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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#81

Post by chucksta »

est31 wrote: post #58
softwarebeware wrote: post #6

Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me: - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust." This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretl…

reddit's search isn't that helpful though. I often get to reddit from Google, sometimes I even do site:reddit.com, but still using Google's search.

Its not about reddit as a search, it's about using reddit to validate your search because the alternative would likely yield poor results. You could trust the 10 listacles that came up as the first results that all look oddly similar, or you can try and filter through reddit by including it in your search terms

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#82

Post by hubraumhugo »

It seems like every critique around Google is immediately trending on HN. I wonder how long it will take to see significant market shifts towards competitors. DDG recently surpassed 100M search queries a day and I'm curious how their growth will accelerate.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#83

Post by bushbaba »

m348e912 wrote: post #32

I add reddit to a lot of google search terms because I want to find discussion on the topic I am searching for. Most of the time I find an opinion, perspective, or more information on the topic I am looking for. Reddit is a lot of things, including hot garbage, but it's also a wealth of information. Here's a billion dollar idea if anyone has the time and ability. Build a search interface that indexes tiktok videos an…

Is this Different than how people looked for this in quora and yahoo answers?

Reddit does have a benefit of time decay for most topics.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#84

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

In case anyone hasn't mentioned it yet: another reason is the censorship. Mostly on the right, but also on the left: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html

They are even going as far as deleting Google Drive documents that contain things they don't like: https://twitter.com/lionel_trolling/status/14908008941574676...

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#85

Post by clearleaf »

zwieback wrote: post #22

Not for work though, if I search "3 way solenoid valve" or "food safe stainless steel" I get good results. Sure, I have to scroll past a few ads but the cost of running the thing doesn't come out of my pocket. For other stuff, yeah, Google is in pretty sad shape. I remember how exciting Google was when it was first created, those days are long gone.

The algorithms haven't been over those specific subjects enough to "refine" them to modern "standards" and it's only a matter of time before enough people search 3 way solenoid valve to get it connected to the forever growing mountain of useless search terms. It's actively decaying.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#86

Post by endisneigh »

foxfluff wrote: post #72
endisneigh wrote: post #53

I can’t this article seriously: > Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. What’s the connection between Reddit being searched for and Google dying? Read the article, doesn’t make sense. Might as well say that GitHub is dying because Discord is where many projects have community discussions. People are always saying Google is dying or search resul…

> What’s the connection between Reddit being searched for and Google dying? Google returns page after page of seo garbage. You often have more luck finding what you want on reddit. > Might as well say that GitHub is dying because Discord is where many projects have community discussions. The point is that a good search engine would find the result you want without requiring you to go out of your way to specify the si…

> The point is that a good search engine would find the result you want without requiring you to go out of your way to specify the site on which you're likely to find that result. It gets worse when you think that these reddit results often provide links to what you want on the web. Somehow google can't do that.

This seems too handwavey - what concrete metrics would you use to evaluate the quality of a search engine?

Reddit has even more garbage than Google. The only difference is that people can say so on there, unlike on Google.

Reddit search doesn’t even do basic spell correction.

https://www.reddit.com/search?q=Apple%20ophone

Hence people use Google to search Reddit.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#87

Post by ineedasername »

>most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust

I hadn't really noticed that my own search habits had slowly changed until this article. Appending "reddit" is now a fairly regular habit for me, for exactly the trust issue mentioned.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#88

Post by bobm_kite9 »

Although I like the idea of DDG's bang operators, I rarely use them (mainly !g when I'm feeling desperate).

What I would find useful is to be able to whitelist a bunch of sites on DDG, so that it prioritises results from them first, when I search.. basically most of the sites with ! operators I guess.

That way I wouldn't get all the SO clone-sites returning their rubbish.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#89

Post by cml »

judge2020 wrote: post #19
softwarebeware wrote: post #6

Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me: - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust." This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretl…

> This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write. Tons of people don't, though. They type whatever unprocessed half-second thought they have into Google and expect Google to lead them to the water, even if they're tugging and trying to go in the completely wrong direction. Google has optimized for working 'most of the time' for 'the most people', and that means striving for fixing the complete…

A single mediocre experience optimized to work ‘most of the time’ for ‘most people’ is quite contrary to the narrative that has made Google such tremendous amounts of money (“let us surveil you so that you can have a more personalized experience”) though, isn’t it?

Given all of the data collected about Google users, ought not one of the applications of that data be some way to give users specifically what they are searching for if their past behavior suggests that they mean what they type? Couldn’t the “search only for “ option be a very good data point on making that determination automatically, or enabling a user setting for “give me exact results based on what I actually typed by default”?

It seems possible to me that this behavior has more to do with the value of ads for “big” keywords than with (poorly) inferring user intent.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#90

Post by kozikow »

I remember when searching for vacuum cleaner recently. Google 1st page is 100% SEOers gaming search to earn money on affiliate links. On reddit you can find comparisons like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/VacuumCleaners/wiki/recommendedvacu... . That's a clear example of what article is talking about.
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