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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#571

Post by samstave »

mardifoufs wrote: post #531
samstave wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what reddit's valuation is currently looking like? I have long been surprised they havent been acquired .. I assume for sure they have had plenty of offerss in the past

They have filed for an IPO last month with the SEC so they should go public very soon. Last valuation was at 10b$ which is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website. It happened before and the admins…

>>is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website

I have a story about this - and its worse than just mods -- Admins intervene and set narrative on for whom is allowed to mod and make mod decisions...

I wont reveal the details - but I have seen Admins literally come in and fuck up Mod orders because (my suspicion) is that the Admins have MANY accounts that /appear/ as mods - but are actually Admin shill accounts...

I had this happen to me first hand and I was appalled.

Reddit's ethics are absolute garbage in this regard.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#572

Post by wldcordeiro »

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…

It's particularly awful on mobile where you get Google's "smart" cards which can be ads, followed by ads then the actual results which are mostly SEO trash. Trying to find support for Google Fiber routers was nearly impossible because Google just tried to interpret what I wanted as signing up for Google Fiber and just overwhelmingly suggests that. It gets even worse on Youtube where after like 10 results for what you typed in they just show you "things you might like".

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#573

Post by TimLeland »

JimBlackwood wrote: post #198
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 appen…

I've been adding this to my searches for years. Check out this site that will save you a few keystrokes: https://gooreddit.com/

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#574

Post by Klonoar »

ziml77 wrote: post #321
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…

The reason that the quality on Reddit is higher is because there’s people moderating those quality subreddits. Without those moderators it would all turn to crap and be just as useless as Google.

Moderators that are often anonymous/unknown.

(This isn't an argument against your point, just a bit of additional context that increasingly is odd to me as Reddit gains more and more social weight)

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#576

Post by salt-thrower »

JimBlackwood wrote: post #198
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 appen…

Yeah, Fextralife saved my ass multiple times while working through the dark souls series. It's a shame that type of community resource isn't more popular.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#577

Post by Klonoar »

dheera wrote: post #350
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…

As soon as Google removed Wikipedia as the first result of everything they started dying.

Except Wikipedia has a reliable place on the page, if a Wikipedia entry exists... they never _removed_ it, just _moved_ it.

This is the least of the issues with Google.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#578

Post by siliconescapee »

ultrarunner wrote: post #554
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 used to be solved by allowing queries like `Class Inheritance +ruby' to require results to include "ruby". They killed this for Google+ by changing it to quotes, so `Class Inheritance "ruby"' but now they interpret even those. When I use Google, which is less and less, I am not looking for a fight with a computer to express my intent, I'm looking for the answer to a question. That never seemed to be an issue unt…

I don't have any recent information on how google search works, but years ago it looked at the expertise level of the searcher. So newbies received newbie results, advanced searchers received advanced results (and more visibility into filtering functionality). Today... they're hiding the advanced features and also seem to be reducing personalization of results to save compute resources. It's horrible.

You: Class Inheritance +ruby Google: searching for "cash inheritance..."

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#579

Post by fishtoaster »

bigthymer wrote: post #511
fishtoaster wrote: post #388

I don't know that I agree with the thesis that it's dying, but I think the symptoms it describes are very real. Searching for "good restaurants in " is useless. Entire real companies exist to fill the top few slots on that search for any given city. My workaround is, as the article says, to search Reddit instead. Look for the subreddit dedicated to that city, then find their most recent thread on good places to eat -…

> I strongly suspect this only works because it's not a widely-known strategy I think this post in combination with HN users' comments indicates that this is a widely-known strategy. It's cool. I've been doing it too and didn't know that everyone else did it too. Reddit is already being secretly advertised on but I guess we'll see how things end up.

Sure, but "widely known on hacker news" is a very different bar. :) Really, the question is, "is it a widely known enough strategy that there's big money to be made subverting it?" And as soon as the answer is "yes," the battle will be on between spammers trying to fill Reddit with low-quality info and Reddit trying to keep them out without hurting legit users.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#580

Post by Klonoar »

coolso wrote: post #423
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, eve…

>Upvotes do not mean the contents of the posts are legitimate or not shilling.

I increasingly think that upvote/downvote culture is the worst thing to happen to the internet and the world at large.

The problem is I don't have an alternative solution to propose.

Your comment is spot-on in my opinion though - I usually start with Reddit results, but try to check against other sources before relying on it.

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