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Google Search Is Dying (2022)

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Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#321

Post by Double_a_92 »

thadt wrote: post #218

People keep repeating the mantra that Google search is dying - but I think it's more that many just haven't yet understood that communities of people are the small oases in an otherwise vast, noisy information space. Of course Reddit, Hacker News, and Stack Overflow are where many (in this community) are going to find the most relevant information - that's where the people are. I remember clearly when I switched to u…

Maybe something like the original Yahoo would be good to have again? E.g. if I know Reddit exists, how do I easily find out that hackernews or stackoverflow also exits and are good sites?

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#323

Post by Double_a_92 »

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.

Because it's not that the sites it finds just has a bad or wrong opinion. Instead the whole site itself is usually a complete fraud or generated nonsense and it should be Googles job to kinda filter those out or rank them down. It would even help a lot if they just added a button to allow me to ban certain domains from my results.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#325

Post by izacus »

ilyt wrote: post #296
tokinonagare wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try asking why Aragorn is a black man in the future LotR set on /r/magicTCG and see how long you can ask a question on something related to a product in that hobby after that. There are other swift ways to get ban, like noting that the body shape of some characters were changed drastically in-between old and newer cards. Basically anything going against the pandering of WotC to some twitter users.

I got banned out of /r/games for asking "what rights trans people don't have that other humans do?" under post about someone yelling "trans rights are human rights" about Hogwart's legacy. Not being snarky at all, just curious (as I'm not from US and don't really get what the fuss is about). Still haven't got a coherent answer out of anyone I asked, just insults

That... sounds like a very well deserved ban considering the topic, the reddit and everything that was happening around it.

As a moderator of online communities I'd do the same in a heartbeat. Take that to Twitter or somewhere.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#326

Post by thesuitonym »

jjbickerstaffe wrote: post #117

I was an early adopter of Google Search around 2000 when it was better than Altavista. A few years ago I switched to DuckDuckGo. But in the autumn my DDG searches began to have only about 10 results for terms that should have had thousands of results. A couple of months ago I started paying for Kagi search and like it because it's like Google used to be 20 years ago – it shows interesting results.

Why do I feel like this post is actually a marketing operation for kagi?

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#327

Post by account42 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #210
jhoechtl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we need an internet without corporations? Sounds obvious but how we are supposed to achieve this? Easy self-hosted solutions, like IPFS or Gemini?

No, the pseudonymous nature of the platform, combined with the voting mechanism surfacing content (rather than a mechanism like "following" surfacing the relevant posts to you) makes the platform uniquely manipulable. That makes running these kinds of consensus-manufacturing campaigns easy. If you get rid of either of those mechanisms, you make it a lot harder to astroturf. HN would be the same way without dang.

Instead of making astroturfing harder you could also increase consequences for being caught and reward whistleblowers.

No company is going to risk posting without revealing that they are behind the post if doing so would result in - to make it extreme - jail time for the poster AND company leadership.

Ultimately, this is not really a technical problem but a social or legal one. As long as we let people get away with fraud - and let's be honest, astroturfing is fraud - then enterprising individuals will find ways around whatever technical means we put in place.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#328

Post by impalallama »

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.

HN perennial hit Kagi is good for this.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#329

Post by marginalia_nu »

izacus wrote: post #315
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…

> I imagine Google is in an awkward spot because, since ads is their bread and butter, they can't meaningfully penalize these websites without eating into their own bottom line. Many of the most intrusive ads are google ads. The fun thing is that NOT fixing this will kill them long term as well - they're like meth heads seeing how the drug is destroying their body and the short-term optimizing managers, C-suites and,…

Well how would you fix Google's predicament? I think it's easy enough to conclude they're harming themselves, but what are their options?

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#330

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

HWR_14 wrote: post #293
digitalsushi wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) remai…

Media companies pulling shows so quickly makes me sad. It's one of those cases where I think they constantly misread the data. "People don't watch shows with a long story arc as they come out, so we should cancel them" is really "people don't trust us to continue shows with a long story arc until a good stopping place, so they don't want to invest the time in starting new ones"

Part of it is they don't want to renegotiate pay with the cast of a successful show so they cut them off before that becomes an issue.
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