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Google Search Is Dying (2022)

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Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#151

Post by dageshi »

tokinonagare wrote: post #8
tzhenghao wrote: post #2

> The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust. Reddit was also partly successful in that regard because it catered to niche communities who ask the most interesting questions and, trolls aside, responses from the community that's generally trustworthy. There are literally subreddits with discussions on solutions that are deemed better than what you get from customer support. Reddit als…

> Reddit was Yes, it was somewhat good in the past but an alternative is sorely needed. Most popular subs (at least the one I frequent) are moderated to the point that censored would be the more appropriate word to describe the situation. Then there are whole subs banned (including non political) for wrongthink.

This point is always brought up and it has no relevance in terms of what we're discussing which boils down to opinions on products and services from people who have some expertise in the matter.

You're not going to get banned from a hobby sub for asking a question on something related to a product in that hobby.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#152

Post by pcrh »

andrewstuart wrote: post #107
projektfu wrote: post #98

"How do I fix some odd setting in Windows, Mac, whatever" 2007: results include documentation, a couple forums, if you're unlucky there's a potentially malware tool that's discovered people need to fix this. 2012: results include Reddit and Stack Exchange, documentation has disappeared, forums have opened that are full of "support specialists" telling you to reset your windows install. 2023: top results are just blog…

Today, ChatGPT gives you an instant step by step guide which may or may not be correct but will likely get you there.

User: How do I fix large pdf files?

ChatGPT: delete system32

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#153

Post by flir »

treyhuffine wrote: post #149

The recent success of ChatGPT shows that the current search experience is likely deprecated. With LLMs, you can get information immediately that directly answers your query. ChatGPT has its limits too though - it's not always right, you don't have options other than to re-ask or regenerate if the one answer doesn't satisfy what you need, we're limited to only text, and the experience may be just a bit too contained/c…

> With LLMs, you can get information immediately that directly answers your query.

Not as long as they're relying on humans to write pages with that information in. When nobody visits, what's the point in writing a page?

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#154

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

mmcgaha wrote: post #150
kstenerud wrote: post #7

The worst is the SEO pages, especially for popular how-to topics. Every single first page result will be a page that has expanded what used to be said in bullet point form, into a 1500 word essay that you must now slog through in order to get the information you need. And this is by necessity, because Google values prose over bullet points. The majority of things that come up on search nowadays consist of computer-ge…

Maybe I am wrong about this, and maybe the SEO junk sites would find a way to evolve, but what I really want from google is a plonk button so I can have a personal kill file for sites that I never want to see again.

Wow, yes to this -- your own google blacklist.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#156

Post by regularfry »

000ooo000 wrote: post #82
AdamN wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with a sub banning/censoring people. That's a critical part of having a trust value within a social network and if moderators of a popular sub don't think a poster is meeting the bar to post it is good for them to ban it and become higher trust. If they go too far than there won't be content on the sub at all though. For instance /r/AskHistorians has a very high bar for posting and threads are c…

>There's nothing wrong with a sub banning/censoring people. That's a critical part of having a trust value within a social network I would not characterise a community moulded according to the whims of a few anonymous individuals as high in trust.

It's high in trust of a very specific type. Not, perhaps, the type we want or need, but the type we have nonetheless.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#157

Post by paleotrope »

moffkalast wrote: post #133
projektfu wrote: post #98

"How do I fix some odd setting in Windows, Mac, whatever" 2007: results include documentation, a couple forums, if you're unlucky there's a potentially malware tool that's discovered people need to fix this. 2012: results include Reddit and Stack Exchange, documentation has disappeared, forums have opened that are full of "support specialists" telling you to reset your windows install. 2023: top results are just blog…

> forums have opened that are full of "support specialists" telling you to reset your windows install God this is such a pet peeve, those stupid Microsoft forums especially where the customer reps spend 80% of the comment apologizing and wishing a good day and suggest fuck all. They ought to just pull the plug on the site and let reddit handle their support for free.

Most of that support is free. It's some weird universe where Microsoft gives out fake credentials (forum badges and crap) to people that don't know what they are doing. These poor people in India and other places are spamming tons of useless "fixes" for internet cred.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#158

Post by mcherm »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #154
mmcgaha wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I am wrong about this, and maybe the SEO junk sites would find a way to evolve, but what I really want from google is a plonk button so I can have a personal kill file for sites that I never want to see again.

Wow, yes to this -- your own google blacklist.

As a bonus, Google would have access to the list of who had blacklisted what sites -- surely that would be useful to them as a signal to detect "SEO spam sites".

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#159

Post by KarlKemp »

owisd wrote: post #73
Gigachad wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally anything google values will be abused and ruin the internet. If they valued shortness then everything would be trimmed to bullet points removing useful info. The problem is really not that google is doing a bad job, it’s that the incentives to get views on pages ruins the internet.

I disagree that whatever ranking system google uses will just be gamed to the same extent. If google downgraded the rank of pages with lots of ads and trackers it would substantially reduce the incentive to game the system, the reason it won’t is because most of those pages are running Adsense so there’s every incentive for google to keep the status quo.

No, the reason they won't is that trackers and ads have little to do with the value of the content.

As long as there are any ads, the incentives stay the same. You're saying an internet completely free of monetary incentives would be better. I doubt that's true but it really doesn't matter, because it won't be happening.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#160

Post by SCdF »

On the PG tweet[1], posts like this make me feel like I'm losing my mind. I cannot get over how the tweet says "Reddit is unique in social media" while the Instagram graph is literally identical to Reddit's and are right beside each other on the graphic that accompanies the words. You cannot miss it. It's also very selective, as the Twitch guy points out, and it's also google search terms, which aren't really that indicative. But I guess PG === default insightful? Wild.

On using reddit as a search engine, I agree that for certain types of information it's very helpful, specifically in theory authentic user experiences. Twitter is also useful here, though not to the level of detail. You could argue that stack exchange is the same thing: user generated truth that by and large aren't search engine spam.

[1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1360263618508521480

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