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DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

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Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#151

Post by gruez »

burnte wrote: post #148
qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

I think it's a multifold problem and they've chosen bad solutions. 1. To protect ad revenue they make search results worse to increase the number of searches by making people refine their searches. This made people upset because search result quality went down. 2. "AI everywhere!" put them in a panic, so they shoved am LLM into results, hoping it could pick through bad results and give good data to the user. 3. LLMs…

>1. To protect ad revenue they make search results worse to increase the number of searches by making people refine their searches. This made people upset because search result quality went down.

Why would this work? Were yahoo and askjeeves sandbagging their results too just so they can get more clicks?

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#152

Post by leereeves »

alberto467 wrote: post #132
eithed wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why let a cooking website get visitors and ad revenue when they are free to take the content and show it as their own? I think this is a step beyond that - why should people be creating cooking websites when you can ask LLM how to cook given thing, while indeed, serving their own ads. It's the continuation of "we own content other people produce" policy

You can also tell the LLM exactly what you have in the fridge or what allergies you have and get customized recipes. It’s just a better experience, 2026 is rough for a recipe site.

> You can also tell the LLM exactly what you have in the fridge or what allergies you have and get customized recipes.

Can you really though? Are the results delicious? I've never tried that.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#153

Post by alex1138 »

burnte wrote: post #148
qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

I think it's a multifold problem and they've chosen bad solutions. 1. To protect ad revenue they make search results worse to increase the number of searches by making people refine their searches. This made people upset because search result quality went down. 2. "AI everywhere!" put them in a panic, so they shoved am LLM into results, hoping it could pick through bad results and give good data to the user. 3. LLMs…

I don't know how much control Goog has over Youtube despite owning them but I do note in passing they removed dislikes, removed upload dates (apparently?), removed 5 stars. Easier to trick people into ads

The platform has been various kinds of hostile for a few years now

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#154

Post by tredre3 »

crazygringo wrote: post #116
qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

> but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. Not me. I really appreciate having both results simultaneously. I can scan the first couple sentences of the AI response, and if that already has the answer then great. I can expand it to see if there's more. Or, if I see that the AI mode didn't understand my brief search query, I just glance at the search results below. And often times, when I do ne…

> I can scan the first couple sentences of the AI response, and if that already has the answer then great.

But how do make the determination that the answer is good and you should stop reading the page? Vibes?

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#155

Post by pbhjpbhj »

SirFatty wrote: post #77
gazebo2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, "AI Mode" is the default result when you Google something, so of course they're seeing high usage. Driving an increase in total queries is probably because instead of just Googling something and getting the right results like it was 10~ years ago, now you have to interrogate a chatbot or try multiple queries. I would think higher total queries is more an indicator that your search function isn't effective.

"I mean, "AI Mode" is the default result when you Google something" No, it's not. AI mode is something you have to select (in the search window). There is an AI overview provided with your basic search results.

I agree with their assessment that '"AI mode" is the default' - https://ibb.co/Pz9LqKRb.

That's what I get, in the UK, logged out of Google, from a search in Firefox omnibar using "Google" as provider.

I'm aware that they have other things that can be described as AI modes.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#157

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

"I truly don't get Google's move."

"AI" gets higher volume of use than search. This was disclosed by Google under oath

More traffic, more usage time, more data collection

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#158

Post by 866-RON-0-FEZ »

mrdependable wrote: post #75
qsort wrote: post #20

I truly don't get Google's move. I'm sure the model is fine, but it's not Google Search, and when I want Search I want Search. If I wanted to ask an AI, why can't I ask the one from my subscription... that I'm already paying for... that's actually good... that can also search the web? I assume it's a play to test the waters for how the ad market is going to work, because as a product I really can't see why I would ev…

They want to capture more of the value that was previously going to others. That's basically what this has all been leading to. Why let a cooking website get visitors and ad revenue when they are free to take the content and show it as their own? Now they are going to do the same to e-commerce. Either they are going to let customers buy their products through Google's interface, or they won't be discovered. No more o…

Maybe it's high time to burn it all down.

Block Googlebot from your sites.

Let's go back to webrings.

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#159

Post by pbhjpbhj »

WarmWash wrote: post #147
esseph wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving an increase in total queries is probably because instead of just Googling something and getting the right results like it was 10~ years ago, now you have to interrogate a chatbot or try multiple queries. I would think higher total queries is more an indicator that your search function isn't effective. I wonder how much the search results thing is related to language and locality. I have a hunch but I haven'…

It started when Google made a hard push to improve search for everyday people. They essentially nerfed "expert google skills" to bolster "noob google skills". Regular people are/were really bad at using google, so google moved towards showing what it thinks you want rather than what you want. They paved over the skill gap between people who understood keywords and word order, and people who just typed in a quasi legi…

>"a hard push to improve search for everyday people"

Citation needed. A hard push to change their search offering, sure. To improve it? Well, if by improve you mean 'require more interaction and viewing of more adverts on average before leaving' ...

Re: DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode

#160

Post by hilariously »

leereeves wrote: post #152
alberto467 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also tell the LLM exactly what you have in the fridge or what allergies you have and get customized recipes. It’s just a better experience, 2026 is rough for a recipe site.

> You can also tell the LLM exactly what you have in the fridge or what allergies you have and get customized recipes. Can you really though? Are the results delicious? I've never tried that.

It's worse than you think, many recipe sites do not taste test their stuff at all, and often have very stupid instructions.

That being said, an LLM can give creative ideas, mix and match components, but you should not trust the details at all.

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