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ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

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Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#361

Post by splittingTimes »

voytec wrote: post #359
mfDjB wrote: post #171

For me, Google Search just doesn't seem to be getting better over the years, if anything its getting worse. I honestly feel like its hard to get what I want half the time with all the SEO spam, most of the time I have to input "inurl:reddit.com" just to get good results. At the same time, ChatGPT has frequently impressed me, not with everything (my expectations are reasonably low) but it has performed amazing work fo…

> most of the time I have to input "inurl:reddit.com" "site:reddit.com" should only include hostnames ending with "reddit.com", not URLs including "reddit.com" anywhere. Not sure if this still works though - haven't used Google Search for a few years now and I'm reading (even outside HN[1]) that it's getting worse. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20230107072330/https://www.ft.com...

What do you use instead of Google?

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#362

Post by throwawaymaths »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #340
throwawaymaths wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT struggled to tell me how to pin the bottom of a div to the bottom of its parent when scrolling (like a chat window does). It gave me the first thing that I tried (which is wrong). Eventually I figured it out, then confronted ChatGPT about it and it insisted on the wrong answer, and blithely dismissed the correct answer.

An AI struggling with CSS might be the best evidence of intelligence :)

It passed the Turing test since it suggested the thing I already tried

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#363

Post by spritefs »

viraptor wrote: post #350
ravenstine wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this thread is about ChatGPT, but if you're still using Google then I suggest giving Kagi a try. It's a paid search engine, but I've been using it for quite a while now and really enjoy it. With Kagi you can rank and downrank domains as well as block them. There's also this think called "lenses" which are basically filters for specific kinds of searches. For instance, I have a "Programming" lens and a "Academi…

> With Kagi you can rank and downrank domains as well as block them. This is a killer feature and I don't understand why ddg and Google don't do it. Google doesn't even have to respect that list for ads. Just give me a way to remove all results from domain X, Y and Z. There are already extensions which do that, but I can't use them on my mobile. It would improve my Google satisfaction massively since it's normally th…

This is something that could very easily be done with a meta search engine or alternative frontend like whoogle (assuming it isn't already implemented, could be)

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#364

Post by Cipater »

LewisVerstappen wrote: post #271
m3kw9 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked many questions and it usually fail to answer the tougher or very specific situational ones.

Give some examples? I use ChatGPT for 200-300 queries per day and it’s astonishingly accurate. I’ll double check with Google if I’m unsure but it’s almost always been correct.

You're typing out 300 queries to ChatGPT every day?!

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#365

Post by nowherebeen »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #43
nowherebeen wrote: post #8

ChatGPT will flood the internet with articles like how SEO was used to hack search. It might not replace search engine, but search results will becomes even more irrelevant.

Which will ultimately drive more people directly to ChatGPT and just cut out the search middle-person.

Not necessary. The google search function still works fine, its just the content becomes worst. If the content is generated from ChatGPT, I don't see how it will cut out the middle-person. I believe a more likely scenario is people appending site:reddit.com for all of their search. It will be domain specific.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#367

Post by hgomersall »

t0bia_s wrote: post #323
ravenstine wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this thread is about ChatGPT, but if you're still using Google then I suggest giving Kagi a try. It's a paid search engine, but I've been using it for quite a while now and really enjoy it. With Kagi you can rank and downrank domains as well as block them. There's also this think called "lenses" which are basically filters for specific kinds of searches. For instance, I have a "Programming" lens and a "Academi…

"I suggest giving Kagi a try. It's a paid search engine" I dont like the idea of linking my search queries with credit card.

I can only assume if you don't think Google knows exactly who you are, you must have much more internet hygiene than most people do.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#368

Post by voytec »

splittingTimes wrote: post #361
voytec wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the time I have to input "inurl:reddit.com" "site:reddit.com" should only include hostnames ending with "reddit.com", not URLs including "reddit.com" anywhere. Not sure if this still works though - haven't used Google Search for a few years now and I'm reading (even outside HN[1]) that it's getting worse. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20230107072330/https://www.ft.com...

What do you use instead of Google?

A search engine I'm decreasingly fond of, so won't advertise.

I've tested alternatives mentioned in this thread and have no clear winner to point at.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#369

Post by azinman2 »

jamesrom wrote: post #284
azinman2 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the LLMs are better if you want knowledge synthesized, assuming it can be done correctly (it is very confidently wrong a lot of the time). But if you’re trying to find something specific, often you want the complete work published by a human as is.

Do you have any reason to think LLM cannot reference published work?

Yes - you’re in an embedded space that’s the result of effectively compressing knowledge into something higher order. LLMs are not grounded, so to ask it to ground something would not be reasonable. It’s not a lookup aka search engine where references are maintained.

Re: ChatGPT won’t replace search engines any time soon

#370

Post by snehk »

I personally think that this is true and false.

I think there are two types of people who use search engines. The first person is the one who just types in whatever they want to know and sees if Google gives them a good result. They're also the ones who use TikTok or Instagram just like a search engine. Whenever there's a search bar, this type of user profits from the search term being fed into some AI to get the best result possible.

Then there's "me and everyone else who has complained about Google getting worse and worse over time". Basically people who are very good at googling things. This might sound arrogant or something but one of my skills is that I know (or knew) how to use Google. I would not just type in whatever I needed to find, I would know to exclude specific terms using "-term", put parts of a sentence in quotation marks, add other terms I knew would be on the site where the answer could be found and whatnot. The search is then very specific and if I didn't get a satisfying answer it was because I needed to improve my query. Now whenever I do that, Google takes this query and modifies it without me knowing what they're actually doing. It seems harder and harder to tell Google to just work like it used to.

It has become frustrating because I still google the same way thinking this is the best way to get to relevant results. It seemingly isn't anymore and I find myself just typing in whatever these days, getting results without me needing to specify what I'm actually looking for.

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