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Google tools for customizing searches

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Re: Google tools for customizing searches

#11

Post by jonathanlydall »

That verbatim option looks like it might be a way to largely bring back the old Google which tended to work quite well for me (except that modern SEO spam means we can probably never have the old Google again).

I’ve been pissed off with Google for (10+?) years now, ever since it became apparent to me that they changed their search from returning what you queried to some kind of fuzzy guess at what they think you’re looking for (probably based on what average, ie, non technical, people look for).

Possibly that verbatim option puts it back to what used to work pretty well for me, but because they changed it without really saying and then made the option for the old behaviour hidden away with an obtuse name, I had no idea about it until reading this article and had largely written them off as being more interested in showing adverts than what I was actually looking for.

Once I discovered that ChatGPT and similar are almost always way better at finding what I was actually looking for than Google ever was, Google is now very far from my first choice of search service.

It also helps that LLMs tend to be very good at helping you find the correct term, project, technology name, etc, for something when you’re not sure up front of what term to search for exactly.

Re: Google tools for customizing searches

#12

Post by adaptbrian »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #11

That verbatim option looks like it might be a way to largely bring back the old Google which tended to work quite well for me (except that modern SEO spam means we can probably never have the old Google again). I’ve been pissed off with Google for (10+?) years now, ever since it became apparent to me that they changed their search from returning what you queried to some kind of fuzzy guess at what they think you’re l…

Modern day seo spam is attributed to Google dumping page rank in American serps starting back in 2018. Brands were propped up by signals others can't emulate and the smart seos realized it was a fools errand to work anywhere except in house at said brands so they could continue to easily spam and not get noticed, collect easy pay checks and sit on hacker news all day.

This take is so tiring to read on HN. GOOG won the FUD WAR with Russias misinfo playbook.

Ohh yea. E-a-e-t.

GOOG doesn't track clicks either..........

Re: Google tools for customizing searches

#13

Post by shevy-java »

> A 2024 study by SparkToro found that nearly 60% of Google searches end without anyone clicking through to a website, and the trend has accelerated since. By February 2026, Ahrefs found that queries triggering AI Overviews now see a 58% reduction in clicks.

I disable the AI spam by Google, but even doing so still does not help uncripple what Google ruined here. Google search is next to useless now - and that was a deliberate change by Google. Oddly enough, the alternative search engines also suck, so I don't blame Google for everything - just the majority part of suckage here.

We need a new search engine. Google failed us here. AdCompanies always fail. Google committed to an ads only company.

Re: Google tools for customizing searches

#14

Post by shevy-java »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #11

That verbatim option looks like it might be a way to largely bring back the old Google which tended to work quite well for me (except that modern SEO spam means we can probably never have the old Google again). I’ve been pissed off with Google for (10+?) years now, ever since it became apparent to me that they changed their search from returning what you queried to some kind of fuzzy guess at what they think you’re l…

> Once I discovered that ChatGPT and similar are almost always way better at finding what I was actually looking for than Google ever was, Google is now very far from my first choice of search service.

I found that all of them really suck nowadays. AI also hallucinates and lies to me, which means they waste my time. Wikipedia is still ok but the AI Skynet crap is constantly attacking it, trying to erode its quality.

Re: Google tools for customizing searches

#15

Post by shevy-java »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #9
AlecSchueler wrote: post #7

> Wrapping a phrase in quotation marks forces Google to find pages where those exact words appear in that exact order. This hasn't been the case for at least five years surely?

Maybe it needs that verbatim option?

I found that Google ignores it for the most part.

I also think that behaviour kind of came from youtube. For videos it makes a tiny bit more sense to ignore what the person wanted. For google search it makes no sense, and this is one of many more reasons why I think Google must be disbanded.

Re: Google tools for customizing searches

#16

Post by jonathanlydall »

adaptbrian wrote: post #12
jonathanlydall wrote: post #11

That verbatim option looks like it might be a way to largely bring back the old Google which tended to work quite well for me (except that modern SEO spam means we can probably never have the old Google again). I’ve been pissed off with Google for (10+?) years now, ever since it became apparent to me that they changed their search from returning what you queried to some kind of fuzzy guess at what they think you’re l…

Modern day seo spam is attributed to Google dumping page rank in American serps starting back in 2018. Brands were propped up by signals others can't emulate and the smart seos realized it was a fools errand to work anywhere except in house at said brands so they could continue to easily spam and not get noticed, collect easy pay checks and sit on hacker news all day. This take is so tiring to read on HN. GOOG won th…

Well whatever the cause, SEO spam means that searching for anything generally popular returns pages and pages of results to sites with low depth content and no real substance.

I realized this when I was curious to know when a TV show’s next season may start and all the search results were useless fluff articles, even though their titles looked promising.

In conjunction with my having concluded some time prior that they had generally switched their search (for example when searching for software development stuff) to seemingly always assume I was actually searching for something else, made me convinced that Google had become quite useless.

Re: Google tools for customizing searches

#17

Post by jeromechoo »

This is a fantastic resource. The author only briefly covers library databases, but there's so much more in structured querying that could be worth covering.

For example, you can use Sparql to perform structured queries on Wikidata (a structured database version of Wikipedia) to get well beyond unstructured documents.

Here's every person in Wikibase that was born in NYC: https://query.wikidata.org/#%23Humans%20born%20in%20New%20Yo...

Re: Google tools for customizing searches

#19

Post by cindyllm »

shevy-java wrote: post #14
jonathanlydall wrote: post #11

That verbatim option looks like it might be a way to largely bring back the old Google which tended to work quite well for me (except that modern SEO spam means we can probably never have the old Google again). I’ve been pissed off with Google for (10+?) years now, ever since it became apparent to me that they changed their search from returning what you queried to some kind of fuzzy guess at what they think you’re l…

> Once I discovered that ChatGPT and similar are almost always way better at finding what I was actually looking for than Google ever was, Google is now very far from my first choice of search service. I found that all of them really suck nowadays. AI also hallucinates and lies to me, which means they waste my time. Wikipedia is still ok but the AI Skynet crap is constantly attacking it, trying to erode its quality.

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