I use Ecosia, and the results are usually good enough. Google’s results are often better, but now there are only like 4 results on the first page.
If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
381–390 of 471 posts
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#382Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…
Google works great for most daily tasks software questions, looking for a service/company etc But when I want to do serious research on things like eczema, diet, backpain, exercise. Google absolutely fails (also Google scholar) I have to buy books, go through Reddit,listen to YouTube lectures etc that point to the correct literature and then you get to know the experts, different opinions etc. All you find is these g…
It generally even fails when you are looking for a product. If you don't know certain brand. I have been hunting reasonably priced stainless steel meat grinder(the grinding parts, not the body), but with google due to all SEO spam it feels like impossible task...
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve noticed more spam and shit sites but I’m not sure if that’s entirely googles fault. There might just be 1000x more spam sites now then a few years ago.
You don’t give Google enough credit: They totally can add a “report spam site” action in the search results, but they don’t, because they don’t care. It would help immensely to have websites disappear from search after 100 trusted Google users complain about them (after manual review). This stuff already exists and works on Google Maps. Even the data collected from a personal blocklist would be useful for them, witho…
I think this is also because of potential abuse: there's nothing to prevent malicious SEO gamers from reporting legitimate sites as 'spam' to remove competition, as a means of extortion, etc.
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#384Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…
Exactly. Google sucks because the internet that we remembered died long ago, hoovered up into social media.
The person passionate about beetles who would have a great website in 2002 now posts 38 post Twitter threads (at best) or Instagram/Facebook posts that are lost forever.
It’s sad as we had this amazing “long tail” effect where a company like Google could set out to organize the worlds information.
Unfortunately the economics drive new behavior, and the next cohort of big web companies sought to monopolize human attention. The more profitable ones like Facebook are masters of psychological manipulation, and the second string cohorts like Reddit who aren’t very smart/manipulative adopt a more hands off approach where undesirable content like porn juices engagement.
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#385Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…
> Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. Sure, in the sense that someone who had their legs broken sucks at running. Compared to yesterdays, Google today has to deal with a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their search. It's easy to fetch good water when the well is clean and no one is trying to actively poison it.
I partially agree with your comment, but it feels like in some/many cases the Google algorithm has large flaws that were not previously there and that (superficially) seem solvable. For example:
* If I search for recipes, the Google algorithm seems to heavily favour recipes with a short novel prepended to them. The “novel” does not have to be particularly relevant to the content - I’ve seen recipes with “novels” that I’m not convinced wasn’t partially algorithmically generated. Every human being I’ve ever spoken to hates this.
* Google will search for what it believes to be alternatives to terms, even when those terms are placed into quotes (which used to prevent this behaviour). This can be very irritating when Google’s alternative terms are incorrect.
Both of these are regressions over earlier behaviour, and don’t seem to have any obvious benefit to them.
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Define the border between SEO and abuse. Perhaps there is no border to be defined since nearly all SEO is abuse?! The only acceptable SEO should be "provide website content that is more relevant/interesting for the viewer".
Let's say someone writes a blog article. They publish it on Wordpress with a bunch of unoptimised defaults. Some time after, someone comes along and says "Hey, the search engine will rank your post more highly if you include the name of the post in the URL instead of just having it be blog.example.com/posts?id=1234", so they change the URL. Is that SEO? Should that result in the site being de-listed/banned? It doesn'…
I'm sure there are better examples, but this specific one actually does make the experience better for the reader. People often return to good blog posts and it's a lot easier to remember a title than a numerical id. If you can remember the title and know the url of the blog and it has a simple naming convention, you can bypass the search engine entirely and just go straight there. Sports sites are really good about this. //stats always gets you the stats. //standings gets you the standings. If you're curious how a team is doing or who currently leads in scoring or whatever, you know where to go without needing assistance from search.
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#387Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…
Exactly. Google sucks because the internet that we remembered died long ago, hoovered up into social media. The person passionate about beetles who would have a great website in 2002 now posts 38 post Twitter threads (at best) or Instagram/Facebook posts that are lost forever. It’s sad as we had this amazing “long tail” effect where a company like Google could set out to organize the worlds information. Unfortunately…
Reddit isn't manipulative? Have you been there recently?
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#388Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. It's still vastly superior to the modern alternatives. It doesn't help that almost all alternatives out there are just Bing with different window dressing, so going through alternatives is just annoying as they have all the same holes in the search results. Another big issue is that everybody just tries to copy Google. I don't need Google in less good, I want to see som…
> Google sucks compared to Google from years ago. Sure, in the sense that someone who had their legs broken sucks at running. Compared to yesterdays, Google today has to deal with a whole new level of the entire world trying to game their search. It's easy to fetch good water when the well is clean and no one is trying to actively poison it.
Different types of these strategies have been around since before google existed. Hell, even web directories (like early yahoo!) had to deal with spam, early google had to deal with keyword spam. Paid backlinks, spammed comment sections with backlinks, copied content sites as backlink farms, all of this existed at least as early as 2005-ish. For some sites (some of them with legitimate info) the meta keywords tag (even though google stopped using it very early) was the bulk of their size for just this reason.
What has so radically changed the last couple of years to make spam take top spots on the SERP?
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why we need more competitors in this space. When you are an underdog, making something "better" even for no direct monetisation path, is an obvious win because it all creates more noise and attracts people to your platform. More noise = more business - but Google don't need more noise, they have all the attention they need, they are basically king, they just need to figure out how to milk it, which means the…
Where should the profit come from for a search-oriented product/business?
From a business model that doesn't make money off ads.
Re: If Google sucks then why is everyone still using it?
#390I don’t think that most people care about using Google or quality of search results at all. I’d agree that the average HN user and certain professions like developers do care. I tried them all, kept switching back to Google and recently stuck with Kagi. If I look at average not-so-technical users, they just enter words into their browser’s navigation/search bar and are happy to get useful results. It’s worth to remem…
I had a similar experience with trying to switch a few times during the last few years and only within the last few months I've actually managed to keep using another search engine for more than a week, and it happened to be kagi.
If this is because Google has gotten worse or Kagi is better I can't tell, but either way I think we are at a point where Googles dominance is threatened for the first time, at last from my sample of one.
But there are other signals like how many of these "google isn't good anymore" posts we see on HN nowadays and the above example of a user not even noticing they aren't using Google.