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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#681

Post by nluken »

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 latest conditions on mountain bike and hiking trails are being shared inside communities like Reddit but not on the web

This point especially rings true for me, but it also concerns me a bit. Reddit has killed a lot of other forums over the years. If something happens to Reddit, we run the risk of losing a large corpus of information.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#682

Post by WalterBright »

jedwhite wrote: post #585
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…

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…

I would think that there'd be an online opportunity for a search engine that only searches humanly curated sites. Those sites would be ones that have quality information rather than spam. Some obvious examples - wikipedia, reddit, hackernews, public domain books, etc.

It's easy to game an algorithm, but hard to game a human - humans know garbage when they see it.

As an aside, whenever I get a prescription, included with it is a dense two page sheet of detailed information about the drug. I see nothing like that online with a search. Why is this sort of thing not online?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#683

Post by pie_flavor »

mad182 wrote: post #357
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…

IMHO it's not so much of a problem with google search, but the internet as a whole. Most genuine discussions have moved from open, publicly accessible web to places inaccessible to search engines and general public. Smaller niche forums, blogs and personal websites with no financial incentive have died out. People have moved to Facebook, Discord, Whatsapp, Instagram, Slack, Twitter and other places behind logins. Onl…

Feature, not bug. If there's no public search, it can't be gamed for money. The problem TFA identifies is one of discerning that the person you're getting your info from is an actual person, who cares. The best way of doing that, until we find some way of creating institutional trust in these matters, is talking to the sort of person that spends all day in talking to a chat room about whatever it is you're asking about.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#684

Post by smcin »

Google still gives decent results for many other categories, especially when it comes to factual information.

Increasingly it doesn't. I posted a similar finding earlier yesterday: Google search relevance fail: result for “Africa longitude” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30337563.

- For that query, Bing's image results are much better, but the #1 site hit is still the exact same SEO-manipulated auto-generated e-ecommerce page, not any reputable reference source like we might expect. And that is a basic query.

- I tried the query on Reddit, the results are a disorganized jumble.

- So, the surprise winner on that query is... Bing. Or "none of the above". Back to atlases and encyclopedias.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#685

Post by Matrixik »

I would love to have search engine similar to Google (I search in Polish and English, duckduckgo is no good for this, I tried) with ability to have favourite pages. If there are result on any of this pages from my search always show them in top 3. It should not matter how old are this favourite pages are or when last time they were updated or if they have low amount of reference links to them. They are my favourite so show me results from them on top. And they should still show in my results even if Google or any search engine delist them for some boggus reasons from default results (they are my favourite so I veted they are good for me).

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#687

Post by Waterluvian »

There's probably fancy terms for this, but I currently see Google at this phase:

"We cannot meet shareholder expectations by selling milk alone. We need to slaughter some cows and sell some beef."

YouTube ads are getting worse. Google results are getting worse. They're cannibalizing long term value for short term gains.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#689

Post by MockObject »

Ironic that the web is being eaten by a glorified Usenet, leaving then, as the main use case for the web, the sort of remote commerce that was once handled by Sears catalogs and food delivery phone numbers.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#690

Post by [deleted] »

jedwhite wrote: post #585
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…

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…

[deleted]
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