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Google Search Is Dying (2022)

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Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#241

Post by ilyt »

wslh wrote: post #168
kstenerud wrote: post #7

The worst is the SEO pages, especially for popular how-to topics. Every single first page result will be a page that has expanded what used to be said in bullet point form, into a 1500 word essay that you must now slog through in order to get the information you need. And this is by necessity, because Google values prose over bullet points. The majority of things that come up on search nowadays consist of computer-ge…

Limit your search to Reddit, HN and/or Stack Exchange! I really loved the first paragraph of the article about Reddit: "Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit". I want to add this that just happened at my company, that shows really bad execution on the Reddit side. Bad as if the current Reddit management is surfing tiny waves in some paradise. Ou…

> Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit"

Which is funny as builtin search is so utter shit you pretty much need to use google to find anything

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#242

Post by alex3305 »

Recently Google started translating some of my English search queries into my local language (Dutch). Which doesn't help at all. There is a reason I search in English.

For instance I wanted to see if there are new Iberico spareribs recipes, so I search for that. The first page has 8 results with 7 in Dutch and 1 in English. When I visit the English site, the recipe is auto translated in Dutch. And four of those 8 results are stores where I have to buy their rub to even follow the recipe.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#243

Post by ilyt »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #214
projektfu wrote: post #98

"How do I fix some odd setting in Windows, Mac, whatever" 2007: results include documentation, a couple forums, if you're unlucky there's a potentially malware tool that's discovered people need to fix this. 2012: results include Reddit and Stack Exchange, documentation has disappeared, forums have opened that are full of "support specialists" telling you to reset your windows install. 2023: top results are just blog…

> Thankfully Linux-related searches are still useful. Kinda... but it then gets broken by the developers of the distros. Static ip on raspberrypi? Sure... /etc/network/interfaces! Nope, not anymore, it's dhcpcd.conf now. It took literally a year for the "new way" to get on top of google search results.

    /etc/network/interfaces works just fine tho
but yeah, the stuff where "right thing to do" changes often can be hard to find.

Also "simple stuff" brings more "not really right way but kinda sorta works" answers

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#244

Post by isaacremuant »

AdamN wrote: post #50
tokinonagare wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit was Yes, it was somewhat good in the past but an alternative is sorely needed. Most popular subs (at least the one I frequent) are moderated to the point that censored would be the more appropriate word to describe the situation. Then there are whole subs banned (including non political) for wrongthink.

There's nothing wrong with a sub banning/censoring people. That's a critical part of having a trust value within a social network and if moderators of a popular sub don't think a poster is meeting the bar to post it is good for them to ban it and become higher trust. If they go too far than there won't be content on the sub at all though. For instance /r/AskHistorians has a very high bar for posting and threads are c…

There's absolutely something wrong. They're not banning people for not adhering to posting rules in a sub, they're literally banning wrongthink, they're often banning political opinions they dislike or don't align with US democrat party hegemony.

They suppress subs or influence mods to suppress them for them.

There's a myriad of ways in which censorship to shape a narrative happens, and that narrative is as true as the narrative a few twitter users can set, if highlighted as "the majority opinion/the people have spoken" by mainstream media.

There's intervention via subterfuge, not an open contract you either adhere or not.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#245

Post by dematz »

ilyt wrote: post #241
wslh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limit your search to Reddit, HN and/or Stack Exchange! I really loved the first paragraph of the article about Reddit: "Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit". I want to add this that just happened at my company, that shows really bad execution on the Reddit side. Bad as if the current Reddit management is surfing tiny waves in some paradise. Ou…

> Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit" Which is funny as builtin search is so utter shit you pretty much need to use google to find anything

Maybe this is giving reddit too much credit, but I do see people say "append reddit to searches" literally every time the topic of search is brought up, so what if reddit is aware people do that but doesn't want to be a search engine?

Imagine you're one of the few remaining sources of human content on the Internet, and you look at the terrible cat and mouse game google plays forever with spam, you don't really envy it. So imagine telling the world hey, reddit is the new google, everyone come do your searches (and spam) here, gl mods.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#246

Post by foepys »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #145
moffkalast wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just headed over to one of the popular subreddits That was your first mistake, the defaults are cesspools full of karma farming bots. Nobody goes to those for advice.

What makes you think that the niche subreddits aren't also full of marketing firms, bots, and upvote networks? With very few exceptions, they are.

You don't need to be the size of Coca Cola to successfully astroturf, there are enough companies specialized in social media marketing.

Take r/mechanicalkeyboards for example, arguably a niche community. The enthusiasts there are very motivated to buy new things and are willing to pay quite a lot of money for them. Place a few of your bots there to promote your artisan keycaps and watch people pay top bucks for them.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#247

Post by ilyt »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #19
tzhenghao wrote: post #2

> The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust. Reddit was also partly successful in that regard because it catered to niche communities who ask the most interesting questions and, trolls aside, responses from the community that's generally trustworthy. There are literally subreddits with discussions on solutions that are deemed better than what you get from customer support. Reddit als…

Reddit is one of the most astroturfed places on the internet, and there's an entire ecology of PR/marketing firms that focus exclusively on it. There's also a thriving market in "high karma" accounts, which can be bought for as little as $30. > Reddit also doesn't have "promoted" content / responses It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. And low-karma or new a…

Entirely depends on subreddit in question

> It does, though. Your karma basically determines the visibility of any new post you try to make. And low-karma or new accounts are de facto shadowbanned.

It's used more as protection from SEO spammers and this is just unfortunate side effect for new users.

Other problem is that karma is global which basically means user on popular subreddits will gain it quickly so any karma-based filtering is doomed to fail anyway

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#249

Post by dsfyu404ed »

moffkalast wrote: post #174
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that the niche subreddits aren't also full of marketing firms, bots, and upvote networks? With very few exceptions, they are.

Because the tiny niche audience isn't a cost effective marketing group? Advertisers want to maximize their reach and well, it's not like they know these groups even exist. I'm sure it happens a lot regardless, but the vast majority of content in those is still just from regular people. You can tell by the information posted as it tends to be more or less truthful and useful. Once it stops being that it'll be obvious…

>Because the tiny niche audience isn't a cost effective marketing group? A

That's the magic of Reddit, 4Chan and every other cesspool where any niche is only a slight URL change away from any other niche.

It's trivially easy to add niche subs 2, 3 and 4 to the list of places that you target.

Re: Google Search Is Dying (2022)

#250

Post by litiholofan »

londons_explore wrote: post #169

Whenever you are thinking Google is dying, please instead consider what an ideal page of search results would look like... When you search for "2012 honda civic brake hose burst pressure psi", which pages exactly would you wish were at the top...? Typically, I find that when google search fails me, it's because the content I'm looking for actually doesn't exist. I'm seeing SEO spam simply because nobody has written a…

At the very least I'd like for those keywords to each show up on the page I'm looking for.
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