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

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

#121

Post by zbuf »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #77
zbuf wrote: post #39

Google is now a "recommendation engine" not a search engine... I type something in and it ignores the words and presents something it thinks I might like. For good measure, it prepends a word-spaghetti advert that's optimised on-the-fly to maximise confusion with the missing useful search result. When I accidentally click on it then they'll get paid.

I've been putting it exactly this way ("recommendation engine") for years. Whatever algorithms Google is using, they're absolutely terrible at distinguishing the considerations of relevance to a specific query on one hand and broader tranches of popularity on the other hand. Unfortunately, nobody else seems to be doing much better. I've found that DuckDuckGo's results suddenly got drastically worse a few months ago:…

I'm also finding the same difficulties with DuckDuckGo.

I don't think Google is "terrible" at anything; they know their stuff. But they have created peverse incentives around advertising which lead to this.

They're paid by the advert clicks, so if you actually find a search result you're not clicking on an advert.

The definition of an advert is "I want to push something at you that's only indirectly relevant to what you are looking for, and I'm willing to pay for that" -- that's what an advert _is_.

In my simple brain, I'd happily see Google paid per-display (not click) of adverts. Then my incentives (to find a search result) have a fighting chance of aligning with theirs. Show me the advert, in a separate column marked "adverts".

But I appreciate this is a vast over-simplification their broader business.

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

#122

Post by freediver »

There is a growing possibility that any search engine using advertising-based business model will either not exist or will have to carry 'for entertainment' label in cca 10 years (as in 'do not take these results seriously, they are here for your entertainment only', similar to the disclaimer some ad-based media like Fox news already has in their terms to avoid liability [1]).

The conflict of interest produced by ad-based business model is so strong and will continue to grow like a malignant body. Public's erosion of trust in information served by an advertising company and at the same time realization by the users that what information we put in our heads is as important as what food we put in our bodies will inevitably lead to a major shift in the way search works.

We will see the rise of search engines with paid subsription business models that will align the interests between the information provider and customers (I am the founder of one, not trying to promote it but participate in the discussion close to my heart) and increasingly better AI that will be able to condendse multiple pages of information to produce contextual answer with references (an example here in fighting misinformation [2]).

Once we have this, there will be only one way for search to go and that is becoming better and better for the users, as the positive feedback loop between the search engine and its customers will drive such behavior.

[1] https://www.foxnews.com/terms-of-use (beginning of the third paragraph)

[2] https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1597423319598305280

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

#124

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

Google's problem is akin to Windows virus problem. All the hackers wrote viruses for Windows, because that's what everyone used. Now the hackers retrained as SEOs and they attack the search engine that everyone uses.

Switched to Bing generally (why use extra redirection in the form of DDG?). Image searches are better done by Yandex.

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

#125

Post by derivagral »

HarleyBestfield wrote: post #101

It stopped being helpful a while ago. It's now moved into being harmful. A popular scheme among shady SEOs and marketers is "rank and rent." This is where they choose a major city and a common contracting service (eg, plumbing, carpet cleaning, fence building, home remodeling, etc.). Then they register domains using generic search terms. They build a website presenting itself as an independent local business. They ev…

Didn't grubhub and ilk effectively insert themselves this way for food service to a lot of restaurants?

Somewhat relatedly, I know my local tech hub has a couple places that do leadgen like this for financial verticals and it has been... lucrative. In my local cases, usually either a license or a snapshot of supporting technology is part of the deal and the vertical is spun out as a new entity to the acquirer. Rinse and repeat several years later, when the "acquirer" has years-old versions of the original stuff and needs something fresh to reinvigorate their pipeline...

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

#126

Post by Nicksil »

super256 wrote: post #93
ergonaught wrote: post #24

Google is increasingly useless, but there is a Garbage In Garbage Out aspect given that the vast bulk of what they're indexing today is junk. Most of the problems appear, superficially at least, to be consequences of advertising. There seems to be a growing chunk of automated site propagation as well (90% identical content but with keywords/names/etc tweaked), perhaps for scams, perhaps again for advertising. There m…

> Most of the problems appear, superficially at least, to be consequences of advertising Some trivia: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page wrote about this in their 1998 paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". [1] 8 Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not a…

>Some trivia: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page wrote about this in their 1998 paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". [...]

Doing a Google search for "cellular phone" now returns those poor-quality results.

Google's just... not good.

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

#127

Post by iamthepieman »

super256 wrote: post #93
ergonaught wrote: post #24

Google is increasingly useless, but there is a Garbage In Garbage Out aspect given that the vast bulk of what they're indexing today is junk. Most of the problems appear, superficially at least, to be consequences of advertising. There seems to be a growing chunk of automated site propagation as well (90% identical content but with keywords/names/etc tweaked), perhaps for scams, perhaps again for advertising. There m…

> Most of the problems appear, superficially at least, to be consequences of advertising Some trivia: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page wrote about this in their 1998 paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". [1] 8 Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not a…

I really wish Kagi had family plans. I would love to have my whole family using Kagi but with 7 people in the household, it makes it rather expensive.

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

#129

Post by Wazako »

drukenemo wrote: post #100
Wazako wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also use Google in the same way. Google is really amazing as a recommendation engine for finding keywords. Then you just have to get those keywords and put them in a real search engine.

What would be a real search engine according to you?

If it's generalist Duckduckgo / Yandex, otherwise directly search on specialized sites (wiki, anidb, algolia, reddit, youtube, ...).

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

#130

Post by islon »

iamthepieman wrote: post #127
super256 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the problems appear, superficially at least, to be consequences of advertising Some trivia: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page wrote about this in their 1998 paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". [1] 8 Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not a…

I really wish Kagi had family plans. I would love to have my whole family using Kagi but with 7 people in the household, it makes it rather expensive.

That's the reason I don't use kagi. I even sent them an email to ask about it and the response was "pay per person". A shame really, I was really happy with kagi in the beta.
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