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If you email me, I will send an invite to Kagi Search beta which deals with the problems you mentioned, namely: - A ranking algorithm that penalizes commercial and ad/tracking bloated pages - Ability to "mute" or "prefer" domains - Ability to search for discussions - Customize type and appearance of search results Kagi Search is a new startup in the search space and we are currently in the closed beta. https://kagi.c…
I can't prove it, but if bet anything the reason Google is getting worse is the same reason everything gets worse: engagement. They are likey optimizing results not for relevance but for engagement more and more.
- There are way more Google users, including grandmas.
- Conversations have moved from discussion boards to walled gardens and chats.
- Google relies more on neural network embeddings, so does a better job when you type full sentences and semantic similarity.
- Google relies on authority signals and incoming links to a website, so non-commercial, hobbyist, or controversial content ranks way lower.
- Websites rely on Google for income, so they start producing what Google and its readers want to see.
- Spammers rely on Google for income, so those surviving after decades, have created massively successful linking rings and spam production pipelines looking at keyword search statistics.
- You were really good at Google searching years ago, having a harder time updating and letting go of what worked for you. Easier to blame Google for this.
As for tips: Anything academic, search on specific websites or Google Scholar. Anything technical/coding, search on StackOverflow. Anything cultural/commercial you want a peer answer, instead of a salesman answer, search on Reddit. Try to join like-minded communities where you can ask expert questions, and research new things in your field. Exact keyword match still works by enclosing keyword in double quotes:
"sal dulu antasma"The fundamental problem is that Google and the SEO spammer’s interests are aligned. Google is both the search provider and ad network. I think this makes Google tremendously vulnerable to competitors who don’t have that conflict of interest, and presents a massive opportunity to those with enough courage and cash.
Everytime one of these threads show up, I find myself wondering why someone doesn't launch a technical and research focused competitor. There seems to be such broad agreement that Google is now terrible for research that there's for sure a market for it. Edit: I'd love to see a some-of-the-web search engine like this. Start just with university sites, prepress archives, quality forums, public dev Slacks, etc.
Your bubble seems to agree, but the lack of serious competition, even in niches, is a sign that outside the HN bubble Google is in fact not seen as any worse.
Google is a recommendation engine, not search. It recommends what you will click on, not necessarily what you want.
Well i don't know what you're talking about, i can always find the ads i m looking for. I mean the most serious business would pay the most to have their ad on top of results right? Works for meee
I also get SEO lessons from sites below the ads in the list, it's quite a sight to observe how they manage to all come up with the same content slightly rearranged, and still be clogging the frontpage.
The results keep getting "refined" so as to suit the popular 80% of queries, while getting much worse for any technical or obscure queries. Forced synonyms and "people also searched for" are typically useless and almost infuriating. Once you get off the first or second page, the results get even worse-- with pages entirely unrelated to the query (e.g. not even containing the searched phrases). They are probably testi…
The "people also searched for" box is not just useless, but also very much messing with usability for me. Every time I click on a link, go back, then trying to click on the next link, this box shows up and I accidentally click on that (because it shows up with a little delay and an animation). This filter takes care of that box completely: www.google.com##.exp-outline www.google.com##[style="display: block; opacity:…
And somewhere a team of designers and PMs got their bonus for increasing the engagement OKR. Clearly users love the animation and added delay because look at the metrics skyrocket!
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…