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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#831

Post by mizzao »

bnralt wrote: post #308

An 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,…

What happened to Clubhouse? I just realized it was quite popular but now I haven't heard about it in a while. Can you link to a postmortem?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#832

Post by r00tanon »

Having come of age professionally in the Mozilla era, everything the Internet has become since then is the worst case scenario we all saw coming.

Once commercialization of personal information and site tracking became a norm, it has been downhill since then. I don't begrudge making money from the internet. It's the commoditization of user data that has corrupted everything.

However, it is encouraging to see the responses here. Perhaps the tide changes to something more equitable in terms of network value. Hopefully, something that rewards people and companies for their contributions to the network (content, inventions, knowledge, etc.) rather than mining their clicks.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#833

Post by kovac »

initplus wrote: post #783
bnralt wrote: post #308

An 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 want Google to allow me to specifically include/exclude mirrors from my search results. "Only show my the original source of this content", or "only show me mirrors of this content". I don't want to see the same result repeated 5 times across different stack overflow mirrors.

If it helps,there's an extension called ublacklist that you can blacklist results. I use this to permanently blacklist those sites with garbage.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#834

Post by [deleted] »

esics6A wrote: post #829

Google is dying because people are searching Reddit using Google and the data generated to conclude Google is dying is drawn from Google search volume stats for labels and keywords available on Google and trends...ok.

[deleted]

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#835

Post by throwamon »

Gigachad wrote: post #757
mad182 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's because private communities are the only ones free from mass abuse. Public forums moved to private discord groups with hard to find invite links / etc because public forums take an army of anti abuse workers to keep alive. While a discord group just needs a few people to kick the trouble makers and maybe revoke the invite link for a while.

If that's the entire problem, then why not make these forums read-only by default (while still keeping them publicly viewable) and hand out invite links as in Discord?

Lobste.rs, for instance, has an interesting "invite tree" concept where your reputation is bound to people you've invited and who they've invited and so on.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#836

Post by fbn79 »

Ten years ago I was following many search query by Facebook (looking for an event, a place, a business ecc). That was not implied that google was going to die but: 1 - I know before searching which content source was the best to answer my quest. 2 - Google was (and it still now) the best engine into insert my contestualized query and reach quikly the right content. Far better than the internal website of the content source (facebook yesterday, reddit today)

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#837

Post by ziml77 »

Klonoar wrote: post #574
ziml77 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Very true. Fortunately I don't think most moderators want to see their community destroyed. That's exactly what would happen if they started taking money. As a group, people will catch on fast and either force the moderator to step down or just leave for a new subreddit.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#838

Post by throwamon »

TimLeland wrote: post #573
JimBlackwood wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Or you could just add a custom search keyword directly in your browser...

https://zapier.com/blog/add-search-engine-to-chrome/

https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-sea...

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#839

Post by sidibe »

tim333 wrote: post #482

Counterpoint: No it's not dying - Sales 2019 161m 2020 182m 2021 257m >If you’ve tried to search for a recipe or product review recently, I don’t need to tell you that Google search results have gone to shit. Not that I usually do but I tried for macbook M1 and apple pie and it gave me ok results - Tom's Guides and a BBC recipe Competition - I don't really know anyone who uses Bing or DDG though I believe they are ou…

For what it's worth you're not the only one. These Google search is awful posts happen a few times a week and I always wonder what I'm doing wrong to not notice. Seems to get me the results i want which is usually wikipedia or SO but then I'm not expecting Google to perfectly review products. What are people not finding and what are they expecting their search engine to do for them? Seem to be a lot of general rants

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#840

Post by bambax »

wilde wrote: post #828
bambax wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is weak because it conflates ads and seo spam. Yes, Google went all in with ads, and yes, this hurt its credibility and the quality of its products. But there is no conceivable universe where seo spam isn't the arch enemy of Google. Google needs to fight spam to survive, it knows it and it does. But that's hard. So hard in fact, that nobody else has cracked the problem, and for all the anecdotal eviden…

SEO is ads Google is failing to monetize. That said, the reason the Reddit trick works is that it uses information Google explicitly excludes when ranking content (engagement signals). Google has a bunch of “objective standards” that it uses to paternalistically shape what the web looks like. Many of these are divorced from what users actually want for pieces of content (https, AMP, a life story in front of recipes t…

As explained in another comment [0], the real reason the Reddit trick works is that Reddit content is hand-curated by humans who are dedicated and passionate (and, I think, also work for free). It's a garden in the jungle.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349460

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