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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#91

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

arketyp wrote: post #55
judge2020 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is very helpful if I search for a name I didn't quite pick up or don't know how to spell, or if I only remember fragments of a quote or topic, then I just blurt out my stream of consciousness and Google will mostly point me in the right direction. That being said, I wish I could explicitly tell Google to treat my query more literally. Ideally you would be able specify the search query in some kind of grammar. Th…

You can though, put quotes around it.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#92

Post by steve_adams_86 »

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…

There’s something sad and ironic about using Google to search Reddit. One, I mostly dislike using Reddit - I only want to see specific discussions very occasionally. Two, what is the state of the internet if I have to use the best search engine to find content on a website I mostly dislike? Haha.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#93

Post by foobarian »

cosheaf wrote: post #23

It's already dead. Google mined all the links that were curated by the initial internet communities for all it was worth and turned them into profits for Google's earliest employees and shareholders. Now that no one is curating useful links anymore their search quality, unsurprisingly, is deteriorating. Without human curation there is no signal for Google to use anymore and whatever signal is there is just SEO spam t…

Wonder how we could set up an alt-web without the incentives that cause this problem. Delist any for-profit site? How would the sites keep the lights on without ads?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#94

Post by falcolas »

valdiorn wrote: post #38

Google used to be really, really good at finding exactly what I told it to find. Nowadays, it's turned into the yellow pages; sponsored content from businesses trying to sell me goods and services. Can people suggest good alternatives or search patterns for certain categories of information or search types? Some of the search patterns I currently I use: * Youtube for product reviews and demos, entertainment, music an…

In my experience, the forum experience is far from dead, but it's effectively impossible to surface in a search engine - any search engine - unless you know the name of the forum.

Oh, and the content must also be "fresh". If the content isn't "fresh" (which most of the best forum/blog posts are not), nobody shows it anymore. I can search for a specific blog post using a verbatim quote, but the result (if it exists) is buried under 10+ pages of "fresher" content, no matter how disconnected it may be from the search.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#95

Post by ckmar »

I am soft-launching unfluence.app in the coming weeks. It's live now, though not yet marketed.

It is a platform for finding and sharing recommendations within your own trusted network. I'd love to hear your feedback!

You can read more about it on the home page[0], from its inspiration, comparisons with existing solutions, to a down-the-road monetization model that aligns with the network.

It is being built by Kujo - a brand in the lawn care industry, and so is seeded with products and brands for that community. The initial launch will be within the lawn care community. However, the platform is community-agnostic and supports creating communities for any groups.

[0] https://www.unfluence.app

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#96

Post by telchior »

listmaking wrote: post #35

Many of these articles/complaints don't compare Google Search to alternatives (Bing / DuckDuckGo / ...), so it's not clear whether web search itself is getting "worse" (in the ways mentioned), or whether the issues are with Google Search specifically. (For example, the article proposes the explanation that "The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust" , which is about the web itself, n…

I try to use DuckDuckGo exclusively, but the results are often poor enough that I have to switch to Google.

Just to be clear, I totally agree with all the criticisms of Google here; it's also awful and I'll often end up just doing site: searches, which Google seems to be better at than DDG.

It feels a bit like the search engineers have lost the war with SEO.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#97

Post by iainctduncan »

oh man, on point. I literally just did a day of picking a new gas range and finally the best results were Reddit. Trying to search for information on through google and general sites was so infuriating. It sucks now.

I would seriously pay $10 a month for a search engine that worked really well and wasn't in the ad game. But I guess that's not a common stance.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#98

Post by foxfluff »

Last night while doing a search, I found myself pondering the fact that recently I've been using DDG more than before.. and it's not because DDG has become so good, it's because Google has become so trash.

Ironically, only a moment later I noticed on an IRC channel I've been on for nearly two thirds of my life that someone just complained about Google giving nothing but SEO trash.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#100

Post by ricardo81 »

gipp wrote: post #11

The thesis seems a lot closer to "the open Web is dying".

I don't know about dying, but definitely more hidden from view. Google owns a huge share of the search market and a lot of the remainder information discovery is on the large social portals.

Alt search engines do offer an alternative view to what's out there, but are not on the scale of Google and many of them are ultimately meta search engines relying on Bing for crawling and indexing.

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