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Has google stopped working for finding anything?

Google search failed to even find a hollywood movie, even after 1 hour of attempts. I don’t really care about the movie, but I am terrified by the prospect that google now ceased to function on this basic level. Why is this happening?

I understand the explanations of seo and other stuff like spam content. But why are there NO relevant results at all.

I wouldn’t mind having to start wading through results at page 2 or even 10 but now it utterly fails to find even the most basic things.

Things you found on the first attempt even just a year ago. Now they are effectively hidden.

To me functionally the entire internet has now vanished. I cannot access anything that I am searching for. Might as well not exist at all.

Has anybody found a way around this?

Is this on purpose? Is this an attack on the free internet, herding people to just the top 5 sites like facebook, youtube, tiktok, and so forth?

Are there search engines that still work?

Cyberflunk ,

Kagi.com for about a year now, absolutely love it. Never Google anymore.

jmanes ,
@jmanes@lemmy.world avatar

Yep, I use Kagi as well. Great results!

SkyeHarith ,

Absolutely. It’s really nice that the middle tier now has unlimited searches too!

FIST_FILLET ,

been hearing praise for kagi for ages in underground communities like this and admire what they’re trying to do with the orion browser (although that one is still too buggy for me to use daily), gonna give it a shot now. cheers

Ephera ,

I’ve heard the theory that it’s LLM-generated spam content ruining the remaining results. There’s presumably just so many webpages with heaps of garbage text now, that search engines need to aggressively filter anything that looks remotely like spam, including lots of legitimate content.

I do find it kind of terrifying, too. It’s happened a few times now that I remember some event from a year ago or so, sometimes even being relatively certain what the title of an article was, and I just can’t find anything about it. As if it had never happened.

FIST_FILLET ,

this has gotta be the correct answer. it’s impossible to find anything written by a human on search engines these days unless you specifically click a forum link

calypsopub ,

Just today I was searching for a news article about a local radio personality who got fired in the last few days. Zero relevant results. Just extraneous garbage. I was stunned.

DandomRude ,
@DandomRude@lemmy.world avatar

Sometimes I not only have the impression that good content is harder to find, but that there is less good content in general. This may have something to do with the fact that high-quality content is becoming increasingly uneconomical. Plagiarized or low effort content is much cheaper. With the rise of AI, I think this trend will only continue to intensify.

webpack , (edited )

I hear a lot of people complaining about how they can’t find stuff with Google, but it seems to work fine for me? i don’t know what I’m doing differently

I use brave as well, but in my opinion Google searches work better for me? I guess I’m just more used to it or something, for some reason I find things quicker on Google and also I often rely on the search bar calculator with chrome which doesn’t work as well on brave (since in order to get my answer, I have to press enter after entering in an expression. not sure if there’s a way to change this)

edit note: I mostly use search engines to look up random information or for programming

overcast5348 ,

An example of search engines failing me miserably last month:

I wanted to hire a photographer, so I started searching using keywords like “wedding photographer MAJOR_CITY_NAME”, “photography MCN”, “event photographer MCN”, etc. The top results I got were all mostly along the lines of “top ten wedding photographers in MCN” i.e. listicles with links to a few photographers who probably paid the listicle creator? There were maybe one or two links to a photographer’s website itself in the first page.

I’m okay with ignoring the first page of results and moving on to following pages. But rather than giving me individual photographer’s websites in subsequent pages, I started getting listicles for “top ten wedding photographers in OTHER_CITIES”. I’d click through multiple pages of results to find maybe 5 direct website links.

What actually helped me find a photographers eventually was entering the exact same key words on Instagram. Almost every single one of them that I found on Instagram had an excellent website and the city name, and their addresses were mentioned clearly on their websites. So, it wasn’t a case of them not having enough information on their website. It’s just that search engines chose to prioritise listcles of photographers from other cities rather than giving me links to individual websites of photographers in my own city.

In this case, I got lucky because photographers have a presence on Instagram which has a functional search engine. What if I want to find a plumber, or someone else? I’m forced to just trust a listicle creator because search engines don’t want to give away links to single purpose websites and only want to keep us on websites with a shit ton of content (that may or may not be what you need) and ads.

/rant

thantik , (edited )

Why the hell are you not switching to Google Maps when you’re searching then? If you want something in a specific area, especially local work, you search on Maps…

vonbaronhans ,

Would that work in the case of photographers? I would only think to use Maps for business that are likely to have or must have by necessity some building or office.

thantik ,

Yeah. I just found 8 different photographers near me in less than 30 seconds.

what_is_a_name ,

Photographers are it an obvious term to search for on maps. “Photo studios” sure. But event/wedding photographers are a google search not a maps search.

Vqhm ,

Bro,

I have been using Google before 2000

Had an early invite to Gmail. Got mobile search results over text message before smart phones.

Google maps didn’t even launch until 2005.

Some of us went places and did things before Google+

I don’t disagree that if I want to go somewhere I might search g maps.

But the search results are really shit lately.

I miss competition with several web spiders

thantik , (edited )

Just sounds like people don’t know how to use the services available to them. Even if I don’t specifically go to maps to search, searching “wedding photographer” immediately puts a maps result at the top of the list with 3 photographers in my area.

I remember Lycos, Altavista, Looksmart, AskJeeves, Yahoo, etc – You are putting some awfully rose tinted glasses on saying that those had anywhere close to the results that Google was putting out at the time; or even now for that matter.

Even now, the competition is garbage with 1 exception – OpenAI’s GPT3.5 and GPT4. If they can get the hallucinations under control, it’s incredibly good at distilling information you are looking for. Unfortunately, it is also TERRIBLE for any kind of up-to-date information.

Every time someone says “Google couldn’t find this thing”, I say – “what were you searching for exactly” - and I put it in, and I get perfect results. I have no idea what people are doing, or maybe if Google is geo-blocking certain things, but I have not once had anyone show me empirically that their results are any worse today than before.

Additionally - nobody should be using Google for search without an Adblocker.

WaxedWookie ,

You understand that while this would give better results, this is an example of the problem under discussion - you’re deferring to businesses listed on Google, washed with Google reviews and promotion. Businesses that don’t actively try/pay to work with Google functionally don’t exist - they are the gatekeeper, toll collector, marketplace, and the arbiter of good and bad. They don’t do this altruistically or honestly - they do it for profit, and the crashing quality of their search results is evidence of this.

AA5B ,

I’ve noticed for quite a while now that you can’t search by location like that, but have to use the keyword “near me”. When I do that, the first result is a map with on an and list of photographers.

Its not actually “near” but its in the area so that might be that I don’t share location

ConstipatedWatson ,

Disclaimer: I’m late to this whole discussion and I also don’t understand some things (I don’t fully understand what SEO is and why it’s bad, though from the comments I understand it’s part of what’s making search engines worse nowadays)

Given that: I also made some searches where I wouldn’t get anything good in the first pages, but that seemed to be dictated by the amount of spam sites too, isn’t it?

I mean, I use the Ublock Origin and NoScript extensions for Firefox and search logged out of Google, so I don’t get advertisements, but I agree that, depending on what I search, I need to fight through large amounts of crap to find something good. Still I don’t understand (and it’s my lack of knowledge in this) why it’s the search engine’s fault for not being the best and hiding spam sites

overcast5348 ,

SEO itself is fine - it’s just optimising your website website for whatever a search engine considers important.

The problem is that search engines’ seem to have absolutely garbage metrics for what is important and worth it.

Digestive_Biscuit ,
@Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk avatar

I’ve not noticed any problems with Google myself but I just did the same search you did. It brought up Google maps at the top, quite helpful as it showed local photographers. But as I went down to the results the only one in my local area was the top result. The rest were things like photographers in Majorca, Peterborough, a random motorcycle website.

I’ve never noticed how broken Google is until now.

FluffyPotato ,

Google still works in languages other than English, like my workaround has been to just search in Estonian and I’ll usually actually get better results and like zero AI content (AI sucks at Estonian, can’t even get grammar right). So if you wanna use Google learn an obscure language.

MonkeMischief ,

Wonder how well Esperanto would work. 🤔 But if we came up with another “lingua franca of relevant searches” I feel like they’d just tune AI garbage to that “untapped spam market.”

It would be an arms(tongues?) race but then hey, everybody would know like 16 languages so that’d be cool. Lol

ConstipatedWatson ,

I’m late to the party and I don’t understand several things I read in the comments, so I need to ask for clarification.

What is Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? I looked it up, but the websites StartPage was giving me were not useful (probably ads or spam sites). Is finding these ads/spam sites the problem?

How is this a search engine’s fault? I mean, if the internet is now made by walled gardens and spam sites, search engines have trouble finding something really relevant, but how is it their fault?

I should add I navigate logged out on Firefox with the Ublock Origin and NoScript extensions (among others) so I at least don’t see Google’s ads.

I agree there are some searches where it’s next to impossible to find informed sites from spam ones: just a week ago I was looking for “Best Nintendo Switch games released in 2023” and I got lots of dubious blogs, and even when I got hits from IGN, GameSpot or PcMag sites, I realized I don’t know if any of these last sites are genuine or bought out (and checked the Wikipedia for more wisdom about their veracity), but how is it the search engine’s fault to not navigate through seas of crap?

When I search for academic things, Google or StartPage still seem to give me useful answers.

I have been wary about searches related to reviews about anything, but it just seemed to me the internet is a worse place now in general (because of walled gardens and spam)

woefkardoes ,

The search engine makes the rules for what they deem important in finding the correct results. SEO is the practice of optimising of a web site to best get your site on the top of the list. All the painful stories about grandmothers and long lost lovers at the top of recipes are to achieve better SEO and a good example of how SEO made the internet worse.

ConstipatedWatson ,

Thanks! So it’s some sort of guidelines Google and other search engines laid out which can be exploited to maximize visibility. Very annoying indeed

Dogyote ,

duckduckgo has been working well imo

hungover_pilot , (edited )

I use duckduckgo for personal use and google for work and I have noticed a significant quality drop in the results for both.

Scolding7300 ,

Likewise, something happened in the last 1-2m, couldn’t find answers. But sometimes Google did.

After finding myself searching multiple times for one thing at DDG, decided to just go with Kagi.com

pan0wski ,
@pan0wski@infosec.pub avatar

The main issue with DuckDuckGo, in my experience, is searching in languages other than English.

bufalo1973 ,
@bufalo1973@lemmy.ml avatar

Try other search pages, like Qwant.

sxan ,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Duckduckgo has gotten good enough that they’re being more brave with ads: the first several results are always ads for me now, such that I usually have to scroll to get ito good results. I don’t begrudge the ads; ddg doesn’t track users, and ads are how they fund the service.

Lately, I’ve switched my default engine to a good searx instance. When I’m not looking for a business, it gives me better results. However, when I am loojing for products or services, DDG is better. DDG seems to prioritize commercial interests, either intentionally or not. I suspect it has something to do with SEO; maybe searx ignores a lot of that.

I also find that Bing is providing better results than Google, lately.

Finally, here’s one of the best search engine resources I’ve come across recently:

Search Engine Party

ColeSloth ,

Duck duck go IS Bing. So of course they’re both getting better/worse at the same time. They’re the same search engine.

MedievalGamer ,

I hate Google now, I was a loyal Android user since the very first Nexus and a Google account user since day 1 of Google+ (I miss you Google+), I even bought a Pixel 2 XL as soon as it came out…

spez_ ,

Simp

Da_Boom ,
@Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

I don’t like Google or apple anymore. Granted apples walled garden approach was never appealing to me. But google antics lately have just sucked the joy out of things. It’s like they’re trying to hinder me at every turn. Just give me a phone with an operating system that I can control, with all the apps I need. Why has that become so hard. Android is good because it has all the apps. But Google’s been trying to lock it down tighter than a ticks ass since they introduced safetynet.

dexa_scantron ,
@dexa_scantron@lemmy.world avatar

I also have a Pixel 2 XL! (Because I got it refurbed for $50…) But either way hi phone buddy!

cabron_offsets ,

Yeah bruh, Google has been shit for a good long while, now.

Quexotic ,

Right. Like, I haven’t used it since reddit started to charge for API calls.

tgxn ,
@tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net avatar

Yeah I switched my primary search to DDG at about the same time. It just has more relevant reulsults, especially if you’re just looking for reference to some random API or library.

Quexotic ,

GPT4 gives good search results too, most of the time.

tgxn ,
@tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net avatar

Yeah for sure! I’ve used bing chat a bit too, as well as chatgpt !

solomon42069 ,

The first result is always an ad that is irrelevant or outright misleading, sometimes dangerous.

The second result is a plug for some stupid Google tie-in service like Shopping or Maps.

The third or fourth result is usually what I was after, if not I usually have to change my query.

Tried to switch to DDG a few years ago but it’s index was a bit lacking for my day job, may try it again though as Google is getting increasingly frustrating to use. And just not a fan of their ecosystem.

joel_feila ,
@joel_feila@lemmy.world avatar

Well since you can’t change how google works you have to just either deal with it or change search engines.

doctorcrimson ,

I use DuckDuckGo more and more often but that’s actually just because they support more syntax than they used to.

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