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Ask HN: Is Google becoming useless as a search engine, or is it just me?

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61–70 of 158 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is Google becoming useless as a search engine, or is it just me?

#61
Its not just you. I noticed this since around 2017. They changed the algorithm to control information. Its eternal September, the powers that be don't want the broader public knowing too much stuff.

Before the internet was only accessible to a small percentage of the world population so they would let them have any information they would want but as more and more people enter the internet they need to control the information to control the population.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google becoming useless as a search engine, or is it just me?

#62
post #2

The Youtube video tutorials popping up when searching for specific documentation or programming language features is especially disheartening. I've also noted that COVID, vaccine related or climate fact checks are pushed to the top when I search for specific topics which are only tangentially related at best. The outcome is similar for me. I find myself using domain specific searches more and more. This is unfortunat…

I searched for a product on Youtube recently, and the main result was a computer-generated voice narrating words that felt like they had been generated from the product spec (rather than written by somebody with experience with the product)! It will be interesting to see where we are in a few years time.

YouTube search is even worse than Google. Takes 5 to 10 searches to find what you are looking for.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google becoming useless as a search engine, or is it just me?

#63
Why are you surprised. Querying others for useful or authoritative answers, whether it is something as inconsequential as tips for an upcoming trip or matters of life and death has always being a complex task fraught with risks. Our response has been relying on networks of trust, building up indicators of authority through scholarship (proof of work :-), vetting for potential conflicts of interest, sniffing out malevolent objectives and blacklisting bad actors etc. etc.

We have somehow assumed that all this can automated away. We've got what we deserve.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google becoming useless as a search engine, or is it just me?

#64

It's not just you. First, I wish you & your wife all the best. For me it's the same. The search has been made more easy for everyone by Google. But that implied the reduction of some Poweruser functions. In the early times, one could use "+" and "-" to define the search in detail. Nowadays, no +/- anymore accepted in the search, but... There is a link somewhere for "advanced search ". If you get onto that page, you c…

- still works. I just used it yesterday. Enclosing terms in quotes also mostly works as an alternative to + although it’s not quite the same. The biggest difference is that I find myself having to use both far more often than before to get non-spam results and now often have to go beyond the first page as well.

-"negative keyword" is the way to get the old behavior.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google becoming useless as a search engine, or is it just me?

#66
post #47

Quoted post unavailable.

But Yandex is Russian. Aren't we supposed to be boycotting everything Russian these days?

Its fine as long as you are not looking for political content in relation to Russia or Ukraine.

I suspect Yandex is "older" in design, so does not suffer as much from the SEO spam that is optimized to rank on Google.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google becoming useless as a search engine, or is it just me?

#69

I sometimes see surprisingly good results from this gpt3 based search engine, if I take a bit of time to write out a sentence or two: https://metaphor.systems/

I get surprised by so many AI startups using discord as their product interface. First time I saw it used, I was like, don't you have enough funds to build your own interface? Still find it jarring to go from a slick looking site to a discord login. They probably don't want to reimplement chat, but I'm sure there's got to be a couple of opensource chat projects out there..

I don't know - haven't used discord too much to know, does it serve a lot of utility to invite bots to your own server and stuff.. is that a big plus?

Re: Ask HN: Is Google becoming useless as a search engine, or is it just me?

#70
post #51

It's just you. Google is an extremely useful search engine. As a demonstration of its abilities, note that searching for "Is Google becoming useless as a search engine" with our without the quote marks turns up this obscure article that's only 1 hour old. I use Google hundreds of times every day. I use it to search C++ STL documentation, where I generally get an exact hit in the first slot. I use it to find out wheth…

Kagi managed to make good articles “spring into existence”. Your trust that Google is showing you the whole Internet is misplaced.
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