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Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

bbc.com

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Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#31

Post by pinapplepony »

Hikikomori wrote: post #21
david-gpu wrote: post #4

Over the past several months I find Google search has become completely useless to find anything other than online retailers. I thought it may have been just something about my profile, but this article suggests it may have been an update on their end. Meanwhile, Duckduckgo still provides decent results in my experience.

Switched to DDG a few months ago and find myself having to switch to Google for many searches. Going to give kagi a try after trialing it.

I switched to DDG a while ago because Google thought I was a bot.

Capchas, every single search! It kept telling me I was wrong when I tried to solve them.

I'm on a popular ISP in India, my guess is that one of their IP ranges got blacklisted somehow.

Between DDG and ChatGPT, I haven't looked back.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#33

Post by Varloom »

coldcode wrote: post #18

I searched for how to use a massage ball (my back hurts) last week and got a giant page full of ads and ad-like sections for buying one with barely any articles at all. That is not a search engine; it's an ads engine.

I reduced my google search engine usage by 90%

Just Option+Space and get the answer with ChatGPT for MacOS.

No ads, no nonsense, just the answer.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#34

Post by hobs »

nycdatasci wrote: post #11
skilled wrote: post #3

Honestly, bravo at BBC for whoever green-lighted this story. It puts the finger right on where it hurts for small publishers and illustrates Googles new way of thinking. I am sad but also frightened for small creators and those who simply share interesting information once in a while. Google is bulldozing these people away from anywhere near the AI answers or the ten blue links below it. The article didn’t mention it…

This was inevitable. Traditional search is an inefficient way to access information in a world with large AI models. Google is being forced to do this due to competition from openAI, meta.ai, perplexity, etc.

It's really not, they are extremely complementary.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#35

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

sp332 wrote: post #23
CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the executive/management team could start using Google search themselves so they can see how bad the results are for their users. Pretty common to dogfeed in the software business yet Google seems to ignore this approach.

What search engine do you think management uses now?

They probably use some internal version that doesn't optimize for ad revenue but instead for user experience, as is Google tradition.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#36

Post by ADeerAppeared »

michelb wrote: post #8

This is good. Because it now will make way more sense to compete with Google on searching the internet, since they screwed it up. They’re are panicking and defending their bottom-line instead of innovating and leading. I think internet search is now ripe for disruption. Still need deep pockets but it’s now increasingly easier to be much better at search than Google.

> Still need deep pockets but it’s now increasingly easier to be much better at search than Google.

That's the big problem here. All the new search engines rely on the infrastructure of the old ones. It would take very little collusion between Google and Microsoft to crush something like Kagi. And the moment any new competitor gets big, they'll do it.

What's needed is an anti-trust breakup. There's simply too big a conflict of interest between Google, the search engine product, and Google, the ad-tech giant earning money off the websites.

Google is using their search engine monopoly to control the wider web, and fill it with spammy SEO garbage to juice their advertising revenues.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#37

Post by caseyy »

nycdatasci wrote: post #11
skilled wrote: post #3

Honestly, bravo at BBC for whoever green-lighted this story. It puts the finger right on where it hurts for small publishers and illustrates Googles new way of thinking. I am sad but also frightened for small creators and those who simply share interesting information once in a while. Google is bulldozing these people away from anywhere near the AI answers or the ten blue links below it. The article didn’t mention it…

This was inevitable. Traditional search is an inefficient way to access information in a world with large AI models. Google is being forced to do this due to competition from openAI, meta.ai, perplexity, etc.

LLMs cannot compete on truthful high-quality information from experts. Only on plausible babble. If that’s the only information you search for, then your perspective makes sense.

We shouldn’t be using LLMs for information retrieval at all. They should be summarizing individual web pages at best. That would make search more efficient. But to use plausible text generator without any guaranteed veracity checks in the pipeline for information retrieval is madness.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#38

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

coldcode wrote: post #18

I searched for how to use a massage ball (my back hurts) last week and got a giant page full of ads and ad-like sections for buying one with barely any articles at all. That is not a search engine; it's an ads engine.

That's by design. I'm reminded of this from a month ago: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Discussed with nearly 900 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#39

Post by giancarlostoro »

Imma be real its been deteriorating for a while. Used to be an insanely powerful engine. You could find things with verbatim quotes. I have not seen this work anymore for quite some time. It all started when they started adding rules to suppress results somewhere in the late 2000s or early 2010s. Its only gotten worse and worse. Googles search engine is now just a personal collection of pre approved search results for no valid rhyme or reason.

Re: Google just updated its algorithm. The Internet will never be the same

#40

Post by rsolva »

We need to make bookmarks a common way to access the web again! So many people use Google or other search engines to access even the most basic sites, instead of storing a bookmark or typing out the whole URL.

I have used a simple bookmarking strategy in Firefox for some years now, simply storing everything and anything I suspect I might want to retrieve later. I give each bookmark a few quick keywords and store it all in one folder. No hierarchy. It's surprisingly useful and has helped me retrieve so much stuff from my vague long term memory.

In addition, I flush the cache automatically every time I close the browser and curate a list of sites that are exempted from the flush. I have also turned off search words suggestions in the address bar, leaving me with a tidy and usefull experience that helps me find what I'm looking for in seconds. Only saved sites show up when I start typing.

But most browsers, including Firefox, need to improve their bookmarking system. I can't add keywords to bookmarks from the mobile browser. Why not? And the bookmark UI has gotten little attention for literally decades.

It would not help all smaller sites, but it would help some, if browsers would improve the storing, managing and retrieving of bookmarks.

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