Via @rodhilton@mastodon.social
Right now if you search for “country in Africa that starts with the letter K”:
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DuckDuckGo will link to an alphabetical list of countries in Africa which includes Kenya.
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Google, as the first hit, links to a ChatGPT transcript where it claims that there are none, and summarizes to say the same.
This is because ChatGPT at some point ingested this popular joke:
“There are no countries in Africa that start with K.” “What about Kenya?” “Kenya suck deez nuts?”
when will people learn that search results change all the time and are different for different people
I get the same as the main post. Either way the point still stands. I had someone correct me with a misconception about something because he googled it and thats what it said in the answer box. It’s getting increasingly difficult to rely on search results especially when google synthesizes them into questions and answers with little context
Yes. I have to keep reminding my parents that those little Google answer boxes aren’t real search results and can’t be trusted. They sometimes say the exact opposite of the page they’re citing!
What point?
Oh, honey. You must be new here. Googling something, taking the first answer that fits your needs, doing zero follow up, and posting it confidently is nothing new. That has been happening for the last few decades.
In what way? Like always, I have had to do a little critical thinking to gain anything out of my google searches. But now, sometimes the answer is right there. In what world is that a bad thing?
But you might just say “hurry durr it give me answer, therefore correct”. Again, yes, that has always been the case. People will use any tools available to them to support their point. If a new tool has less than a 100% success rate, I don’t see that as a problem.
The point is that google is no longer just listing search results. For years now it has been giving the “correct” answer as well as results. This started of with things it could recognise and easily solve like calculations (“what is 432 times 548”), but has now moved into general queries powered by LLMs that have no knowledge of fact.
Okay? As I said, google has been giving incorrect results for decades. Now, just like before, it gives incorrect answers sometimes. But it has gotten a LOT better at giving those correct answers.
You are arguing on bad faith. It is a fact that Google results have been getting worse over time. What is your point? That with extra effort, you might get the answer you’re looking for? Google used to be the king of search! Other search engines don’t seem to have a problem answering the question is the point others are trying to make, despite Google’s massive revenue.
Care to back up that unfounded claim?
Two for one! Mind giving me some supporting evidence? Nothing anecdotal, mind you. Show me that “other search engines” answer questions better than google, statistically.
I can back up that claim by pointing to the popularity of other search engines. People are now even paying to search because Google has become a nightmare due to SEO.
As to your other question: did you even read the other comments on this thread before you jumped to Google’s defense?
I used to totally be a Google fanboy, like you still are, but they’re failing us, dude, and somewhere deep down, I think you realize that.
I would love to see that research paper. Just to be clear: you are claiming that google is… Not the most popular search engine? Or that it is losing popularity?
You still haven’t answered my questions, though.
Why don’t you show us some proof that google search is unchanged compared to what it was 10 years go.
When did I make that claim?
As to my point, it is that google searches have not failed me to date, AI has only improved it, and saying “but it gave me something wrong once!” is basically that “old man yells at clouds” meme.
It doesn’t matter? If you search for something and you get a blatantly wrong answer parroted from an AI text completion service, it’s still a fail.
I got the wrong answer from Google just now and I’ve never heard of that joke before. So clearly it isn’t just OP with polluted metrics.
What’s your point here? Is googling supposed to be a lottery of good and shit results?
I just tried it and got this result. The sentence is incredible, I can’t get over how painfully stupid it is.
Apparently Kenya starts with a k sound and a letter that resembles k but not the letter k
I get the result you got, but the Emergent Mind response is the second organic result. That’s still way too high.
Interestingly enough, when I removed the word “letter” I got none. If I put it back I get Kenya.
This was done on the same device and same browser session.
Take out “the letter” part and search as just: “countries in africa that start with k”. For some reason it seems the search involving the words “the letter” got fixed but others did not. Confirmed I was able to get both results by doing that and as of this typing I still able to switch between the two results by just adding or removing those words
While true, I also got the same result as OP.
So what? They’re usually correct is the point.
I did it just now and got this:
Yeah, drawing conclusions from a single bad search result is stupid.
Kiribati Kirghizia Kenya
also Kroatia Kuba Kyprus Kanada Kosta Rica Karelia