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

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

#261

Post by d0mine »

marcus0x62 wrote: post #245
_false wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Doc…

Hospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies. The customers are not doctors but shareholders. That is why a cure is seen as a threat.

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

#262

Post by JustExAWS »

mrkramer wrote: post #233
JustExAWS wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those people found you by randomly searching Google versus via links via your profile on social media?

That's the real question, because younger generations use less and less Open Web. That was actually one of the main concerns of Larry Page back in the day, that the majority of Web's information might get and be locked behind walled gardens, paywalls or whatever else.

The web is just as “open” as it ever was. It is just as easy if not more so to create and host your own content.

You’re complaining about “discoverability” which hasn’t been easy since 2000.

The most successful independent writer today is probably Ben Thompson’s “Stratechery”

https://stratechery.com/about/ https://blockbuster.thoughtleader.school/p/how-ben-thompson-...

Through organic search, you probably won’t find any of his free articles when searching for a topic on the first page. He had to put in the work over years and couldn’t depend on Google.

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

#263

Post by masa331 »

fl0id wrote: post #251
masa331 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you use Kagi?

Probably because it costs money and it also likely also will quickly succumb to sloppification by experimenting with their own ai and having an unstable founder…

I'm using it for about two years and i haven't seen any sloppification. I see it as a feature that it is a paid service because i hope it will be a sustainable model for them to keep it as it is. I think it's a no brainer to pay for it instead of all the suffering people describe here. The founder remark i don't get

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

#264

Post by lostlogin »

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…

> we're not the real customers any more.

Were we ever? I didn’t pay for search. I don’t pay for email.

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

#265

Post by lostlogin »

d0mine wrote: post #261
marcus0x62 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Doc…

Hospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies. The customers are not doctors but shareholders. That is why a cure is seen as a threat.

That doesn’t make sense - a sick patient costs the shareholders money.

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

#266

Post by mrkramer »

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”.

Not all queries are the same but I agree with you that the authority of source is crucial. That's why for example .gov sites rank high and should rank high because government is usually the most trusted source.

But when you are looking for new shoes to buy or food recipes then .gov sites can't help you and that's where things get ugly....SEO spam ugly.

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

#267

Post by hinkley »

echelon wrote: post #70
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 get very wrong and dangerous answers from AI frequently. I just searched "what's the ld50 of caffeine" and it says: > 367.7 mg/kg bw This is the ld50 of rats from this paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27461039/ This is higher than the ld50 estimated for humans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeinism > The LD50 of caffeine in humans is dependent on individual sensitivity, but is estimated to be 150–200 milli…

Even that seems high. I don’t feel good with 200mg per human, not per kilo. I can’t imagine drinking ten times as much and not being in the ER. A hundred times that much? No fucking way.

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

#268

Post by hinkley »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #112
alex_young wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm my search returns “between 150 to 200 mg per kilogram”, which is maybe more correct? Also, in what context is this dangerous? To reach dangerous levels one would have to drink well over 100 cups of coffee in a sitting, something remarkably hard to do.

> Also, in what context is this dangerous? To reach dangerous levels one would have to drink well over 100 cups of coffee in a sitting some people use caffeine powder / pills for gym stuff apparently. someone overdosed and died after incorrectly weighing a bunch of powder. doubt it is a big leap to someone dying because they were told the wrong limits by google. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60570470 as ever, m…

This is why we let the pros do compounding. Slip a decimal point and you can kill yourself with many substances.

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

#270

Post by [deleted] »

d0mine wrote: post #261
marcus0x62 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Doc…

Hospitals are increasingly owned by insurance companies. The customers are not doctors but shareholders. That is why a cure is seen as a threat.

[deleted]
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