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Google Search Is Dying (2022)

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Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#341

Post by polski-g »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #304
girvo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord as the go-to community hub for things like programming languages makes a little bit sad, knowing it’s all ephemeral and locked up. At least the Nim team has a Matrix bridge I guess, so it’s a solvable problem somewhat. But I find joining yet another Discord group just obnoxious. I long for the async-only text forums of yore. I’m getting old, aren’t I.

How would you even index something like Discord? It's mostly a chat app, where discussions are casual and often mixed togheter with others... It's not like a forum where each post is at least a somewhat coherent thought written out properly.

Discord should be publishing chat logs in HTML format, like how FreeNode did for their IRC logs.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#342

Post by marcosdumay »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #203
onion2k wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if human readers know what's a good search result and what isn't That assumes there's a single, canonical idea of what a "good result" looks like. I imagine that's dependent on a lot of factors, from the context of why the user is searching, their demographic, and their biases. When I search for "chocolate chip cookie recipe" I want straight facts - ingredients and bullet point steps and nothing else. My mother would…

Recipes are a pain in general, even without google, doubly so for baking. Baking is a science, not art... so recipes calling for a cup of flour and two teaspoons of butter are useless to me, while recipes with ingredients in grams are useless to many american grandmas. On the other hand, a pinterest page with a photo and a large overlay asking me to register is useless to both of us.

Nowadays a cup and a tablespoon are standard unities of volume. They are not any worse than milliliters. There are a few people that insist on ignoring the standards, but those also tend to not publish their recipes.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#343

Post by Jensson »

GeekyBear wrote: post #316
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 don't know if it's Google that is dying. I tried to use Google to see what would be good brand to replace a decade old small electrical appliance that failed a couple of months ago. Absolutely none of the results were helpful until I tried the "append Reddit to the search terms" trick. Immediately, I found a link someone had shared to a consumer reports style review of different brands at different price points.…

It is impressive that Google manages to rank reddit threads very well though. They don't have reddits internal data, do they look at reddit upvote scores or what? Why would the helpful thread be higher ranked than all the content spam on reddit? Google must do something really clever in order to be so good at indexing useful reddit threads.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#344

Post by auggierose »

danaris wrote: post #303
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…

> Our attention is the only valuable thing left. That's...just not true, though. You know what's still more valuable than our attention? Our money. The only reason they want our attention is to get our money. A big part of the problem is how many people simply don't have enough money, due to the stagnation of real wages and the increase in the cost of housing, health care, and higher education, among other things. If…

Nah, that's not true. People just don't like to spend money, especially when they are rich.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#345

Post by trinsic2 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #262
yunohn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed. If content creators are more interested in getting something back (money) then they are creating something of value to society and disseminating it in a simple and clean way then I'm forced to think twice about their motives.

If you put the cart (making money) before the horse (creating value) then you are not really a productive member of society. Takers are like irresponsible children, they take without any awareness of the ramifications their behavior has on society.

This kind of attitude is similar to colonialism, an attitude representative of most of commercial enterprises today. Givers give value knowing that when they give, they receive, without any need to unnaturally focus on the end result.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#346

Post by brookst »

Retric wrote: post #197
KarlKemp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You misunderstand, if you penalize excessive advertising then the revenue generated per page view decreases. This will reduce but not eliminate the amount of effort spent on these projects resulting in fewer such webpages. So ‘How to unclog a toilet’ is always going to get SEO optimized spam. However, most topics don’t get that many views making them less viable for this business model.

> the revenue generated per page view decreases

That assumption is worth reconsidering. It may be that fewer ads would just be more expensive to run and would work out similarly revenue-wise in the long run. The value of lots of ads may be diversification and smoothing out revenue, not increasing net.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#347

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

> Thankfully Linux-related searches are still useful.

Mostly if you add an specific distro on your terms. It doesn't have to be your distro, just one that cares about what you are searching.

If you just ask for "how do I do X in linux", you will get plenty of spam and a few wrong answers here or there.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#348

Post by ruszki »

Yesterday I wanted to figure out whether some languages are more difficult than others as a native language. Google failed miserably. Nowadays, there are things, simple things like that, for which Google is increasingly useless. I encounter such every week. This definitely didn’t happen 10 years ago. In this case, it gave me results about bullshit ad sites, random barely related Quora questions, what languages are more difficult for native English speakers. Nothing helped. Zero proper result in 10 minutes. There were none which I could use as a reference, or had any proper reference.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#349

Post by JohnFen »

carlosjobim wrote: post #302
JohnFen wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Videos are far less useful than text.

Not at all! It depends greatly on the content and the person. For recipes it is actually useful to see with your own eyes how to do something. The same thing with many other things, such as for example carpentry and mechanics. I agree that text is better for tech content and for a lot of other things that are mostly text based, or more abstract. We've been conditioned into thinking text is better because we've all be…

Well, I should have said "text is better for me". Especially for recipes, which are a list of instructions. I just need to see the list, not have someone tell it to me.

Videos aren't dense enough, information-wise. I can't just put them up on a screen as a reference, and they require too much interaction as I have to back up, play, back up, play, back up, etc. in order to use the information being relayed.

If I only have a video telling me something, it's better than nothing, but it's going to slow me down, reduce my understanding, and will inevitably leave out detail that is important to me.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#350

Post by account42 »

throwaway1851 wrote: post #75

I have often wished that there were a search engine that would let me filter out pages with monetization (affiliate links, calls to action, ads, etc.). However, every time I consider this idea, I wonder how much of the web would be left. Besides social media sites, government pages, and technology blogs, is there a lot of authentic content out there on arbitrary topics? Perhaps even if Google were motivated to delive…

Forums, tech documentation, personal websites.

I think for many queries, a non-commercial search engines would have plenty of relevant pages to show.

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