Reddit has peaked, at the time PG wrote that tweet you could see some volatility with still some isolated peaks, but if you look at it now it's more clear that the general trend is downwards https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=reddit
Google Search Is Dying
711–720 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#712Some 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…
>Dead Internet Theory
Reminds me of the "birds aren't real" theory. Its almost more social commentary than a serious theory
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#713Some 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 death of the authentic web really chimes with me. I have an almost physical reaction when I occasionally come across a page that isn’t trying to sell me something, that is a labour of love.
A month or so ago, I was trying to help someone retrieve some very old Wordpress for Mac files. I found http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos and was so touched, I sent the author a few dollars for a coffee
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#714Some 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…
Maybe a different kind of terror than Dead Internet Theory: the Internet is "alive", but it acts as if it was dead.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#715Earlier 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…
> almost no consumer consciously chooses to use Google search anymore...Their monopoly over distribution - not search result quality - is what keeps consumers searching Google I don't disagree with this as a fact, but I think there are a lot of things that work this way that aren't actually monopolies in the competition-preventing sense. If I wanted to launch a new breakfast cereal, getting my product into grocery st…
You have a point but shelf space is physically limited. Online real estate is not so limited. In my country there is reasonably healthy competition between supermarkets. Supermarkets do have self-branded products but they don't cross-sell competitors self-branded products.
Here we have Apple with Google and Bing on their shelves. Microsoft have Bing and Google on their shelves. And Google have Goggle or Bing. Is that healthy or an oligopoly?
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#716Some 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 have a similar habit, I often search "[topic] forum" - I'm not fond of Reddit specifically due to accessibility issues although in some cases I still go there because it's the only good source.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#717An 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.
This has been happening a lot with StackOverflow and GitHub pages lately. A lot of the times, the actual GitHub or SO link won't even be on the first page.
I'm surprised they haven't done some kind of manual pruning of junk like that, or maybe they have and it's not working... but on the surface it totally seems like they could implement something that says "GitHub has content X, and these other 10 sites are 99% the same, but we've flagged GitHub as an authoritative source so they'll always outrank the clones".
Maybe it's a fear of appearing unfair. Or maybe they secretly want to hurt Microsoft by turning a blind eye. Or maybe this is actually a much harder problem. If I had to guess it's probably #3. But as a user of search it's frustrating to find the clones ranked above the real stuff.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free project idea for someone with more time on their hands than me: Classical search engines determine trust automatically, based on various factors including "link neighborhoods" where trustworthy sites link to other trustworthy sites. These automated strategies are clearly breaking down; the spammers are winning the arms-race. So maybe we need to go back to human-based trust. People used to curate lists of website…
There's no need for an extension; plenty of websites are part of webrings or feature blogrolls. I'm in the process of adding one to mine. Throw in some microformats2 and/or schema.org structured data and you're good to go. Certain search engines specialize in this type of manually-curated content; I listed some in the "non-generalist search" section of my collection of indexing search engines: https://seirdy.one/2021…
I've just had the deja Vu reading this post! Took me a minute to realise, I did actually come across this post and your blog some time ago, and really enjoyed reading all the posts then and now again! Hoping to read more from you!
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#719> There’s a fun conspiracy theory that popped up recently called the Dead Internet Theory
I think we're well on the way ...
Was recently pretty shocked, searched for "gas heating repair" and got back at the top some sites with my suburb name in the title. Naturally I thought, wow, if there is a local place I should go there. Clicking into it, it has everything about my suburb - a picture of the local park, and whole paragraphs of random text containing bits and pieces about the local area interspersed with odd sentences about gas heating ("Cold mornings in XXX can be confronting without effective heating" etc). The text kind of makes sense but also reads like it was generated by GPT3.
Of course, then I realise, this is all SEO. They have generated a page like this for every suburb in my city. There are tens of thousands of such pages they are hosting. The most shocking thing is this is a small time gas repair dealer. They clearly don't know how to do this, they've gone with a low budget to an SEO firm who has effectively generated a giant plume of toxic content into the web atmosphere, all to create a marginal benefit for this one small company.
If a small time low budget unsophisticated company can do this, then I have to assume it's happening everywhere. On a mass scale we have giant smoke stacks all over the internet spewing toxic plumes into the atmosphere. And the humans are gasping trying to find the small bits of remaining breathable air.
Re: Google Search Is Dying
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
Working at a marketing agency, I can promise you the Dead Internet Theory really isn't even a conspiracy. It's depressing.
I did software dev at a marketing firm for about a year, and it was pretty soul sucking, so I know what you mean. I won't work at one again unless it's literally my only option.
I’ve been there too. The sad thing was that the people I worked with were genuinely great and smart people but you’re spot on about the actual state of the environment being a depressing and soul draining thing. I quit that job on moral grounds, I just couldn’t be a part of that any more.