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Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

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Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#171

Post by asadotzler »

I search Google about 90% less using Firefox because I never have to use Google to find a site I was recently at.

In Firefox:

Add ^ to show only matches in your browsing history. Add * to show only matches in your bookmarks. Add + to show only matches in bookmarks you've tagged. Add % to show only matches in your currently open tabs. Add # to show only matches where your terms are part of a tag or title. Add $ to show only matches where your terms are part of the address. Add ? to show only search suggestions.

Armed with this, and &UDM=14 on my browser's Google Search, I use Google a couple times a day to find new things and without the AI slop, product ads, and other nonsense. That doesn't fix the shitty results themselves, but with a little bit of -quora and -reddit I can usually get what I'm after in the first 5-10 links.

Stop feeding that monster. Cut your usage. Find other tools that accomplish your goals (often faster and cheaper too) and then use Google for what it's good for, the occasional web search. With uBlock Origin and &udm=14 Google web search still beats Bing or Kagi or any of the Bing-based products like DDG.

Google Search sucking is only really an end user problem if you depend on it for a lot. If you only need to touch it a dozen times a week for a total of 5 minutes, it's not too terrible.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#172

Post by pokerface_86 »

balder1991 wrote: post #145
rjh29 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no money in it. It's expensive in both compute and storage to provide the tool, and they want most users to just be mindlessly consuming the front page or popular subreddits.

That’s my issue with Reddit nowadays. Most subreddits content is just the same question thrown over and over, and Reddit nowadays changes the home page to be just random algorithm selected stuff. And now I don’t have a choice to use Apollo anymore.

you could always side load apollo

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#173

Post by freediver »

leotravis10 wrote: post #163
Exuma wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn... that makes Kagi way less exciting. I thought they had some secret sauce. It's just a paid wrapper WTF

I fear that Kagi is going to suffer the same fate as Neeva did: "In a way, the brief flicker of Neeva’s existence tells everything you need to know about the last 20 years of search-engine supremacy. Building a search engine is hard. Building one better than Google is even harder. But if you want to beat Google, a better search engine is only the very beginning. And it only gets harder from there." [1] [1] https://ww…

Thank you for your concerns, but Kagi is not just sustainable but also profitable.

And if you want to know our plans, just check our own blog [1].

[1] https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-ai-search#philosophy

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#174

Post by 6510 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #56
rsolva wrote: post #40

We need to make bookmarks a common way to access the web again! So many people use Google or other search engines to access even the most basic sites, instead of storing a bookmark or typing out the whole URL. I have used a simple bookmarking strategy in Firefox for some years now, simply storing everything and anything I suspect I might want to retrieve later. I give each bookmark a few quick keywords and store it a…

Yeah, and, along the same lines, directories should perhaps also make a comeback -- like the old Yahoo! Directory or DMOZ. Just a carefully curated and organized list of trusted sites that are made and managed by humans and for humans. Unlike, say, DMOZ, the directory of the future should be easier to navigate and incorporate "modern" features -- and it should also be easily searchable. (All sites on the directory ar…

You could make the topical hierarchy as deep as possible and build a search that only searches the current category.

I recon LLM's, with minimal oversight, could file websites as well as articles on websites under all the appropriate categories.

Google is highly confused about articles vs websites about a topic. There should be a distinction. Sometimes I want a website, sometimes just an article.

Making it into a distributed index complete with cached copies seems fun. Have the hosted giant monolith mirror to fail back on but attempt to do everything p2p.

Maybe it should bluntly show a dialog in the corner of the screen with closest related websites (or pages) and a button to further browse the index using the current page as the query. Basically contextual advertisement only for free.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#175

Post by mejutoco »

EasyMark wrote: post #151
mejutoco wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding desktop bookmarks: Adding tags on Firefox is so natural (ctrl+D and maybe tab for comma separated tags). In Chrome it is not possible without an extension.

can't you just save them on the end of the title? doesnt it search through the titles when searching the bookmarks? It's all just a big grep through your bookmarks anyway whether it's in tags or titles

That is exactly what an extension I use does, but it adds friction compared to Firefox ergonomic one.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#176

Post by oissla »

jmyeet wrote: post #14

So I'm normally skeptical of the anecodata you see on HN and elsewhere ("Google is now useless, I switched to DuckDuckGo 23 years ago") but it seems like Google has done rather big things here: 1. Greatly increased the weight of doamin authority. This... seems desperate; 2. Increased the weight of reddit. Google have probably noticed how many people add "reddit" or "site:reddit.com" to search terms. I do this too. It…

This. The seo effect on google is just gonna be transferred to reddit, which as of now has very little account fraud detection. Good luck to Reddi's t&s team

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#177

Post by rldjbpin »

throwaway211 wrote: post #28

Two big reasons people add Reddit to search phrases is because Reddit's search isn't functional and to deprioritise Ad Junk from search. It's to fix broken search, which gets more broken - more unwanted Ad Junk. But Google's an advertising company with it's ad search device in everyone's pocket. At least it's reached sufficient post-don't-be-evil to be honestly shameless, even if it does employ people in PR with brok…

on the contrary, i have stopped using reddit due to how most communities work there since past few years. i wish every subreddit was full of nuanced, balanced discussions but it is rarely the case from my experience.

ironically the recent ai overviews results are partially referencing sarcastic reddit posts, like cheeze and glue.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#178

Post by rldjbpin »

rutierut wrote: post #45
david-gpu wrote: post #4

Over the past several months I find Google search has become completely useless to find anything other than online retailers. I thought it may have been just something about my profile, but this article suggests it may have been an update on their end. Meanwhile, Duckduckgo still provides decent results in my experience.

DDG was such an absolutely subpar experience for me (used it for 6-8 months) that it wouldn't surprise me if nobody would _actually_ say it's better in a blind test. They just don't like Google. Kagi on the other hand really blew me away, I have no idea how they're doing it, but I'm only using Google for one thing these days (besides G Shopping & G Maps) which is when I want to use ad spend as proxy for quality/relia…

having used ddg for more than 5 years, i'd only agree with your sentiments in the first year or so. at first, i'd just use the bangs feature and do real search on google using !g bang. but for past few years i am exclusively searching on ddg. the only exception being searching travel directions.

a lot of search people do can be done in domain-specific websites, which ddg bangs allow you to do with ease. i am surprised to see that people are driven enough to pay for search before fully making the most of ddg.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#179

Post by yreg »

EasyMark wrote: post #150
zarathustreal wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a cesspool, at least the standard subreddits. It’s worse than Twitter. It also has a moderation culture that kind of promotes toxic traits and petty power trips. Used to be pretty good for finding niche info, but most of it for my uses was deleted back when everyone left. Can’t imagine still using Reddit nowadays

I find decent info in plenty of subs, you just have to stay away from the front page/popular subs, Especially the comments in those items. Total garbage full of people ranting. I give it a go a couple times a year but nothing ever changes. Just people raging at each other.

Sure, there's a lot of valuable information and I often append my web searches with “reddit”.

But I no longer go to reddit to spend time there, without looking for specific information.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#180

Post by culebron21 »

rutierut wrote: post #45
david-gpu wrote: post #4

Over the past several months I find Google search has become completely useless to find anything other than online retailers. I thought it may have been just something about my profile, but this article suggests it may have been an update on their end. Meanwhile, Duckduckgo still provides decent results in my experience.

DDG was such an absolutely subpar experience for me (used it for 6-8 months) that it wouldn't surprise me if nobody would _actually_ say it's better in a blind test. They just don't like Google. Kagi on the other hand really blew me away, I have no idea how they're doing it, but I'm only using Google for one thing these days (besides G Shopping & G Maps) which is when I want to use ad spend as proxy for quality/relia…

Since 2015 I made some futile attempts to switch to DDG, and mostly used google, but last year I noticed myself using DDG 90% of times, because DDG got far better, and G turned in a page of junk, or showing generic stuff instead of specific. G spectacularly shot itself in the foot.
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