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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#351

Post by jedwhite »

creeble wrote: post #216
jedwhite wrote: post #64

There have been many interesting threads recently about the decline of Google's search quality here on HN. There's zero doubt search results are getting worse, and that ads and spam are the cause. But Google's financial performance has been going from record to record. So there is a huge disconnect building in the market. Each thread has had some common themes, but what's surprising is how different the problems disc…

I wish you great luck and success. This just seems part of a long cycle to me (of course, the older I get, the more everything seems like a long cycle). Google wasn’t the first search engine, and I expect it won’t be the last. Page Rank redefined search, and now that results are 95% advertising-driven, the underlying “search algorithm” means nothing at all. Someone with a “new” algo that isn’t so completely ad-driven…

Thank you! I think there are alternatives to ads that are worth trying.

A freemium model is viable. You can't have ads or ad-tech tracking, or you just end up another Google. But you can have free anonymous use, and paid pro or business plans (API use etc). And referral link attribution can be done anonymously and with no commercial influence on search results.

I also think you have to share any revenue with the people actually making content fairly. That's one of the worst things about Google, and it's one of the reasons the entire media landscape has become an ad-tech nightmare, because Google and Facebook take the lion's share of digital revenue.

It's worth trying other approaches. Ads are a corrupting influence. If you don't say a hard no to them, they eventually take over.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#352

Post by svth »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #59

Still in shock that they killed reverse image search and replaced it with some useless AI tech demo. It used to use the actual image and be able to provide context from where that image was found elsewhere. Now it seems to throw the image at AI and the AI will go "Oh that's a street" then they will just show you streets with similar colors as the image you put in. Completely useless for trying to locate what movie a…

Have you tried using TinEye.com for reverse image search?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#354

Post by clairity »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #214

When looking for an answer we don't want the average opinion of the whole world, we want the best opinion of the expert in that subject. As the internet (and Google) reach out more and more, we get closer and closer to everyone and their opinion being online. And so the average answer online gets closer to the average opinion in the planet. I know Google thought PageRanknwas the answer for that but they now rely as m…

you're really pushing that appeal to authority to its logical absurdity. how do you find the real 'best' expert and their 'best' opinion? everyone, even in their so-called field of expertise, is prone to error. limiting your information gathering to a single person exposes you to all of their errors directly, with zero error correction applied. taking input from many people, even non-experts (gasp! the horror!), gives you a much fuller expanse from which to make your own decisions. this expansive approach more fully covers the decision space, and provides in-built error correction.

and that's the basis of why many (uncorrelated/diverse) opinions are a better strategy than appealing to authority.

you might wonder why it's not better to take a consensus of experts only, but then you're back to the biased proposition of determining who's an expert in the first place. but more than that, "experts" (fashionistas) tend to be highly correlated, usually in a few well-worn directions (the fashions), even if sometimes opposing, because they don't come anywhere close to covering even a significant portion of the potential vector space.

this is the problem with google. their hubris leads them to erroneously believe they're better than the average bear at determining what people want in search (and ads). they're decidedly not.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#355

Post by [deleted] »

JimBlackwood wrote: post #160
profstasiak wrote: post #148

Just a heads up if someone is searching reddit for product reviews. I believe most of them are inauthentic. I worked in marketing for several companies and we always had some budget for whisper marketing aka shilling. There are third party agency specialized in shilling on reddit and making it all look authentic.

Do you have a link to such a service? Not to bash on them or anything, I'm just interested in how they market their services

[deleted]

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#356

Post by gjvc »

ColinHayhurst wrote: post #120

Is Google still a Search Engine? Or is it rather an Answer Engine? Answers are more-and-more provided on what used to be SERPs, but now is too often dominated by answers on the page, ads, and big marketing budget SEO optimised landing pages. We still believe in the value and power of discovery; call us old-fashioned but we focus on 10 blue links using an independent index. Your vanity search maydisappoint, and our ra…

This is an important distinction, albeit semantic and somewhat contrived. If I believe the earth is flat, I may find much evidence to corroborate that theory via Google. Though I may ignore the overwhelmingly greater volume of evidence to the contrary, I will still find what I want. So is it now a search for "the facts" or "the facts that I want" ? The AdSense model is arguably tilted towards the latter.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#357

Post by mad182 »

softwarebeware wrote: post #6

Some really good thoughts here. I'll summarize the ones that hit me: - "Why are people searching Reddit specifically? The short answer is that Google search results are clearly dying. The long answer is that most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust." This is it for me exactly. I search for the following kinds of things on Reddit exactly because results on other sites aren't trustworthy: Reviews are secretl…

IMHO it's not so much of a problem with google search, but the internet as a whole.

Most genuine discussions have moved from open, publicly accessible web to places inaccessible to search engines and general public. Smaller niche forums, blogs and personal websites with no financial incentive have died out. People have moved to Facebook, Discord, Whatsapp, Instagram, Slack, Twitter and other places behind logins. Online newspapers and portals are increasingly using paywalls. Most of the genuine human interactions and quality content is not indexable anymore. Instead we have a million affiliate marketers fighting for the top positions in search results with every possible seo trick.

Reddit is one of the last places with huge amounts of publicly accessible online discussions.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#358

Post by rg111 »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #173

I'll re-post a comment I made about Google Search back in July 2020 because I believe it's still relevant: "Call me crazy, but I've been using Yandex a lot more recently. Political FUD aside, the results are pretty good, and completely unfiltered. It reminds me of how wild and unfiltered the internet was back in 2007. However, I wouldn't recommend it to "casual" users. Using Yandex requires a bit more common sense th…

I am very frustrated with Google search results right now. I do use it to search for facts only and it is my main calculator app now. But that's it.

I have been adding "reddit" to search terms since two-three years ago.

And I have been made aware of two new search providers: kagi and you.com.

Kagi was announced in HN, I believe , and I am now a beta user, and I am surprised at its quality.

It does not pull underhanded shit like Google does, and although it is better than Google in filtering out spammy, SEO sites, I would say- not by much. My overall experience is much better with kagi than with Google. I found myself grumbling towards it after I failed with Google in initial days, but now I go straight to kagi itself.

I like you.com but hasn't used it much. It is nice to see varieties categorised in one single page.

Google will certainly lose any user who can be categorised as "power users" even by a jiffy.

That includes High School students researching for papers they are writing and aquarium users searching about fishes.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#359

Post by narrator »

I wonder if spammers have somehow gamed the Google political controversy filter. I stopped using Google because their search results returned only things in agreement with mainstream talking points for anything remotely controversial.

If you search for "What countries are using ivermectin" on Google, you get the second link being a broken spam site (the kitchen sisters) and pages of results saying Ivermectin doesn't work. I wonder if the broken spam site figured something out to get ranked that high.

If you use duckduckgo or Yandex you get a whole page of relevant results that actually answer the question. The number of topics where Google refuses to return relevant results and instead focuses on talking points is very large at this point.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#360

Post by N1H1L »

profstasiak wrote: post #148

Just a heads up if someone is searching reddit for product reviews. I believe most of them are inauthentic. I worked in marketing for several companies and we always had some budget for whisper marketing aka shilling. There are third party agency specialized in shilling on reddit and making it all look authentic.

Depends on subreddits. I love shoes for example, and /r/goodyearwelt is a really decent resource in general. /r/malefashionadvice and /r/rawdenim for fashion are pretty great too.
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