Google executives acknowledged this month they need to do a better job surfacing user-generated content after the recent Reddit blackouts.
Google search is a pain from a year ago.
When searching for something on Google, you should include terms like “Reddit”, “superuser”, “Stack Overflow”, etc., to get better results. Because if you don’t include them, the first page of Google looks like a bot-generated page. Of course, Google are ‘not quite happy’.
Google search has been pretty weak for awhile now. I/O spoke a lot of big talk about bring generative AI into search, but from my part of the world it still seems the same.
Ai isn’t going to fix the first page being all ads, that’s a business decision.
If they wanted to return actual content they could do that without AI.
that’s not even close to the issue, though – Google Search fell because of SEO pushing irrelevant auto-generated garbage towards the top.
I think it’s both - the SEO fight as well as the explosion of ads on Page 1. Throw in a dash of average-user search optimization (vs a flatter term-based search) and you’ve got Googles downfall in a nutshell.
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If they did they’d probably just scuttle it after a few years. It’s what they do.
Reddit wave +
Big suprise! I’m this close to Uninstaller reddit.
Of course they are. Adding “Reddit” at the end of questions and other stuff was the best way of avoiding shitty results (Fuck you Quora).
That was one of the last ways of getting some useful results out of Google.
It depends what you were searching for. For help with Stable Diffusion or programming questions or other technical subjects, the reddit communities were actually one of the best places I could go to for answers
They still are on archuve.org. you’ll get the info you need and reddit gets nothing. Win win
That was one of the first things that I thought about. People can’t affix “Reddit” to their Google searches in good faith anymore, so what is the next most reliable community?
No shit lol
Boo fucking hoo
If Google makes changes that stop people from clicking through to reddit due to the protests then the protests will have likely done more lasting damage than anyone imagined.
DuckDuckGo has great results IMO
DDG is my default search engine but there are some types of searches that it’s not good at yet, so I find myself often toggling between the two after I see that DDGs response isn’t going to cut it.
Earlier today I was searching for a really specific Python error message and google had zero results. I tried Yandex and got the correct result on the first response.
Each search engine seems to be optimizing for a certain type of query and answer.
Ive started going to chatgpt to help me out with errors i dont understand and google hasnt helped with
Same, it helps with a lot of issues and even skips the part where people are questioning why you even want to know that and how you’re doing it the wrong way and should do their way
Yesssss, me too. And often it gets to the right response on the first try which is the ultimate timesaver. This is why Google may be toast unless they can figure out how to integrate this.
The only caveat is that sometimes Chatgpt just hallucinates an answer or it’s incomplete, so you need a bit more dead reckoning to make sure you’re going the right way.
I find DDG has the same garbage AI generated content as Google. Also, search operators have been broken on DDG for years
Search operators? Quotes and dashes?
Yes
They work for me
Probably going to be different experiences depending on what you are searching for.
DDG mostly gets its results from bing
we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing
https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/
True, but they also have their own crawler. Bing is also very bad for privacy.
I liked them well enough, but recently is it just me or it seems like every time I reload a search by simply going back to the page, the ranking of the results immediately changes?
That is supper annoying to me, as now I can’t keep track of the results I opened easilyThis happens sometimes if you search for a new non-cached search phrase. It’ll give you a couple pages, then update it’s index and when you go back you’re on the updated index.
Interesting, but how come it never did that before? Did I just not notice?
I don’t know. I’ve noticed it happening for the last few months. Maybe they have the ability to update caches faster now and want to give the most fresh results. It can be irritating if you’re like me and like to click a result and then go back and open a bunch of results in new tabs.
Sounds plausible yeah, so I haven’t gone crazy haha, it really is annoying since usually the new results are also worse than the first batch in my experience. Guess I’ll just pick up the habit of opening everything in a new tab from the get go
the new results are also worse than the first batch in my experience.
FWIW I thought the same. Seems like every search engine turns to doo with time.
Would be a great moment for a great open source search engine to take everyone by storm, well, like that’s ever gonna happen…
Startpage still seem to give me good search results despite using Google index itself. I guess a lack filter bubble have its own benefits.
I remember the art of crafting the perfect google search query and knowing you’d eventually find that obscure bit of info. Now I have to quote nearly everything in my query and if a single result in the first 100 results is tangentially related, I’m grateful.
I remember being good at google-fu, and then thinking my google-fu was failing me.
No, it was the Google that failed me.
I’ve noticed this too, and I want to say it was only noticeable in the last year or two — but it seems to have gotten even worse over the last couple of weeks. Even when I quote something or -exclude a term it is still giving me what it thinks I actually wanted.
Agree. Something definitely changed in the last two years. It’s unbelievably bad now, to the point where I give up if the answer isn’t among the first 3 results. It’s insane.
As others mentioned, Google just straight up ignores most of my quotes and excludes and just shows me what it wants to. Shockingly bad, I remember a time when if I couldn’t find something, it was my own failing.
I’ve noticed the degradation of google search since they introduced search suggestion completions. That is forever the timemark (landmark for time?) in my mind of the enshittification of google search.
I read half this article and just thought, “yeah no shit.” I swear Google conditioned everyone to just settle for dumb answers.
It’s amazing how few people understand how SEM works or the fact that Google makes services for freely available in order to build a profile on you and sell targeted ad space. The algorithm is tuned to for clicks. The amount of sponsored results and crappy listicles you need to scroll through is unreal. “Reddit” was the shortcut to opinions outside of sponsored influencers with affiliate links… but I’m sure TikTok and YouTube will fill that void just fine.
I would love it if they built an extensive profile on me and used that to serve results but they don’t. Any time there is any commercial interest in what I am searching for it forgets everything and just spews out whatever bullshit the highest bidder wants me to see.
Google Perspectives will highlight results from Quora? That’s the last thing I want.
For real. Looks like speedrunning digging one owns grave is becoming hella popular in silicon valley as of late. Everyone wants to set a new record.
And TikTok. They’ve listed that one, too.
TikTok? Really Google?!
Dear God, i hope that’s not true. Quora answer quality is probably worse than Yahoo answers; at least those were just shit posts, 90% of Quora answers are ads by the creator of some project in my experience
Yeah the quora answers are just advertising
Even when someone was asking about something for free that they’d not have to pay for some fucking idiot would come in selling something
It’s typically either that or some conspiracy theorist screeching about how the Uyghur genocide is a CIA psyop or that the (((psychopaths))) are trying to take over the world or something. Or some random who has little to no experience in a subject acting like they know everything about it. Or some abuser who should be on a watchlist who thinks that children axiomatically evil until the evil is beaten out of them. Those people are terrifying. ~Nai
What search engine are you guys using now? Any workaround?
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