Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#111

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #101

massysett wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge. I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yah…

The point of google was to RANK content on the web, and surface the BEST content to the top. In that regard it has failed, and the expectation is for them to correct the problem and return to delivering good content first. It's not that the content doesn't exist or isn't indexed, its that its been drowned out by noise. Sifting through noise better was the entire reason google took off from more standard crawlers. It…

> It now returns results worse than crawlers from the previous era.

That is an absurd exaggeration.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#112

Post by bawolff » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

massysett wrote: post #53

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #12

The gaming of SEO has been quietly destroying the utility of search writ large as a mechanism for quite a while. Over the last year, its become palpable. Google has such utility in this regard that in some cases, a hallucinating lie-machine offers better answer than an index of what information is available on the internet. This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their s…

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge. I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yah…

A start would be to rank official php/python/etc docs higher than clickbait sites like geeks4geeks

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#113

Post by basch » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

krisroadruck wrote: post #93

doctor_eval wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their searches. I’d argue that they even encouraged it.

Been working in SEO for nearly 13 years now - can confirm, a lot of SEO content spam is quite literally Googles fault. Google has forced just about every company to become a publisher as the only way to generate traffic to their site. I promise you the vast majority of companies don't want to spend the money pump out 4-30 pieces of mostly remixed/regurgitated content a month or screw around trying to attract links bu…

Exactly. Every time someone with a business says "I want to get to the top of google" the person they are asking for help will respond with some jargony version of "you gotta constantly write content." It is the ONLY answer.

And unfortunately Google has become worse than ever at being able to differentiate between insight and fluff.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#114

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

massysett wrote: post #53

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #12

The gaming of SEO has been quietly destroying the utility of search writ large as a mechanism for quite a while. Over the last year, its become palpable. Google has such utility in this regard that in some cases, a hallucinating lie-machine offers better answer than an index of what information is available on the internet. This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their s…

I see this sort of comment a lot, and I honestly don't know what it's talking about. What are people expecting out of Google that it's not delivering? It can only index stuff that's on the Web. Stuff on the Web is, contrary to what is popularly asserted, only a tiny fraction of all human knowledge. I think people are forgetting how bad search was before Google. Google drove Web directories to extinction. Remember Yah…

I also challenge people’s memory of it being so much better. Was it really? Or just different?

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#115

Post by TheCoelacanth » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

mattwad wrote: post #52

dilap wrote: post #31

Microsoft's integration of ChatGPT with Bing is really bad. No-one wants a busy search page with a side-bar of ChatGPT; what's the point of that? The correct interface for ChatGPT + search is just...ChatGPT. But it can also show you a list of web search results, when it's appropriate. A super-clean interface, that always shows you exactly what you want. That would be a killer feature and represent a real threat to Go…

As someone else said, the problem is ChatGPT lies straight to your face, whereas at least Google's answers are based on structured data by someone. It's traceable, whereas I would not trust ChatGPT ever to tell me the correct temperature to cook a steak.

ChatGPT lies to your face, while Google just finds other peoples lies and shows you a list of the best ones.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#116

Post by jeffbee » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

ranting-moth wrote: post #88

saudade97 wrote: post #42

I don't get the HN hate of Google as a search tool. Yes, SEO has made searching more difficult, but Google is still by far the best search engine provided that your searches are focused and you use search tools (e.g., excluding terms, focusing on certain sites, etc.). I've tried other search engines (e.g., DDG, Bing) and they just aren't as good as Google.

Many of the HN crowd remember when Google came into existence and how wonderful it was. If it existed on the internet, Google would find it for you and it was usually the top resault. It was amazing. Today, it's a shadow of its former self. You regularly have to search, wade through the ads that are written like informative articles, adjust your query slightly and repeat the process. It's rubbish.

What these people are remembering is when the web was small and dorks-only. Now it is huge and full of normies of all kinds, including every shade of commercialism and fraud.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#117

Post by jay_kyburz » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

I don't want an AI trained on the sea of garbage that is the modern web to answer my questions, but I would love an AI to draw on a curated, hand crafted, trusted database of the worlds knowledge.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#118

Post by endisneigh » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

I’d be curious to hear from someone who has a non trivial amount of money shorting Google. Anyone can say Google sucks.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#119

Post by basch » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #111

basch wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of google was to RANK content on the web, and surface the BEST content to the top. In that regard it has failed, and the expectation is for them to correct the problem and return to delivering good content first. It's not that the content doesn't exist or isn't indexed, its that its been drowned out by noise. Sifting through noise better was the entire reason google took off from more standard crawlers. It…

> It now returns results worse than crawlers from the previous era. That is an absurd exaggeration.

Spam masquerading as the answer to my question is WORSE than off topic returns, because it is a trick vs being something I can easily disregard.

Before the results would just not match what I was looking for. Now they do match what I was looking for, except some AI procedurally generated the content to show up when I searched those terms, with no regard for the accuracy of what the page says.

Re: Is Google’s 20-year search dominance about to end?

#120

Post by AtNightWeCode » Wed, Feb 08, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #12

The gaming of SEO has been quietly destroying the utility of search writ large as a mechanism for quite a while. Over the last year, its become palpable. Google has such utility in this regard that in some cases, a hallucinating lie-machine offers better answer than an index of what information is available on the internet. This issue with with Googles failure to respond to the deluge of SEO driven content in their s…

They force you to follow their rules so it is cheaper for them to index the site. Then they allow all the SEO hacked content so you have to pay to get above that in the search results. Fun times.

And why is the GoogleBot still on HTTP 1.1...