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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#421

Post by lifeplusplus »

jedwhite wrote: post #64

There have been many interesting threads recently about the decline of Google's search quality here on HN. There's zero doubt search results are getting worse, and that ads and spam are the cause. But Google's financial performance has been going from record to record. So there is a huge disconnect building in the market. Each thread has had some common themes, but what's surprising is how different the problems disc…

Isn't strong financial performance what's masking slow decline in quality, then when competitors take marketshare everyone in Google would be pikachu face.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#422

Post by TLLtchvL8KZ »

bnralt wrote: post #308

An important thing to realize, too, is that this is a problem that keeps getting worse. The article talks about product reviews and recipes, but it's been spreading a lot further than that. Recently I was trying to look up a technical error, and found a lot of web pages that seemed to be auto-generated with "How to solve [error_scraped_from_the_web]", complete with a list of generic things unrelated to the error (IE,…

I come across these sites so often it's not even funny.

Different website. Different title. Exact same content. 4 or 5 in the first page of search results.

I'm assuming they're all ran by the same person, throwing as much ** at the wall knowing some will stick.

Many of my searchers now include "reddit" or "forum" at the end to filter out all the spam/crap.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#423

Post by coolso »

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…

> I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretly paid ads.

There is so much shilling on Reddit if you knew it would blow your mind. I wish more people realized this. Reddit is the best place to shill because not only is it ridiculously simple, people also automatically assume you’re not shilling, and then once you seed the idea, everyone else will do the shilling for you indirectly.

The healthiest way to use Reddit is like Wikipedia: assume the information you’re reading is highly compromised and biased in one way or another, but use it as a starting point in your further research and it’s a great tool.

Reddit posts are not your friends. Upvotes do not mean the contents of the posts are legitimate or not shilling.

Reddit is the best place to shill and the sooner the non-shillers figure that out, the better off the entire internet will be.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#424

Post by shuntress »

cromwellian wrote: post #390

Ah, young whipper snappers, everything old is new again, and clearly the world is always getting worse. Well, some things are (reverse image search, ease of accessing 'Cached' pages -- now I have to go to archive.org Wayback, etc), but forum search has always been bad. Long before Reddit was big, USENET/DejaNews and forum software like PHPbb/UBB ruled supreme (and before Markdown there was UBB Code). Google, despite…

I think this is very important to note and I agree.

Whether or not google search right now is as good as it could be should not be the main point of discussion.

We have to remember to acknowledge that the web google is indexing now differs drastically from the web it was indexing 20 years ago. Web pages are now less likely than ever to be freely accessible plain text put forth in good faith for public consumption. Google (in addition to dealing with big walled gardens designed explicitly to hide content from google) is trying to sift through basic spam, industrial scale SEO exploitation, and nation-state cyber warfare.

Bitching about google search being bad almost feels like yelling at the canary in the coal mine when it passes out.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#425

Post by holbrad »

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/

Looks interesting.

In the FAQ they mention potentially charging around $10/month.

Not sure if I'm being entitled or anything, but I was expecting something more like the original WhatsApp model of a few dollars a year.

Perhaps I'm under-estimating how computationally heavy search is.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#426

Post by nvarsj »

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…

Yup, when I want to search anything I use a combination of reddit, HN, and Discord. My main use of Google these days is to find a website I forget the name of but roughly know what it's called. In the olden days, I used bookmark aggregation sites like del.icio.us to search for relevant content, which was generally more fruitful than a Google search.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#427

Post by tjchear »

bnralt wrote: post #308

An important thing to realize, too, is that this is a problem that keeps getting worse. The article talks about product reviews and recipes, but it's been spreading a lot further than that. Recently I was trying to look up a technical error, and found a lot of web pages that seemed to be auto-generated with "How to solve [error_scraped_from_the_web]", complete with a list of generic things unrelated to the error (IE,…

Might the inevitable arms race between bot writers and bot detectors be the missing accelerator for a general AI that has a predilection for top 10 white label brands of generic consumer products?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#428

Post by RationPhantoms »

netcan wrote: post #231
eloeffler wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> This could possibly be done with the help of curated bot-content, but I think we're far away from the point where this is really more profitable than getting students to do the work. It may be becoming borderline. I expect that sentence/paragraph completion is already becoming useful to people who churn out quick content for a living. In any case, the important part isn't whether or not it's bots. The important pa…

It's a pretty clear indication that the once stalwart effort, within Google, to produce a true search experience is effectively dead.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#429

Post by ohyoutravel »

baby wrote: post #397
bnralt wrote: post #308

An important thing to realize, too, is that this is a problem that keeps getting worse. The article talks about product reviews and recipes, but it's been spreading a lot further than that. Recently I was trying to look up a technical error, and found a lot of web pages that seemed to be auto-generated with "How to solve [error_scraped_from_the_web]", complete with a list of generic things unrelated to the error (IE,…

What happened to clubhouse?

It almost immediately upon the real adoption curve (this seems like October November 2020 anecdotally to me) just absolutely filled to the brim with NFT shills, cryptocurrency pumpers, and “self actualization with this one weird trick” promoters of their MLM. But early 2021 it was impossible to find any rooms with anyone discussing anything but these things.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#430

Post by ruffrey »

csomar wrote: post #263
jedwhite wrote: post #64

There have been many interesting threads recently about the decline of Google's search quality here on HN. There's zero doubt search results are getting worse, and that ads and spam are the cause. But Google's financial performance has been going from record to record. So there is a huge disconnect building in the market. Each thread has had some common themes, but what's surprising is how different the problems disc…

> But Google's financial performance has been going from record to record. So there is a huge disconnect building in the market. Of course. I used to get one ad on YouTube from time to another. Now for every 3 minutes videos, I have two forced ads at start and one ad at the end. Heck, the other day, I got an ad inside a 2 minutes video. The fall is going to be legendary.

I pay for YouTube premium and haven’t seen an ad the entire time. It’s worth $12 a month to me. Also get music streaming with it.
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