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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#191

Post by rightbyte »

pdimitar wrote: post #166
sinyug wrote: post #24

I moved to DDG a few years back and don't miss Google. While it is possible that Google might have provided similar results to what DDG did for the same query, I have noticed that when DDG fails to provide good results, Google fails with it. And the author is right about appending the site name to the query (reddit etc). Sometimes, it is the only way to avoid the crap that the search engine would otherwise provide.

Sure, but just lately DDG started deteriorating for me as well. Maybe that coincides with another big update they did and didn't tell anyone about it -- looking for certain phrases that describe sex no longer works. A lesbian friend made me aware of that; she recently complained that she can no longer find porn through DDG queries so she started bookmarking various such websites and is going to them directly. ...What…

DDG just uses other search engines, right? So any of them could have added some prudent filter.

I don't get the hype around DDG. They are at the mercy of the underlying search engines.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#193

Post by baggachipz »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #79
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…

> Can people suggest good alternatives I've been on the Kagi beta test for a few weeks now and, for the kind of searches I mostly do, it seems to be a massive improvement on Google. Strongly recommended. https://kagi.com/

I love this search engine, it gives me the same feeling that Google did when it became a thing. Their business model after beta will be that users pay to use it, and it has no ads. This is a very encouraging sign, and personally I'll be willing to pay for quality search without ads. I hope enough other people feel the same to make Kagi profitable and functioning for years to come.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#194

Post by sebastien_b »

The thing that annoys me the most about Google's results is how they're intent on giving you any results, instead of actual useful results. Too often I'll type in something, and it'll give pages and pages of results that aren't what I'm looking for.

For example: searched something that "didn't have many results" - this is indicated (but somewhat hidden) at the top of the results, but isn't made visually obvious - well, I don't go looking for that to know if the results were actually what I searched for; if it gave me results, it's natural to assume the results were actually relevant.

But instead, Google decides to be absolutely less than useless by giving me back a bunch of irrelevant results, instead of simply returning NO results because there were none.

This is the main reason I've completely given up on Google.

Edit: another annoyance is Google altering your search terms - "searching for YXZ instead", or even worse, excluding some terms in the results (and having to later click "must include YXZ" which, again, is hidden within the results). This is particularly infuriating when looking up API terms.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#195

Post by spideymans »

dageshi wrote: post #141

The article is right, but I think it's missing the main cause. People who used to make high quality web content have moved to youtube instead because you can make more money there and it's probably easier. Add to that, I think because of the move to smartphones, google tries to give you a direct answer to your question rather than directing you to sources where you could educate yourself to answer your own question w…

> People who used to make high quality web content have moved to youtube instead because you can make more money there and it's probably easier.

Web video has also become so much more accessible thanks to faster download speeds.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#196

Post by monkeynotes »

eloeffler wrote: post #60
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…

About the "dead internet conspiracy" - I've worked in writing how-to articles for a fairly large "help" website. They paid very little attention to the quality of the articles. I was paid for each piece and thus had about 30 minutes to write an article and later integrate feedback from internal review. Otherwise the payment became too low. The most important factor was cramming SEO terms and links to keep people on t…

Speaking of bots, I'd be interested to know the percentage of articles on major traffic content sites are authored or co-authored by AI.

My suspicion is this is rife given how many articles read poorly and are almost entirely fluff. If this is true it would appear we are doomed to algorithms shaping our online experiences, which is worrying given the existing shrinking diversity of opinion and content. It's like a entropic gene pool in nature, but with information.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#197

Post by slightwinder »

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 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 secretly paid ads.

So are reddit-comments and entries. There it's even worse, because most people don't connect the content with manipulation.

> The "best" recipe for pancakes is only what's trending on instagram right now.

So, like reddit? I mean every platform has their hive mind, and reddit is even worse, because the hive mind can be manipulated with paid upvotes, not just reposting and comments.

> The same for trending programmer tools.

Aren't most of them yet again commercial products from companies?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#198

Post by JimBlackwood »

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…

Totally agree on the reddit point, I've also noticed the same occurring to me. The girlfriend recently got Pokemon Arceus and sometimes asks me to Google something she wants to know.

It's completely pointless, you just get a bunch of articles from news sites (??) that transcript the quest but not tell you anything more. I miss a nice community wiki like I'm used to from playing Dark Souls etc.

I've just started appending site:reddit.com to everything, works a lot better.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#199

Post by yissp »

While the content on Reddit is probably more authentic than what you're likely to find on Google these days, there's still quite a lot of obviously (or not-so-obviously) corporate-sponsored stuff, and I imagine this is only going to get worse. For example, see https://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/. I think this is unfortunately the fate of any platform that gets sufficiently popular.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#200

Post by shantnutiwari »

One thing I hate about most Google (and Duck) top results: Keyword stuffing

I search about how to do X in python, the top result will have a paragraph or 2 on "What is X in python " "Why do people use X in python"

You can see its being done to stuff more keywords into the headers

But why just google? Like I said, duck.com results are similar-ish

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