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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#471

Post by awwstn »

This post is on point, but the bottom section highlights a nuance that may mean Google Search is not in fact dying: Google remains the best way to search Reddit, by a longshot. As someone who searches Reddit multiple times daily, I have tried a number of Reddit clients and always find myself falling back to Google.

Perhaps this is where the entry point opportunity is...build a search engine for power users that effectively filters results to "authentic" content from reputable UGC platforms.

As an aside: the advent of GPT-3 is going to make it really hard for reddit mods to keep doing as wonderful of a job as they do today.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#472

Post by evilduck »

profstasiak wrote: post #148

Just a heads up if someone is searching reddit for product reviews. I believe most of them are inauthentic. I worked in marketing for several companies and we always had some budget for whisper marketing aka shilling. There are third party agency specialized in shilling on reddit and making it all look authentic.

Generally speaking I search Reddit for genuine looking negative reviews not the glowing ones. I'm looking at Reddit to steer me away from obviously bad choices.

Basically, shilling has become so pervasive that positive reviews are automatically untrustworthy regardless of source or apparent trustworthiness. It wouldn't even surprise me to find that companies are generating fake negative review content without ever endorsing their own products, but it's at least a tiny bit harder to fake genuine modes of failure to report on.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#473

Post by kingcharles »

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 hadn't heard of this. Now that's some sci-fi level of conspiracy but in today's world it seems totally plausible.

Nice try. That's totally what a bot would say.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#474

Post by ClumsyPilot »

TLLtchvL8KZ wrote: post #422
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.

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

If only google was smart enough to figure this out

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#475

Post by registeredcorn »

I won't name the specific search engine I am using as a default, as I'd like to prevent it being manipulated for as long as possible, but I will say this:

Google is my second to third search engine choice at this point - never my default. Google search has, in effect, become the 2nd or 3rd page of Google Search results; you only resort to it when you are truly desperate, and have very little hope of it doing any good.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#476

Post by IncRnd »

The article writer didnt' look carefully at the graph, which says in fine print at the bottom, "Y-axes are not comparable, charts show when* each had its own peak search interest. Data Source: Google Trends"

So, it is a mistake to assume that the quantity of the searches can be shared between the different graphs. Unless there is another data source that shows Reddit has the most searches, this is not meaningful. Actually, the graph is a Google graph, so everything on the graph is from a Google Search.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#477

Post by flatiron »

Mezzie wrote: post #324
NoboruWataya wrote: post #241

It's interesting, and quite concerning, that Reddit has cemented its position as a key repository of useful information on just about everything just as its drive towards monetisation really kicks into gear. It's concerning because, as part of that monetisation strategy, Reddit is becoming increasingly walled off and anti-user. I am sure I am only one of many long-time Redditors who have vowed to stop using the site…

It's very interesting to me as somebody's who's been making and burning Reddit accounts since before the Digg implosion. 15 years ago, I trusted what I saw on Reddit when it came to things like products: If I came across a post on the best can openers, I had some certainty that people were just sharing their opinions on can openers. Now I don't trust a single damn thing I see on that site.

Yeah I have a 6 month timer on Reddit accounts because I tend to post on topics in my home town and my close hobbies and I’m afraid of being doxxed. At least in HN I just talk about programming languages and stuff so I keep my account. I also use reddits account name generator. I think that also helps that my name there wasn’t thought up by me. Least a little level of abstraction.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#478

Post by 0xffff2 »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #140
brimble wrote: post #5

The other day I was searching for a specific kind of jewelry and realized I don't know of a search engine that can do what I needed, which is to just find good results for my search. Searches for jewelry-related keywords triggered Google to go 90+% ads, and their results (and other search engines' results) were so junked up with spam and the same couple sites over and over that they were useless. We're back to the We…

Am I the only one who just skips the search engines and go straight to the source? If I want factual information, I just go to Wikipedia and use their search. If I want to shop I'll go to respected online stores and again use their inbuilt search feature. Obviously I've just built up a list of good sites in my head which I trust... Google search is good for discoverability if you're new to the web I guess? Although i…

> I'll go to respected online stores

... such as? The only general-purpose online store available to me is Amazon as far as I know, and I certainly wouldn't call them respected.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#479

Post by winternett »

dkonofalski wrote: post #181
winternett wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another factor that isn't being fully accounted for is a new SEO/marketing technique where many people are asking scripted questions publicly on sites like reddit and then stealthily providing answers that market a product or service. This leads to reddit results not being exactly authentic as well. Pretty much most online reviews cannot be trusted as we are begged to do positive reviews of companies (and when compan…

Is Google unique in that, though? Amazon reviews are worthless now because companies pay customers to leave positive reviews or pay review farms to leave positive reviews. Even if someone reports them to Amazon, though, the companies just close their accounts and open new ones with different names and sell the same product. It's so trivial for them to pivot when they get caught that I'm not sure there is a solution t…

It's not really us who can resolve the issues...

I just wrote my own "rant" on the matter and posted it here along with the start to fixing them:

Yes, your frustration with the Internet and modern business is real

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30350322

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#480

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

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…

It’s not just the links. After the links, google mined facts, like “how much does a german shepherd weigh,” so no on gets those clicks, and the incentive is gone there too. They’re even mining the snippets of the content, lowering the incentives for creating that too.
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