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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#791

Post by CuriouslyC »

winternett wrote: post #156
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…

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…

Reddit does have astroturfing, but a lot of communities are aggressive about identifying and banning shills, so it's not as widespread as in google search results.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#792

Post by nabla9 »

dwighteb wrote: post #625
jedwhite wrote: post #585

Earlier 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. On my IOS device, under Settings -> Safari -> Search Engine, I have a drop down with options, including Bing and DuckDuckgo, but defaulted to google. On Macos, with Safari running, Safari -> Preferences… -> Search, Search Engine I have a drop down, defaulted to googl…

Google pays Apple for the privilege to be the first.

Another way to think it is that Google pays Apple, so that they don't create their own search engine.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#793

Post by koshnaranek »

dankwizard wrote: post #762

It is only a matter of time until "Search term + Reddit" leads you to a thread with multiple, legitimate looking comments with varying degrees of upvotes and downvotes, and the entire thread has been ran by a marketing firm/search engine hit squad. I too am guilty of trusting the Reddit concencus when searching, and if there were a few legitimate looking threads that had been planted I probably would have eaten them…

I'm pretty sure marketing firms already have some power mods planted.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#794

Post by rhubarbcustard »

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…

Just tried https://andisearch.com/ and I like it. Felt like a fresh look on results instead of the same old SEO ones. For example, searched for a few Java queries and found very informative website/results that weren't dominated by Bealdung. Searched for "soccer scores", "chelsea FC", "prince andrew", "WP export" and found things that would never have been on Google's first page, but were excellent returns. Nice work.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#795

Post by shirro »

I wish it was Google search that was dying. I suspect the problem is a decline in good quality self published text.

There are adversaries gaming the algorithm and pushing low quality results as alsways and they seem to be thoroughly winning on Youtube. While search isn't working as well as it did for me I am not sure it is entirely a search problem. It used to be that a well selected query would almost magically bring up the desired answer as the first result. Even adding search params to exclude low quality sites like quora there is often nothing in pages of results now, if you even get more than a page or two. I remember when results sets used to be massive. But is it the search that is lacking or the content?

IMO Google deserves a large share of the blame. Killing Google Reader inflicted a huge blow on distributed self-published content and helped drive people towards a bunch of walled gardens and systems that promote low quality content.

Where once the blog reigned supreme now content is in the hands of companies like Facebook and Twitter where ephemeral, low effort writing is either behind a wall or drowned in noise. A lot of blog content is now dripping in blatant promotion of people, products and service.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#796

Post by dharma1 »

Google search still works well for many things, but is SEO spam/bot infested for anything that requires a hive mind opinion about something from mostly genuine people. Like if I want to know what kind of a best in class/best bang for buck/newest [insert product] to buy and have no idea where to start, Google is often the worst place for it.

I'm not sure if that's because most opinions like this are shared on social media like reddit (and in rather unstructured form) instead of on blogs/websites that Google mostly indexes, or if it's just really difficult machine learning problem to formulate something resembling a non-spammy consensus opinion from experts by just crawling shitloads of websites that all try to SEO spam the crawler

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#799

Post by nullc »

Too bad reddit has utterly sabotaged itself here.

The logged out views of reddit only show a couple comments from each thread, and then the pages are full of hidden comments from other unrelated threads.

So if I search for some exact text on reddit, google will often present an unrelated page that doesn't contain the queried text-- yet it does contain it: hidden. Actually finding the real thread with the text is a nightmare unless you know of some of the few reddit full text searches out there.

Sadly, even the broken logged out reddit interface is still often a better thing to search than google... but only in the sense that southpark's "IT" (spoof of the segway announcement) beat dealing with the airlines. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK362RLHXGY )

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#800

Post by idank »

Gigachad wrote: post #770
zmmmmm wrote: post #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…

Yes you are right, almost every business with an online presence is generating vast amounts of garbage which exactly targets a huge range of specific keywords. From the search engine perspective, the page is exactly what you are looking for.

No it's not, in the same way that an email provider doesn't want to deliver spam to its users.
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