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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

#221

Post by rchaud »

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…

And people say SEO is snake oil!

You are absolutely correct. So many of the top results are basically machine-generated pages, perfectly optimized for search robots, not so much for humans.

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

#222

Post by npteljes »

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…

DDG is ridiculous with resolutions. Categorizes 500×900 resolution as "Large". Otherwise it works for me as an image search engine. I usually return to google if I absolutely can't find what I'm looking for - google is better when it has to guess, with instructions like "yellow blob old game".

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

#223

Post by Spivak »

typon wrote: post #199
londons_explore wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new UI is great! It keeps the programmers occupied so they stop messing with the old UI that I actually want to use.

Till one day they pull the old UI and theres nothing you can do about it

I mean there's not nothing you can do. You can still grab the source to old Reddit and it's just a matter of gluing the old UI to the new API like all the 3rd party clients do.

Not trivial by any means but there's a lot of prior art floating around you could pull from.

Sure they could pull API access and be more hostile to scrapers but that's the current escape hatch for people who would have left because of the redesign.

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

#224

Post by izacus »

panopticon wrote: post #60
Robotbeat wrote: post #33

It’s not all bad. I consider it a feature that Google usually pulls the right information from Wikipedia. It doesn’t harm Wikipedia, which is free anyway, but reduces their bandwidth load.

That's not strictly true. Wikipedia is crowed-sourced, and losing visitors means losing potential contributors. You could probably make the case that someone who would rather read the snippet on Google isn't likely to contribute, but it likely has an effect on the margin. And that's ignoring the donate banner they throw up there from time to time.

Google will start paying for that content though https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/16/22334276/wikimedia-enterp...

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

#225

Post by ookware »

typon wrote: post #199
londons_explore wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new UI is great! It keeps the programmers occupied so they stop messing with the old UI that I actually want to use.

Till one day they pull the old UI and theres nothing you can do about it

The day they turn off old reddit and stop third party API access is the day I can finally detox myself from reddit.

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

#226

Post by rchaud »

kenny11 wrote: post #41
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…

Same here. I can remember how refreshing it was when Google was new and you could trust it to give you results for what you actually searched for instead of what it thought you searched for, like AltaVista and the rest of its competitors were doing at the time. I guess it's time for something new to do the same thing to Google that it did to those companies years ago.

Other sites still offered old-school website directories, I remember using those for years, well after Google became #1.

I'd much prefer going back to something like that now than bother with Google's approach; depending on the search term, I already know what the top sites are going to be, and I know they won't have what I'm looking for.

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

#227

Post by bentcorner »

queuebert wrote: post #113
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…

You can search Reddit from DuckDuckGo by adding '!r' to your search terms. This is how I search most of the time these days for the exact reasons you mention above. DuckDuckGo has many other bang shortcuts like that too, like '!w' for Wikipedia. Actual search engine results are too manipulated, but they make great link aggregators.

Note that "!r " is different than "site:reddit.com ". The former redirects you to reddit's own search, the latter keeps you on DDG but restricts the results to reddit.com.

I prefer "site:reddit.com" but honestly it's only because I'm used to it. I search in-app on mobile frequently (which I assume is the same as the on-site search) and it's generally pretty good. It usually finds something for me but sometimes using an external search engine works better.

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

#228

Post by throwaway743 »

zip1234 wrote: post #159
typon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For pretty much any product or review related search I just do " reddit" and then scour the somewhat up voted posts for information. Have to deal with tons of dead links though for any post older than a couple of years. The Web really seems like it's an awful place. The original dream of hyper links is really dead. It's all about jumping from walled garden to walled garden through tricks and luck.

and reddit has gotten much less useful with all their push for login and using their app...

That, and don't get me started on their search. Love getting 0 results on initial submit, then reloading the page with the results magically appearing...

Also love being redirected in order to continue reading certain threads

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

#229

Post by xiphias2 »

freebuju wrote: post #98
thomascgalvin wrote: post #25

If Google ever started including copy-pasteable code from Stack Overflow, I might never follow a link from Google again. Which I think says a lot about how Google is used now. I don't use Google to find web pages , I use it to find an answer to a pressing question. When I'm looking for something to read, I go to a content aggregator like HN or Reddit. Of course this isn't sustainable. If Google is just presenting oth…

I don't see any reason why Google can't pay for using your website's content on their search engine. Looks to me exactly like the same deal they've been cutting with media owners from Australia & France. The law should cut this side too. For individual content owners as well.

Generally the price of information is race to the bottom, people shouldn't be expected to get payed anymore. I'm happy to pay for content: I pay for Youtube and Netflix, and they pay content creators. I'm also buying books on Kindle. But when I signed up for the Economist, what I read was significantly worse content than Hacker News comments.

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

#230

Post by rchaud »

ImpressiveWebs wrote: post #119
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…

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…

Same could be said for any site that is smaller in scale than the #1 result.

If I'm looking for a review of a Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, I will see links to Amazon, Pitchfork, Rateyourmusic and other sites well before I find something written by a regular person on their personal blog.

Same goes for products. I will see a page of Amazon links before anything on say, a boutique Ecommerce website with a Shopify backend.

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