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In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

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Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#211

Post by georgiecasey »

bmitc wrote: post #69
BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

It drives me crazy how Google never fails to remove the most unique and yet most important words of my search term. It basically does this 99% of the time now.

I wonder are they doing this because of a resources issue; do including all the unique words put too much of a hit on their servers and it's way cheaper to give generic results?

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#212

Post by hef19898 »

gonehome wrote: post #63
BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

Oh yeah, try finding honest product comparisons and test. It is spam or "aggregated tests" on shopping sites. latest examples: cameras and tires. Cameras worked reasonably well on youtube (required some diging to get the "influencer" stuff out of the way). Tires required going through various forums. because every single video or review for tires I was looking for was product placement, spam or both. in the end price and availability decided the tire question. sometimes I miss the times when you had magazines catering for a certain domain doing honest tests and reviews. Well, even back then magazines started to prefer Canon over Nikon or the other way round.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#213

Post by blueboo »

dundarious wrote: post #143
gonehome wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I search Google now I mostly get spam. “Product vs. Product” -> list of spam websites that just show them side by side with ads. “Product Review” -> same as above, spam. “Product referral code” -> sites with spam and no codes. Interesting web content is in Reddit (and youtube), Google exists as a tool to search Reddit since the “new” Reddit site is awful. Programming questions are mostly stack overflow, but occa…

I have a cat that is always ravenous for anything edible, even if it's not exactly typical cat fare, e.g., my leftover salad, berries, etc. Trying to search for "can cats eat X" after he manages to get a few sneaky morsels is almost pointless. There are so many spammy sites for every value of X, and I have no idea if it's a sophisticated problem to systematically exclude this type of useless content, but Google's top…

Is it really that bad? I tried three queries.

Can cats eat chocolate? Yields ovrs.com (Oakland vet), purina, webmd, thesprucepets.com (cat blog run by vets), pdsa (pet veterinary charity)...

Can cats eat grapes? Yields top-N dangerous foods for cats listicles from various sites such as pet insurance and cat food brands. A response from a veterinary trust is in the top ten.

Can cats eat paint? Yields all reputable medical sources for the first several hits.

I’m not sure I can square this with your description of ubiquitous spam swamping out useful information.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#214

Post by Graffur »

allenu wrote: post #54
Robotbeat wrote: post #26

Half of my Googles are literally just using Google as a calculator.

I used to do that until I realized on Mac, I can just cmd-spacebar to do Spotlight search and type my equation in there.

Thanks for posting that. I never knew that. It does currency conversion too but unfortunately not crypto

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#215

Post by Shared404 »

edoceo wrote: post #198
Shared404 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always happy to help! I try to "collect" search engines, so I'm always interested in finding more/sharing the ones I've found.

Now I'm waiting for your Show HN curated list of alternative search engines

I've thought about doing it before. I don't have quite enough to justify a Show HN though.

You can see the list here[0], and if you see more feel free to send them my way!

[0] http://a-shared-404.com/other-stuff/

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#216

Post by [deleted] »

nafizh wrote: post #96
axaxs wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with everything above. If I ever X vs Y in google, I append site:reddit.com I'm not a huge fan of Reddit, but it's about the largest forum. I really miss Forum search in Google.

Yesterday I discovered, if you go to the 2nd page of the search results the "site:example.com" no longer works. The user hostility is shocking.

[deleted]

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#217

Post by godshatter »

AlexandrB wrote: post #200
ImpressiveWebs wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn’t want people to find alternative sources for news, healthcare, and politics. They now force all the mainstream sources to the top, regardless of whether the search terms entered have any relation to the actual results. And this seems to have carried over to other subjects as well, because I can never find obscure pages any more. This should destroy Google, but for some reason it doesn’t, and it baffles…

> alternative healthcare I don't blame Google for this. 99% of alternative medicine is quackery and it's almost impossible to separate wheat from chaff in an automated way.

Why should Google care about this? Maybe I'm trying to find examples of egregious claims made about a particular alternative medicine.

I only want Google Search to filter based on search terms, not it's creators opinions about what I'm searching for.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#218

Post by DanBC »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Google results have gotten dramatically worse over this last decade. Google now seems to fixate on the most common terms in my query and returns the most generic results for my geographic area. And, it seems like quotes and the old google-fu techniques are just ignored or are no longer functional. There are a whole host of factors behind this, but I'm certain that the switch to Natural Language Processing / Semantic…

And the natural language questions sometimes get stuck. For example, [what's the difference between cauliflower cheese and cauliflower mornay] seems like it should return a page that tells you what the difference is, but it doesn't. It returns a bunch of recipes.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#219

Post by godshatter »

diegocg wrote: post #168
Jerry2 wrote: post #76

Anyone have any opinions on the state of image search? What do you use? I find Google Image search, which I used to love, filled with absolute garbage now. 90% of links are to Pinterest which greets you with usual overlays, signup modals etc. I use DDG's image search because I find Google's search unusable. Also, Yandex image search is probably the best reverse image search on the market. It's crazy how much better i…

Bing image search is much better too

!bi on DDG for me.

Re: In 2020, two thirds of Google searches ended without a click

#220

Post by gnulinux »

_nalply wrote: post #205
gnulinux wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my cat, I'd probably just call the pet poison line in my state/country. Dogs are relatively better at eating human food (except very obvious well known examples like alcohol, grapes, cooked bones etc) but most plants can be poisonous to cats, so I wouldn't risk it.

Simple rule: Chocolate is poisonous to cats. And what's poisonous to humans is usually poisonous to cats as well.

This is a terrible simple rule if you have a cat. Most house plants are poisonous to cats.

https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/toxic-a...

In addition to plants, common human drugs like alcohol, THC and caffeine are also poisonous to cats.

Also common human spices such as salt, garlic and onion can be toxic too. Cats tolerate very small quantities of these (e.g. small slice of salami), but feeding your cat a chicken with garlic sauce is probably a bad idea.

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