Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Search Is Dying

dkb.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 1001 posts

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#371

Post by brimble »

mettamage wrote: post #149
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…

> - "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." Haha, the noobs. I use HN instead sunglasses cool face A bit more seriously: I fully agree with this. And if HN doesn't have what I'm looking for then I use Reddit as well. But if HN has some info on the topic with a few high…

When I'm looking into some project or piece of software I'm unfamiliar with, I really do search for HN posts on it. Fastest way to cut through (enough) of the biased material and get something genuine. Even hyped stuff usually has enough contrarian posts to give you an idea of where to look for the skeletons.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#372

Post by raoa »

Deaimel wrote: post #305
raoa wrote: post #255

Search for "carbon monoxide" on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. Google serves you an entire page about carbon monoxide poisoning, and recent news stories about carbon monoxide poisoning. You have to scroll through a lot of junk to get to Wikipedia's entry on "carbon monoxide". Bing and DuckDuckGo do a serviceable job telling you about the substance CO. You cannot search "carbon monoxide" to learn about carbon monoxide,…

The Wikipedia article is showing up as a featured snippets for me ( https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9351707?p=featur... ). With the following text just bellow the search box. > Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom. It is the simplest molecule of the oxoc…

Odd I don't see that. I am told "People also ask" about five different questions that each of them amount to "what is carbon monoxide poisoning", which replicate the results of the search itself.

the fact other search engines get this right, even if not nearly as well as Google would have in 2008, tells me the problem is not advertising or a contentless web as much as Google specifically and deliberately preventing you from searching about what you mean.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#373

Post by itslennysfault »

valdiorn wrote: post #38

Google used to be really, really good at finding exactly what I told it to find. Nowadays, it's turned into the yellow pages; sponsored content from businesses trying to sell me goods and services. Can people suggest good alternatives or search patterns for certain categories of information or search types? Some of the search patterns I currently I use: * Youtube for product reviews and demos, entertainment, music an…

imo, google is still king, but you have to be a bit of a power user. You're already using `site:` which is good if you know exactly where you're looking. If not you can use `related:` in the same way. I find using `-something` to remove terms the most useful. I'll search for something (usually an error message) then add `-react` (and mumble "ffs not everything is react"). Then if I still see things I DON'T want add more `-` to the string.

It's not GREAT that you have to do that, but it's pretty functional and certainly better than going past page 1 of search results.

Anyways, here are some other things you can do for reference: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#374

Post by qnsi »

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

I see that googling for one seems hard. I can give you link to the one we used if you send me an email (@ in my profile)

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#375

Post by tazjin »

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…

> until they too succumb to the only existing model for revenue

But it's not - if you're happy with your potential userbase being O(millions) instead of O(billions), charging for your service is completely fine.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#376

Post by gfd »

aparsons wrote: post #13

I’ve posited repeatedly that when Reddit IPOs, I’ll be reallocating a significant chunk of my portfolio into their stock. Their management has historically lacked focus, but if Reddit ever builds a half-competent search index, and positions itself as a search-first, discovery-second destination, they will be in the FANG tier of stocks. They have the data. They have the dedicated, active user base. They have free mode…

If reddit ever becomes a significant influencer of people's buying decision (like this article is claiming), it too will be gamed.

Think automatic gpt3 bots making up life stories of how he was hiking up mt everest and just so happen to be wearing brand XYZ which saved his life. Along with autogenerated selfies to submit to gonewild to farm upvotes and other stuff to create a realistic user history.

I can't see how reddit can defend against seospam of that type when Google can't handle the simpler problem of content farms. Reddit will die overnight from being replaced by 99% bot accounts.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#377

Post by cliftonk »

Agreed. I rarely search for anything without "... site:reddit.com" or "site:github.com". the sheer number of sites that scrape github and then pop up above github in the search results is a clear example of this. why isnt provenance weighted more heavily?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#378

Post by vxnul »

I come from the 2040s. Don't come here. In the parlance of your time, it fucking blows.

Google is still around. It is a third-rate search engine but a first-rate reputation engine. Boomers (we still call them that, even though they haven't been actual Baby Boomers for a long time) still use it to vet people before making hiring decisions.

For $159 per month (everything is on a subscription model) you can get the "personalized reputation" treatment by Google, so that when said Boomers are deciding whether to hire you, they see the unreliable material you paid for them to see--rather than, as under the old system, the unreliable material that emerged organically. It's a steep fee (these are the deflationary "new dollars") but it's a small price to be able to get a job and not be picked up by one of the "sweepers" and put into one of the performance improvement camps.

I wish I had overthrown capitalism in the 2020s when it was still possible.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#379

Post by mischa_u »

smallerfish wrote: post #109
scrollaway wrote: post #101

Ive been experimenting with Kagi lately. It seems very promising. The results have been fairly reliable at all types of queries except the ones where I straight up ask google a question. Anyone else tried it? https://kagi.com/

Yeah, I like Kagi - and I even talked to the founder about working there. It doesn't do well at questions, and doesn't have some of google's widgets (e.g. currency conversion) but it's better than duckduckgo.

Kagi's currency conversion widget works fine for me, I use it almost daily: "10 eur to usd" https://kagi.com/search?q=10+eur+to+usd

Which widget queries are you having trouble with?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#380

Post by bradgessler »

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…

I too have found myself searching more in Reddit. Not to throw shade on Reddit, but even if I find exactly what I’m looking for in there, it’s depressing that it’s all bound up inside of another walled garden who will eventually have the same incentive as Google: squeeze every last advertising dollar out of the produc… I mean users. Like Google, it’s just a matter of time before they too lose their balance.

A question worth posing to this community: how can we build an internet that’s hostile to advertisers? Secondarily, how can said internet also be much more accessible to content authors so they won’t have to learn a css, html, and JS to publish some stuff? Finally, how can that content be discovered from within this network?

Post reply on HN