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Google Search Is Dying

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Re: Google Search Is Dying

#531

Post by mardifoufs »

samstave wrote: post #339
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…

Any idea what reddit's valuation is currently looking like? I have long been surprised they havent been acquired .. I assume for sure they have had plenty of offerss in the past

They have filed for an IPO last month with the SEC so they should go public very soon.

Last valuation was at 10b$ which is ridiculous for a website that can literally get its most popular subreddits shutdown arbitrarily whenever a small group of extremely online volunteer mods decide to "go on strike" by locking the subs because they don't like something/someone else on the website.

It happened before and the admins yielded to them so I don't see why it wouldn't happen again, especially since it's not like they can run the website without that weird cabal of (mostly delusional/psychotic) power mods doing their work for free.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#532

Post by [deleted] »

some_furry wrote: post #66
judge2020 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write. Tons of people don't, though. They type whatever unprocessed half-second thought they have into Google and expect Google to lead them to the water, even if they're tugging and trying to go in the completely wrong direction. Google has optimized for working 'most of the time' for 'the most people', and that means striving for fixing the complete…

Here's a perfect example of this phenomenon. https://archive.md/wwMY3 https://www.google.com/search?q=how+old+is+linux&oq=how+old+...

[deleted]

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#533

Post by wackro »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #294
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.

As someone who add Reddit to my query when I search products, I’m not really looking for a review. Generally, I look for subreddits talking about what I’m trying to buy. I then see if they have a good wiki/something pinned about purchasing advice. Then, I take a look at what is posted about the product I had in mind (mostly questions not reviews). It’s more interesting to read about the experience of actual users tha…

Are wikis and subreddits hallowed ground or something?

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#534

Post by madrox »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #347
madrox wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That inauthenticity comment really hit home for me, too. I realize that I do not trust the internet at large, and haven't for a long time. That's been the real trigger for my retreat from mass social media into smaller, tigher online communities. Even HN is starting to feel like it wants to sell me something.

The latter feeling may be because HN is run by a startup accelerator. They run literal native ads on the front page whenna startup they sponsor goes live.

I don't think that's where it comes from. It comes from the same places as Google, where people know the value of this community's attention. Posts at the top of HN are designed to get to the top of HN.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#535

Post by trop »

There is no innate reason why a Google search on a subject should return high quality results. This is predicated on there being someone willing to write thoughtful, informative, well-researched content and post it on the open internet such that a search engine can monetize that content via user profiling and advertising.

There may have been a moment when enough people were willing to put up their writing/images/videos for free such that Google's search engine appeared helpful in "organizing the world's information". But that mission statement was is a smoke screen. Google didn't organize. The company, as a gatekeeper, profiteered off of the writing/images/videos of others.

The problem isn't that Google search algorithms are low-quality, nor that Google has been gamed by SEO. The problem is that Google has engaged in a scorched-earth policy of capitalizing on the work of others. Google created a secondary market in information, without funding the primary market -- which then withered. And now there is a tertiary market of SEO spammers capitalizing on the propensity people still have to think that a Google search will return the truth to them, gratis.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#536

Post by horsawlarway »

shuntress wrote: post #424
cromwellian wrote: post #390

Ah, young whipper snappers, everything old is new again, and clearly the world is always getting worse. Well, some things are (reverse image search, ease of accessing 'Cached' pages -- now I have to go to archive.org Wayback, etc), but forum search has always been bad. Long before Reddit was big, USENET/DejaNews and forum software like PHPbb/UBB ruled supreme (and before Markdown there was UBB Code). Google, despite…

I think this is very important to note and I agree. Whether or not google search right now is as good as it could be should not be the main point of discussion. We have to remember to acknowledge that the web google is indexing now differs drastically from the web it was indexing 20 years ago. Web pages are now less likely than ever to be freely accessible plain text put forth in good faith for public consumption. Go…

I vaguely disagree with this.

The issue (at least for me) is that google is no longer actually searching for the thing I ask for, and it's being blatantly disrespectful of users who cared enough to learn how to actually use the search features.

Quick example from today? I did a literal two word search - gulp admzip - and while the result are okish, an increasing amount of space is taken up by results with this handy little blob at the bottom:

"Missing: gulp ‎| Must include: gulp"

"Missing: admzip | Must include: admzip"

WTF are they smoking? I asked for two fucking words, and the top result doesn't include one of them. Then the second result doesn't include the other.

So then I add quotes around the phrase I want "gulp admzip" because I'd really only like to actually see results that include that EXACT phrase, and... drumroll... IT DOES IT FUCKING AGAIN: "Missing: gulp ‎| Must include: gulp"

And that literally has nothing to do with the quality of the items it's searching, and everything to do with Google deciding what I meant - Clearly I meant the npmjs.com package adm-zip, because that item gets vastly more views than any of the real search results.

I couldn't have possibly meant to restrict the search to the actual fucking phrase I told it to search for, because there aren't that many results, and they don't get many views.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#537

Post by CA0DA »

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…

Kagi search (currently in beta) is actually pretty good.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#539

Post by _cs2017_ »

brimble wrote: post #5

The other day I was searching for a specific kind of jewelry and realized I don't know of a search engine that can do what I needed, which is to just find good results for my search. Searches for jewelry-related keywords triggered Google to go 90+% ads, and their results (and other search engines' results) were so junked up with spam and the same couple sites over and over that they were useless. We're back to the We…

Could you clarify what you mean by 90% ads? I would assume there are always organic results right after the top 2-3 ads, has this changed somehow?

Also you say the results were "all from different sites". Is that a good or a bad thing? I imagine having too many results from the same site would be less informative, no?

I'm very curious to try the same search query myself, but of course I understand that it may not be something you'd want to share.

Re: Google Search Is Dying

#540

Post by takeda »

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…

>> "Google increasingly does not give you the results for what you typed in. It tries to be “smart” and figure out what you “really meant" ..."

> This is the most annoying behavior because I really mean what I write.

Yeah I remember this being mentioned in a local presentation at university. As a great thing. Google doesn't search for what you write, but what you want.

The problem is that very often Google don't know what I want. Before they introduced this, I was able to define my query so that I got exactly what I wanted.

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