Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#241

Post by BadCookie » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:38 PM UTC

Schnitz wrote: post #27

binkHN wrote: post #7

> Enter 2024 with AI. The top 20% of search results are a wall of text from AI... I'll be the contrarian here and say I actually like Google's AI Overview? For the first time in a long time, I can search for an answer to a question and, instead of getting annoying ads and SEO-optimized uselessness, I actually get an answer. Google is finally useful again. That said, once Google screws with this and starts making sear…

The AI answers are nowhere near good enough to always be at the top, without any clear indication that they are just a rough guess. Especially for critical things like visa requirements or medical information. When you search Google for these sort of things, you want the link to the authoritative source, not a best guess. It’s very different for queries like say “movies like blade runner”.

An example: I was looking up what a good diet is to follow after a child has been vomiting. The AI said to avoid giving fruit juice … yet the authoritative sources said the opposite. I already knew not to trust the AI, but this was nail in the coffin for me.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#242

Post by warner25 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:41 PM UTC

sagarm wrote: post #238

warner25 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? I realize that the trend has been going this way for a long time - probably since Ask Jeeves started blurring the line - and this is indeed how a lot of people try / want to use search engines, but still... I wish that Google (and competitors) would have separate pages for something like "Ask Google" vs. traditional search (wher…

Like you, I thought typing questions into Google was wrong for a long time. The times have changed; this is how most people interact with Google, and it really does convey intent to the system better now that we have sufficiently powerful NLP.

I absolutely agree that it handles natural language questions much better now than when I started using search engines in the late 1990s - in fact it's optimized for this task now, meeting demand where it's at - but a direct answer to a question is often not what I want. For example, I often want to find a page that I remember reading in the past, so that I can re-read or cite it. Or I want more reading material to get a deeper, more nuanced understanding of some topic; things that will provide more context around answers or lead me to generating new questions.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#243

Post by masa331 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:42 PM UTC

warner25 wrote: post #43

binkHN wrote: post #7

> Enter 2024 with AI. The top 20% of search results are a wall of text from AI... I'll be the contrarian here and say I actually like Google's AI Overview? For the first time in a long time, I can search for an answer to a question and, instead of getting annoying ads and SEO-optimized uselessness, I actually get an answer. Google is finally useful again. That said, once Google screws with this and starts making sear…

But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? I realize that the trend has been going this way for a long time - probably since Ask Jeeves started blurring the line - and this is indeed how a lot of people try / want to use search engines, but still... I wish that Google (and competitors) would have separate pages for something like "Ask Google" vs. traditional search (wher…

Kagi has better search and you can tweak it however you like. So the product you are wishing for exists.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#244

Post by jazzyjackson » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:43 PM UTC

_false wrote: post #221

jerf wrote: post #211

Don't bet on AI staying clean. A lot of HN readers conceptualize the forces attacking the integrity of the search results as just some isolated people taking occasional potshots, and then maybe slinking away if their trick gets blocked. It is probably a lot more accurate to visualize the SEO industry as a Dark Google. Roughly as well resourced, with many smart people working on it full time, day in, day out, with inf…

I like the Dark Google metaphor, but SEO agencies being Google's real customers makes no sense to me.

Maybe one step removed, if I understand it right, the spam sites make money by offering ad space and traffic, and Google makes money by selling ad placement on those sites, so actually Google and Dark Google are on the same side of the marketplace.

In a way, it's the other way around, Google is paying the spammers for providing billboard space for their ad placement services.

The pervese incentive is that the harder it is to find what I'm looking for, the more ads I get served, hence all ad supported products trend towards becoming useless (see also: Amazon.com)

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#245

Post by marcus0x62 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

_false wrote: post #221

jerf wrote: post #211

Don't bet on AI staying clean. A lot of HN readers conceptualize the forces attacking the integrity of the search results as just some isolated people taking occasional potshots, and then maybe slinking away if their trick gets blocked. It is probably a lot more accurate to visualize the SEO industry as a Dark Google. Roughly as well resourced, with many smart people working on it full time, day in, day out, with inf…

I like the Dark Google metaphor, but SEO agencies being Google's real customers makes no sense to me.

Not OP, but here's how I read it: the SEO operators are driving traffic to google's ad network, where google make's its money. They aren't necessarily paying google much: the ad buyers are doing that, but they deliver the eyeballs to google's ads.

Its kind of like the US hospital system, where doctors are considered by the hospital, if not de jure then certainly de facto, to be the real customers of the hospital. Doctors don't pay the hospital much of anything -- the patients do, usually via their insurance company -- but without the doctors, no procedures happen (i.e., no "traffic.") Hospitals can't bill for room and board, nursing services, therapy, etc., where the hospital makes its operating income without the doctors, and in markets where multiple hospitals exist, doctors drive the patients to the hospital(s) of the doctor's choice. Ergo, the doctor is the "real" customer of the hospital.

The hospitals can and have adapted to get a bigger share of the revenue pie by hiring their own doctors and buying up the clinics that drive a lot of customers to hospitals in the first place, just like Google has introduced products that are more vertically integrated, but the basic dynamic still exists where they are dependent on third parties to deliver customers.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#246

Post by neonbrain » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

weberer wrote: post #104

Deegy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once chatGPT and Claude (through MCP) added web search functionality I completely dropped Perplexity. I assume I'm not unique in this regard. Feels like the writing is on the wall for Perplexity.

Could you explain more? Are the results better, or are there other features?

I assume he's just being over dramatic. I use Perplexity every day, multiple times per day, and it almost completely replaced Google for me in such areas as coding or technological research. Also, I never used nor planning to use ChatGPT or Claude (I use private open models instead - Mistral Nemo, Qwen, etc.). But I also feel like "I'm not unique in this regard", lol.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#247

Post by warner25 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

gr4vityWall wrote: post #198

warner25 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "search" and "getting an answer to a question" are two different things, aren't they? I realize that the trend has been going this way for a long time - probably since Ask Jeeves started blurring the line - and this is indeed how a lot of people try / want to use search engines, but still... I wish that Google (and competitors) would have separate pages for something like "Ask Google" vs. traditional search (wher…

> I've been trying hard to break my 10 year-old of the habit of just typing questions into search engines Honest question: why? I understand not wanting to use Google (the search engine) or not wanting to support Google (the company). But I don't see with the issue with just looking up questions. I'm 10 years younger than you, and I've been reaching for search engines first since I was 7, I think. Basically since I l…

Because I want her to find authoritative sources, read, learn, understand, think critically, etc. rather than taking a given answer at face value.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#248

Post by mrkramer » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

eastbound wrote: post #21

m_ke wrote: post #8

SEO ruined the web, guided by Google's ranking algorithm. Things will get even worse as scammy companies start flooding the web with LLM generated content pushing their products to bias LLMs to increase the probability of outputing their name for keywords related to their business.

This. If Google kept at “Pages must be short and provide straight answers”, then we’d have much better search results today. Google is machine-gunning its foot since 2021, it’s really unclear to me whether they’re killing their baby just to make the job harder for competitors or something. For now… I open the Google Search results with a machete, and often don’t find any answer. Talk about severing your own foot to a…

It's fascinating to me that Google didn't yet crack the actual discovery of websites and information. Google is constrained to 10 search results by design because majority of people won't ever go to the second search results page. So basically they have to figure out how to put as much useful information and links on the first page of search results. Btw I think we need web directories now more than ever.

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#249

Post by jazzyjackson » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

JustExAWS wrote: post #144

nicbou wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole website's raison d'être was to provide neutral and accurate information about German immigration. > as long as information gets out there A possibly incorrect summary of the information gets out there. Given how much nuance I weave into my content, and how much effort I put into getting the phrasing just right, it frustrates me to no end. There's a very high likelihood that AI could give someone an invalid…

And ChatGPT 4o (at least the paid version) and the AI overview in Google both give real time links to sources. Well at least you can ask the paid version of ChatGPT to give you sources and it will do a web search

I use Perplexity and it routinely confabulates while linking to the source it confabulates from. Parent has a valid gripe that AI is essentially damaging their reputation by pretending to cite its information with a credible source, I wish there were some legal avenue to sue but it's not quite libel is it?

Re: Google's Results Are Infested, Open AI Is Using Their Playbook from the 2000s

#250

Post by masa331 » Sat, Dec 28, 2024, 7:49 PM UTC

kotaKat wrote: post #141

binkHN wrote: post #7

> Enter 2024 with AI. The top 20% of search results are a wall of text from AI... I'll be the contrarian here and say I actually like Google's AI Overview? For the first time in a long time, I can search for an answer to a question and, instead of getting annoying ads and SEO-optimized uselessness, I actually get an answer. Google is finally useful again. That said, once Google screws with this and starts making sear…

I just want to be able to turn the stupid overview off. That's all. One simple toggle. I don't get why a Google Workspaces account can have Gemini forcibly disabled across the entire enterprise yet still have these AI features seep in with no way to manage it at the enterprise level.

Why don't you use Kagi? It has better search and you can customize a lot of things, even turning off their LLM