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Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

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Re: Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

#21

Post by ecshafer »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #18

My vision for the future of search: Text search on the web will slowly die. No one trusts the results of random text. Google is in the adversarial position of wanting to censor certain answers as well as present answers that maximize their own revenue. People will search video based content instead, and use the fact that a human spoke the information, as well as comments/upvotes to vet it as trustworthy material (lik…

I don't understand this argument. "Votes" and Comments are almost completely gamed on every popular website already, I personally don't trust them in 95% of cases. Video content is usually very much a lowest common denominator type of information, and I don't understand why I should trust "a human said this" over "a human wrote this".

Re: Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

#23

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

ecshafer wrote: post #21
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #18

My vision for the future of search: Text search on the web will slowly die. No one trusts the results of random text. Google is in the adversarial position of wanting to censor certain answers as well as present answers that maximize their own revenue. People will search video based content instead, and use the fact that a human spoke the information, as well as comments/upvotes to vet it as trustworthy material (lik…

I don't understand this argument. "Votes" and Comments are almost completely gamed on every popular website already, I personally don't trust them in 95% of cases. Video content is usually very much a lowest common denominator type of information, and I don't understand why I should trust "a human said this" over "a human wrote this".

TikTok basically eviscerated facebook over night. Gen Z already makes run of the mill searches on that platform, and is increasingly doing so. Older generations cannot see the massive changes occuring. Facebook stock tanking is not random. Neither is Netflix. TikTok is completely underestimated. All of the new content is being created there. People are not creating text based content on facebook or on blogs. Reddit is the last bastion

Re: Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

#24

Post by mgdlbp »

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #11

Impossible to use. I’ve started adding “ Reddit” to my searches but even now that’s not working as well as it did.

OTOH adding 'forum' (or sometimes 'discussion') has been quite effective recently, unlike a couple of years ago as I remember. I even get the occasional forum result without having to do so. Possibly intentional in response to feedback?

Re: Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

#26

Post by DominoTree »

Two things I love about DuckDuckGo:

1) I can search for a handful of specific terms I remember were on a webpage I didn't bookmark, and I can type them in and find what I'm looking for instead of them being "interpreted" by something trying to be too smart

2) Nobody bothers to send them the same DMCA takedowns that they send to Google, so I can find torrents and things I couldn't otherwise

But on most days, Google is easier to find useful stuff when I don't know specifically what I'm looking for or the exact terms to use.

In an ideal world, I'd have Google default to more of how DuckDuckGo seems to work, with a "fuzzy search" option you can use if needed

Re: Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

#27

Post by civilized »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #18

My vision for the future of search: Text search on the web will slowly die. No one trusts the results of random text. Google is in the adversarial position of wanting to censor certain answers as well as present answers that maximize their own revenue. People will search video based content instead, and use the fact that a human spoke the information, as well as comments/upvotes to vet it as trustworthy material (lik…

Nightmare fuel, suicide trigger, or both?

Re: Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #18

My vision for the future of search: Text search on the web will slowly die. No one trusts the results of random text. Google is in the adversarial position of wanting to censor certain answers as well as present answers that maximize their own revenue. People will search video based content instead, and use the fact that a human spoke the information, as well as comments/upvotes to vet it as trustworthy material (lik…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

#29

Post by II2II »

holografix wrote: post #14

There’s been some debate about this here on HN and someone made a point that resonated with me: The quality of _the web_ has been in decline lately. With ML’s capacity to paraphrase original content and to generate plausible rubbish content from scratch, it’s very difficult for Google’s pagerank (or whatever they call their algo these days) to fight back. That been said, there does seem to be a fair bit of scraping a…

Is it the quality of the web that has been declining, or is our ability to find quality information on the web (due to Google and friends) affecting our perception of the web?

I'm on the fence on this.

Contributors and commenters on HN manage to surface many interesting sites that would be difficult to find using a modern search engine. There is also a large number of old sites that have continued to exist, even if they are otherwise unmaintained, which are also difficult to find using a modern search engine. On the other hand, these sites may be less common than they used to be.

Likewise, scraped and pasted websites are nothing new. It has always been a relatively low effort way to post content. What seems to be new is how often nearly identical pages appear in the top search results. This could be because it is more common, but it may also be because the algorithms are favouring very particular types of content.

Re: Ask HN: Has the quality of Google search declined for anyone else, or just me?

#30

Post by nostrademons »

holografix wrote: post #14

There’s been some debate about this here on HN and someone made a point that resonated with me: The quality of _the web_ has been in decline lately. With ML’s capacity to paraphrase original content and to generate plausible rubbish content from scratch, it’s very difficult for Google’s pagerank (or whatever they call their algo these days) to fight back. That been said, there does seem to be a fair bit of scraping a…

Also the quality of hyperlinks has declined precipitously. Google's big insight was that what people say about a page matters more than what the page says itself. Hyperlinks were fundamental to the (pre-2013) ranking algorithm, in ways that were far more fundamental than just pagerank. This worked really well when people authored HTML pages by hand (or in FrontPage or DreamWeaver) and would promiscuously link out whenever another site was relevant.

It works really poorly when all the links are paid for, or bargained for, or part of social media sites that are overrun with spammers and use rel=nofollow anyway, or are internal-only because every site wants to be its own walled garden. That's the web we've got now.

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