Technology

Google is definitely iffy for me, which is why I've been bouncing between alternates. A lot of people like to complain about how google is filled with ads and spam results like Pinterest, but even then it just doesn't really seem to give accurate results anymore, and even when results are accurate it's very surface level. From what I found, it loves to push listicle articles and such when googling a new topic, as opposed to say, Wikipedia or an encyclopedia article. Like if I search about Barbie, I'll probably get a bunch of ScreenRant-esque articles before I get the IMDB page. There have been dozens of instances of me searching for controls for video games and getting clickbait-y articles, some of which barely even make an attempt to answer the question, before getting an IGN or GameFaqs article that's to-the-point and answers my fucking question.

There are definitely better search engines out there, but they all have their own flaws. DuckDuckGo is pretty bare bones and can also give poor results if your search is too vague. You have to adapt to that one. Others like Brave have AI to help out with summaries and stuff, but Brave's management is "problematic" and so some people might not want to support them.

TL;DR: on google, not only is there ads and spam, but it's just hard to find answers anymore. Everything is clickbait. And with other options, they are good but they also have their own major flaws that some might find unappealing.

SEO and AI-generated clickbait have basically ruined most search engines. I've yet to find one that can really tackle this properly. I believe Kagi offers higher quality results but I can't really verify that myself as I don't have an account with them.

It hasn't worked for a while. Even a year ago it was considerably better.

I can't believe it, but Bing is now the better search engine. What is happening to the world?!

I find google works fine if I'm just looking for general information on a simple topic, because it will dependably return a link to the wikipedia entry and a few of the most popular sites.

And I find that it's pretty much useless for specific information about narrow topics, because it's still just going to return the same general shit.

I'm not sure exactly how the change worked, but some time back (it's been a year or two now, and maybe more - it's just something that I sort of slowly realized had happened), they shifted to a system that made Google Fu essentially useless.

It used to be the case that you could define the importance of search terms by the order in which you listed them and make some effectively required by putting quotation marks around them.

But starting a couple of years back, it's been generally ignoring search term order and quotation marks, and instead giving priority to specific common (and certainly not coincidentally common marketing) terms.

To anthropomorphize, it's as if it's developed a cripplingly narrow focus. So if, for instance, you're looking for the title of some specific movie, it doesn't matter how many other search terms you include or what order you list the terms in - if you include the term "movie," that's what it's going to focus on. So if you're lucky, you might get the actual movie you're looking for, but it's absolutely guaranteed that you're going to get streaming services and "18 movies with real blood" style clickbait.

Google is almost impossible to use when I search for solutions to maths problems. The first few pages are dominated by those sites gaming Google's algorithm and their articles usually don't help.

Google is broken because AI is making it obsolete. I bet in 10 years google will be a historical footnote.

I think google made the web worse with SEO. Sites have to be designed in ways that users and creators do not really care about so that they may show up in search results.

If I have a site about star trek and it has all the relevant information that the user is looking for, then do not derank my site because the text is not a specific length or whatever other unrelated stuff is there.

I think there are some things that are worth while, like I think https sites are preferred over http sites. I think that this is a good thing to promote.

My Google results change like the weather. Sometimes I can't take it anymore and use Bing but quickly switch back as it's worse. There's no replacement yet, but you need more google Fu than ever before.

I have been using AI chat exclusively for searching for at least the past 3 days.

It is so much better in every possible way for simple factual questions, especially ChatGPT and Google Bard. Great for shopping. Microsoft Bing is okay, but you have to choose the right personality.

Sidenote: I KNOW using Google, and the other companies I will mention, is the antithesis of freedom and privacy. Yet, they are incredibly powerful tools that are getting implemented everywhere, so my curiousity has led me down an honestly fun rabbit hole.

The other AI that really surpised me is Opera Aria. Like Bing, it is using ChatGPT-4 and integrating real-time information. It just feels smarter, or perhaps more professional?

The caveat with all these except maybe Bard which, uses its own system, are very good at shutting down questions it does not want to answer. It feels weird and wrong when it happens, like it just saved you from asking something immoral, or at least too many questions about the tech.

Strange experience overall.

TL;DR AI chatbots are great at parsing the internet to get you answers with reasonable accuracy and relevancy when old-fashioned search can be tedious or fruitless.

Nothing to add to this discussion except that savannahxyz is a treasure

tl;dw: song about google being broken

"I have to add to word reddit to every goddamn search to read content made by humans"

Oh the ironing. That line won't age well now will it :)

Seems to mostly work fine for me. However Google as a company is a fucking mess so doesn't surprise me people have problems. I have had more problems with my Pixel 7 and Google Maps seems to getting worse and worse.

What’s your opinion? Does google really “not work” anymore?

Depends what you're searching for. For some searches I've given up on using it. For example I just purchased a new TV and one of the features wasn't working. It took me several hours of Googling to figure out how to fix it — almost every result offered by Google didn't contain an answer to my question.

Are there any better search engines?

ChatGPT works well for some searches. Especially if you pay for GPT-4.

It's pretty impressive how ChatGPT is better than Google despite never being designed as a replacement for Google. I think when someone applies the same technology to a proper search product, the result will be really awesome. Time will tell who manages to pull that off - it might even be Google.

Why did the quality of search results go down?

The main issue, I think, is all the websites these days that exist exclusively to show banner ads. Many of them are packed with information that Google's algorithm determines might be relevant to the user, but the algorithm is wrong.

The websites want you to click on an Ad, and you're a lot more likely to click an Ad if you give up, don't find what you're looking for, and decide to buy a new weight loss gadget instead.

I'm sure part of the problem is Google itself is an ad company. A lot of the things they could do to fix this issue would harm their own revenue.

did not expect to see a savannahXYZ video on my feed here this morning, love to see it though.

I have been having better luck with goddamn BING, ffs. Do you realize how embarrassing that is, Google?

Mojeek has been an interesting alternative. I do find myself using google as a backup when I’m not getting what I need, but Mojeek does tend to present very different results.

I don’t think any other search engine, including DuckDuckGo, has its own web crawler like mojeek does. DuckDuckGo is security based, but still google in the end (similar to how most browsers are actually chromium). It apparently also uses a different term algorithm so you have to readjust how you search because it doesn’t do anything predictive or “smart” in its searching for results.

From googles perspective, you, the user cost them money. Their revenue comes from ads. The brands don't was to be associated with anything controversial so the results are tailored to be as PG and clean as possible.

It works but it’s way shittier. I ended up paying for Kagi.

I append "site:Reddit.com" (I know, I know) to basically every search I perform. It's the only reliable way at this point to see things written genuinely by real people.