Just throwing my weight behind my agreement and belief that Google has gone way downhill in the last two years to where if there was a good alternative (and no, DuckDuckGo is not a good alternative), I'd use it in a heartbeat. Google as a search engine sucks now.
Google Search Is Dying
641–650 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#642Some 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 fits well with my own worldview. I've been griping about Google results for years, and jumped for DuckDuckGo when it became usable. I'm sure that fifteen years from now, DuckDuckGo will be ad-infested crap and someone new will come along to replace it, just as Google replaced AltaVista. Even DDG knows that it can't handle everything, and so it has its bang shortcuts. I've used the !reddit one, and I'd use !w (Wi…
>I'm sure that fifteen years from now, DuckDuckGo will be ad-infested crap
In terms of direct ads, perhaps. But for SEO spam, in many cases, DDG already seems to be there. For example, things as simple as "python datetime", "python json", or "python datetime.now", where it would seem obvious that the top result would be the documentation for the module/function, have spam sites above the actual Python documentation. Meanwhile, search for "matplotlib", and your screen will fill up with ads.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#643Some 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 a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers. Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore. Google has…
> It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level.
There are five (very simply accessible) different choices for Safari on iOS.
But if you switch to iCabMobile on iOS there are TWENTY-FIVE search engines to choose from.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#644Another reason why adding site:reddit.com is so popular: Reddit's search is even more broken than Google and is useless for searching its own site.
https://redditsearch.io/ is the way to go, if you want simple keyword matching and don't want Google AI transforming your search query.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#645Adding money to the mix is always problematic. Money destroyed sports. And money destroyed the web. The amateurs are still out there, but the content served by SERP's are mostly from professionals. Just like when you look at sports on TV there are mostly professionals.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#646I have never appended reddit in my queries. I don’t find majority of Reddit credible or complete. The author here is extraordinarily hyperbolic. Reddit is not “next” search engine by any possible stretch of imagination. I would think search driven by very large transformer based models is probably the next thing but it’s 5 to 10 years away.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#647Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers. Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore. Google has…
>Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore Do you have anything substantive to support this? I highly doubt it is true given the fact that the verb "to google" literally means "to search the internet".
Google is the default search on the vast majority of phones and desktop browsers by default.
People don't change their search engine from something else to Google, because it is already the default search engine on the devices they buy and the web browsers they use.
So people do not make a conscious choice to use Google. The vast majority make no choice at all. Google is synonymous with search because it is already the search engine on their phones and computers. They are simply never asked which search engine they want to use.
Most consumers have no idea that you can even change your search engine. After talking with hundreds of users, they find it's either impossible to change (iPhone/MacOS) or too hard (Chrome).
If you're Duck Duck Go or Bing, at least you're in a very limited dropdown list if someone does want to try something else. If you're a new search engine startup, you're not an option at all.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#648An 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,…
> "Step one: try turning your computer off and turning it back on again. This is usually a good first step, and you'll be surprised at how often..."
This seems like a natural result of optimizing each search for revenue. Think of a search to solve an error message on your computer. There's a very small number of vulnerable people who are going to spend money as a result of that search, so optimizing for ads would mean tailoring the results specifically for those people, pushing them to sleazy sites where they might spend money on some kind of antivirus scam. The results are worthless to you, but who cares? You're worthless to Google when you're doing that kind of search. Try searching for something that people in your demographic spend money on, and the results will likely look better to you.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#649Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a reason why it seems shocking that Google has been able to balance the ads well enough that people still use it. They haven't! Google has orchestrated a monopoly over search engine distribution that allows them to get away with search results that are dominated by ads and spam, without losing most consumers. Let's be blunt here - almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore. Google has…
> It is in all practical senses impossible for an iPhone or Mac user to change their search engine to a new search engine on Safari or at the iOS level. There are five (very simply accessible) different choices for Safari on iOS. But if you switch to iCabMobile on iOS there are TWENTY-FIVE search engines to choose from.
I think it's reasonable to point out that is not something most consumers are going to be able to do. The only meaningful search engine choice is that available within Safari. And you did install another App, they still aren't used from the system search on iOS, or from Safari itself.
I think you might as well be asking regular consumers to root their device so they can use whatever Apps from outside the App Store, or whatever search engine they want.
Also, even for a technical user, there is simply no way on an iPhone to change to a new search engine not already on a tiny list, and from talking with hundreds of consumers, I have not talked with a single non-technical person who could work out themselves how to change their Safari search engine to even one of the 5 limited choices, let alone a new option.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#650Speaking of inauthentic shills, how much did this guy get paid by reddit? If there was really a time where reddit was a good source of authentic information, it’s many years in the past at this point.