now seemingly scatter results into the list that have zero matches for my search term, as well as some with boldfaced words that I did not even type.
And also, for some reason the “zero-click results” stuff really bothers me. I don’t want some crappy AI summary of a Wikipedia page, I want the Wikipedia link first, for example. I can only assume this is a form of traffic theft because I seriously doubt Google has agreements with all the sites they slurp useful information from.