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Google Search Is Dying (2022)

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Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#261

Post by thiht »

mastodon_acc wrote: post #138
thiht wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Search is broken for subjective searches. If you search "best xxx", Google will only return crap. "best xxx reddit" still gives relevant information.

How is that Google's fault? are you expecting a "Search" engine to perform qualitative analysis on your specific topic and generate a list for you? "best xxx reddit" that's google working as intended, you searched for a topic on reddit. I swear with the proliferation of LLMs most people have completely forgotten what a "search" in a search engine means.

> How is that Google's fault

Because the top results are complete crap, and obvious SEO spams in most cases. If Google just allowed me to blacklist some sites from my search results I could actually get good results.

Also maybe they shouldn't not rewrite my queries for me, I don't need them to helpfully remove 3 words out of 5 from my search.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#262

Post by matheusmoreira »

yunohn wrote: post #105
owisd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you provide less monetisation for content creators, you end up with less content too. This is not as simple as you think…

I don't want "content", some generic attention grabbing placeholder around which they spam ads. I don't want some professionally made lowest common denominator product designed to appeal to the widest possible audience. I want creations with heart and soul. I want to read the opinions and writings of real human beings, not corporate PR articles with cleverly disguised pitches at the end.

People who don't have enough intrinsic motivation to create regardless of financial reward probably aren't producing anything of value. That basically excludes every for profit website out there that would be "killed" by less monetization. Killing them off is a good thing.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#263

Post by zzbzq »

carlosjobim wrote: post #187
wslh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limit your search to Reddit, HN and/or Stack Exchange! I really loved the first paragraph of the article about Reddit: "Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit". I want to add this that just happened at my company, that shows really bad execution on the Reddit side. Bad as if the current Reddit management is surfing tiny waves in some paradise. Ou…

To me all signs point to Reddit never having been a commercial venture, but rather an influence and propaganda machine for United States government agencies. So they already have their budget paid.

What are "all signs"? Shit you made up in your head? It's owned by China for godsakes, what a half-baked conspiracy theory

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#264

Post by whywhywhywhy »

JCM9 wrote: post #17

The two biggest problems I’ve seen develop with Google are that: 1. The quality of the search algorithm’s ability to sift through nonsense to find “the good stuff” seems to have gotten progressively worse, and that’s largely fueled by: 2. Google is only really searching the “public” Internet but that’s increasingly a wasteland full of garbage where all the “good stuff” is now behind walled off gardens that Goggle doe…

> Google is only really searching the “public” Internet but that’s increasingly a wasteland full of garbage

Have you tried other search engines because you might be surprised that the problem is more to do with Google than the internet.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#265

Post by supriyo-biswas »

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.

You could use ublacklist[1], it does filtering of search results on the client side. arosh’s list is a good place to start blocking crap.

[1] https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist

[2] https://github.com/arosh?tab=repositories

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#266

Post by digitalsushi »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #254

I don't know if it's Google that is dying. It's more like a large segment of the public facing internet is wilting. The user experience without an adblocker is almost nothing but ads, popovers, permission requests and chat boxes, sign-up-to-the-newsletter requests. And these are the websites that aren't trying to bait-and-switch you For example, this is the screen I'm showed when I navigate to www.producthunt.com: ht…

Our attention is the only valuable thing left. Browsers run competing tech stacks and pile on and draw off a mass of blinking things trying to get the attention. It's a tiny little war happening in real time on our screens.

AI chat things are liquids held in vials, a thumb flick away from pouring into our favorite places online, changing them irrevocably. Will our attention in these places (reddit, here, et al) remain high when most of the people we're talking with are algorithmic?

Media companies create new shows and pull them away more quickly than we can finish consuming them, as realtime engagement metrics quickly show their bosses which must be most profitable, most popular, most attention grabbing.

It makes a good case for going back: watching shows from decades earlier, that have a beginning middle and end. Dropping social media time for books. And the missing analogue, how to give up on google searches because they too, are at a parity of value with their offering and their attention stealing properties.

I'm just an angry person shaking his fist at the sky from an armchair. I love these threads because I always come away with a new perspective.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#267

Post by NBJack »

ilyt wrote: post #247
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is one of the most astroturfed places on the internet, and there's an entire ecology of PR/marketing firms that focus exclusively on it. There's also a thriving market in "high karma" accounts, which can be bought for as little as $30. > Reddit also doesn't have "promoted" content / responses It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. And low-karma or new a…

Entirely depends on subreddit in question > It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. And low-karma or new accounts are de facto shadowbanned. It's used more as protection from SEO spammers and this is just unfortunate side effect for new users. Other problem is that karma is global which basically means user on popular subreddits will gain it quickly so any karm…

And it's not a great protection system at all. Just like how content generators are gaming Google search, there is a problem now with bots that find what is popular and repost it later (with a wording change) for karma farming.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#269

Post by toss1 »

wslh wrote: post #168
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…

Limit your search to Reddit, HN and/or Stack Exchange! I really loved the first paragraph of the article about Reddit: "Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit". I want to add this that just happened at my company, that shows really bad execution on the Reddit side. Bad as if the current Reddit management is surfing tiny waves in some paradise. Ou…

>>Limit your search to Reddit, HN and/or Stack Exchange!

Yup, Google and it's main result set has for quite a while been dead to me (ya, I use DDG, and pretty much threat the main result set that way too). Finding valid detailed comments on Reddit, HN, or SE is what I use for primary clues.

Sadly, this has a predictably limited shelf-life.

When using Amazon for product search, for a short while, it worked really well to sort results by avg review grade. Very short while, as the reviews rapidly filled with fakes. Now, I need to go manually into each review set and compare the quantities and qualities of 1_Star + 2_Star reviews as a primary filter for scam products (& ignoring the idiot posts giving 1_Star for a shipping problem). Now, even using Fakespot and those tactics, the well of Amazon Reviews is quite fully poisoned, to the extent that I now specifically avoid shopping there for entire categories.

Now that this is being discovered about Reddit, HN, & SE, we can expect the inevitable "flooding of the zone with shit".

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#270

Post by foobarian »

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…

This is a major reason I think LLMs could help with SERPs - presumably it will be a lot harder to do SEO effectively because now it involves the model training barrier.
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