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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?

Raiderkev ,

Duckduckgo.com is my go to solution for when Google wants to give me trash results.

Mighty ,
@Mighty@lemmy.world avatar

yeah no. i am WILLING duckduckgo to work as a search engine, but the results are so bad, it doesn’t do phrases well. i just searched “blue sign construction”, thinking i’d find infos about blue signs in construction sites. literally the whole first site is about “bluesign”, something to do with textile production. and the picture results are 99% just construction signs in all different colours.

Gallardo994 ,

This. One of the reasons I couldn’t use DDG for more than a week, and I still kept using !g inbetween. Kagi is the way to go for me.

omnomed ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ccaac8a5-9ede-4d9c-85c4-186cf3ae691f.pngSeems fine to me.

pkill ,

brave or searxng

MadBob ,

I get the feeling this’ll be an unpopular suggestion but I’ve used Ecosia for something like ten years and it’s never failed me. I use Duckduckgo on my Linux laptop because it came bundled and it’s still not worth changing.

Daefsdeda ,

Ecosia has been my standard for a long while now, not realky hear many people mentioning it either.

MadBob ,

I’ve long felt like it gives me better results than Google too but I’ve never really tested that idea!

Daefsdeda ,

When using noscript I see bing in between and I think they make use of their API. But yeah I also have the idea that it works better.

FIST_FILLET , (edited )

willing to bet google is garbage now because of all the AI-run “blogs” that post unhelpful idiotic filler “articles” on every topic under the sun

edit: i despise this shit so much that i made this dissection of a bullshit AI article: i.imgur.com/Hr1wffj.png

h3rm17 ,

That happened waaaay before AI though, it’s how clickbait journalist have been wroting for ages.

BoastfulDaedra ,

Can we please stop calling them journalists now? That term used to actually mean something.

FIST_FILLET ,

true!

NostraDavid ,
@NostraDavid@programming.dev avatar

i’ve got a subscription for ChatGPT and tend to use it over Google, unless I know Google has decent results.

wahming ,

While it’s fun to bash on Google, this might have been a more productive discussion if you had provided your search query and perhaps a sample of the results

frankenswine ,

this is not how google works (nowadays)

TheDoctorDonna ,

Did you maybe misunderstand what the commenter was asking for? We kind of need to know the search parameters and results before anyone could actually tell OP where they went wrong. Search engines are still search engines, even if you have to scroll through 6 ads to get to the results

frankenswine ,

Google does not display the same results for the same queries among different users, they display highly personalized stuff. Web search sadly has become almost unusable when you opt for anonymized use of the internet

DarkNightoftheSoul ,
@DarkNightoftheSoul@mander.xyz avatar

didnt read op and hit 'em with the “skill issue”

Stern ,
@Stern@lemmy.world avatar

I dunno if its the stuff I’m searching for or what but I’m just not running into this issue.

FWIW my last few searches were- “Malta”, “war is a racket”, and “russias egg crisis”. None in quotes. The only one I had to poke around a bit for was the last and that was to change to the news tab. Maybe I just usually search for hard stuff to monetize? I dunno

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

No, can’t say I had issues like that.

And I will say that while I think Google Search has become poisoned by fake/AI results, it’s actually marginally better on Google than on something like DDG. It feels like all major search engine scraper developers just gave up on hte cat-and-mouse of blocking shit content and slowly it’s all succumbing to endless SEO bullshit. 1995 Altavista all over again ;_;

rottingleaf ,

1995 Altavista all over again

It has been solved then by web rings, web indexes and web directories ran by humans for other humans.

The issue is that such a cure is not acceptable for Google, FB etc.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah and then their usual reply is “With how big we are, there’s no way we could hire enough moderators!”, which I agree with. They’re too big. Cut’em up!

rottingleaf ,

Well, I don’t want to cut them up really, just leave them be with bots answering bots.

The problem is that people use them still. There is demand for features absent outside of their platforms.

I mean not other people being there - that’s a point of pressure, but wouldn’t be sufficient alone.

These features are (I’m describing the abstract thing):

  1. Search. People want relevant search or another way to quickly find a service, a place, a memo, a person etc without thinking.
  2. Applications. Various services allow you to easily find and install some casual game, for example.
  3. Forums and messaging.
  4. Common identification for all these.
  5. An RSS-like feed.
  6. Common interface for sharing posts, pictures and so on so that the source would be referenced in a uniform way.
  7. Likes and dislikes.

One can easily see these are partially things which were present and working in the good ole 2007 with XMPP (half of 3), openID (4), RSS (5), numerous web forums (another half of 3), Flash (yes, Flash, and also Java applets) (2). And back then (I was a kid, but) I can remember those being treated as future mainstream.

So the remaining parts which these companies filled and abused to monopolize the system are: 1, 6 and 7.

Search, common object space and rating.

Of course, now the other parts are not really present too.

What I’m coming at, to make it short - GNUNet could make a world of difference if it were really functional and not permanent alpha unclear how to run.

d00ery ,

I struggled finding reviews of Asgard’s Wrath 1 on the Quest 2 headset. Google just assumes I want the newest game.

Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug ,

Struggled? I just searched “Asgards Wrath 1 review” and that’s all it is, I had to scroll all the way down to see the “people also searched for” to even see Asgards Wrath 2

d00ery , (edited )

Was the review specifically for the Quest 2 headset?

Edir: Nevermind, seems it’s a PCVR Exclusive Game so a review specifically for Quest 2 wouldn’t make much sense.

Mikina ,

I’ve recently switched to Kagi and it has been an amazing experience so far. I definitely recommend that to anyone who can spare the 5-10$ a month. I like their business model, and the way I can customise results to I.e always ignore reddit posts, while still maintaining privacy because they are not in the ads business (yet?).

And the results are usually pretty on spot, while also avoiding the major ai/spam blog posts by default.

LemonLord ,
@LemonLord@endlesstalk.org avatar

Discovering new search machines would be an alternative. But they all have their filters and algorithms which make it hard to find exactly what you want. In the long run the internet will be run by AI serving copyright cowbows and big governance.

stockRot ,

I refuse to believe you haven’t been able to find a Hollywood movie after an hour? That sounds more like an issue with you than Google

TheLowestStone ,
@TheLowestStone@lemmy.world avatar

OP was trying to find the movie with only a description of the plot. Google has definitely been thoroughly enshitified but, this one is largely on OP for trying to find a relatively obscure movie without any details.

AnyOldName3 ,
@AnyOldName3@lemmy.world avatar

That kind of thing used to reliably work for me, so it’s not ludicrous that they’d expect it to stop work.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

“Oh what’s that movie where the guy does the thing” has never been a strength of search engines. It’s why r/tipofmytongue is/was a thing.

sukhmel ,

But still I used to get results in about half of attempts, and now It’s more like one out of five

boatsnhos931 ,

I second this

olafurp ,

In my opinion it’s both.

Smokeless7048 ,

Yea, google has gotten worse, but not THAT bad.

vynlwombat ,

danluu.com/seo-spam/

Here’s an interesting read that attempts to compare search results of various search engines

lil ,
@lil@lemy.lol avatar

Google is great if you use Chrome and haven’t disabled tracking settings in your google account and browser

ani ,

What do you mean?

Nadru ,
@Nadru@lemmy.world avatar

I’m using Duckduckgo for a while now. Pretty good

ilinamorato ,

DDG is great for privacy, but their results are mostly just Bing results. Which is usually fine, but rarely excellent.

werefreeatlast ,

It’s a ruzzian company right?

Nadru ,
@Nadru@lemmy.world avatar

I think they’re french ?!

werefreeatlast ,

Perplexity AI says: "Answer No, DuckDuckGo is not a Russian company. It is an American software company based in Paoli, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded by Gabriel Weinberg and offers a private search engine and other privacy-oriented software products. "

Well, in that case, fuch google, I’m out.

Nadru ,
@Nadru@lemmy.world avatar

Yea don’t look back

vsh ,
@vsh@lemm.ee avatar

For me it’s a bigger hit or miss. I never found what I wanted on DDG.

Deftdrummer ,

This is why

The long and short of it - Google search was designed at a time when the web was in its infancy. Basically just text and a few images.

Fast forward to today, and reddit is the only one that still allows its data to be crawled.

As media has become more social (basically all of it) the walled gardens prevent you from even viewing content without an account.

Every platform wants you to be searching inside their service.

Google is useless.

Zomboomafoo ,

That explains why site:reddit.com continues to be the best way to use Google, I thought I was just stuck in my habits

RememberTheApollo_ ,

It’s not the crawling that is the issue. Facebook for example shows up just fine on search results, you just need an account to view the content on FB if it isn’t public. User privacy settings also shield content. Google has actively and willingly destroyed its utility as a search engine by placing revenue sites/preferred results ahead of actual search results. What they want you to $ee comes first, and if social media like facebook isn’t profitable to google, you don’t get to see it. I did a quick search for “facebook car groups” and got a page full of them, so you absolutely can get those walled gardens in results.

Russty ,

Facebook shows up, but do any of the conversations with meaningful information show up in a search?

Unfortunately I think this will get worse over time as databases of text and video are extremely useful for LLM training, and locking them down makes sense if you look at them as an asset that can be licensed.

Goodtoknow ,
@Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca avatar

What’s upsetting to me is how many communities that have moved to discord and there’s no centralized way to search for content in there. Black hole of ethereal content

tslnox ,

And the Discord search is total garbage. There’s no way (I know of, and I’ve tried to search for it) to search for the exact term. No parentheses, no plus signs or whatever. So you try to search one term, but the results come back full of terms that are similar but not the same.

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