There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

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?

snowe ,
@snowe@programming.dev avatar

Kagi. DDG and Google are trash in comparison

Scrollone ,

Or Yandex for borderline legal content (e.g. movies, porn, etc.)

0x2d ,

whats so good about yandex

Supervisor194 ,
@Supervisor194@lemmy.world avatar

Everybody is blaming SEO, which is true - but Google is also hamstrung by walled gardens.

Before Facebook, most content posted to the web was open. It could be viewed by anyone without logging in. Reddit even uses this paradigm.

But then Facebook started putting everything behind their account login and suddenly, Google can no longer spider a significant amount of the conversation going on on the Internet - and it can’t link you to it either, because the link would be dead if you weren’t a logged-in Facebook user. And of course it’s not just Facebook.

This is why appending site:reddit.com has come into fashion in the past couple years. Reddit, being open, viewable without a login, is a fantastic source for finding people who are talking about exactly what you’re searching for.

And it’s another reason why Meta is cancer: all the conversations going on about whatever problem you are experiencing that made you do a search in the first place, if they exist in private groups on something like Facebook - they are useless to you and useless to anyone but the members of that private group. We are losing our giant public knowledge base because capitalism.

Aurix ,

You really need to add Discord to this list as it is soaking up gigantic amounts of information about video games as a forum replacement. One could argue for actual community games like MMO’s it is perhaps slightly different, but for the majority it is a huge problem.

Dkarma ,

But u can login to discord and if the room is public you can see the content. Even if ur logged into FB if ur not in the private group u can’t see the content.

Dozzi92 ,
@Dozzi92@lemmy.world avatar

I think the point is you can’t put a search term into a search engine and get results from some random Discord. No body is going to go trawling through Discords to then use the search function to potentially find information from it. Now, if chats were somehow archived and could then be searchable, different story, but I don’t think that’s what people using Discord want from Discord.

mesamunefire ,

In 10 years, when we move off discord for “the next big thing” all that info will be gone yet again. It happened to slack and it will most likely happen to discord. None of it will be indexed too. Fun times.

nilloc ,

Where are the data hoarders when you need them?

FractalsInfinite ,

Tools for backing up servers already exist: github.com/Tyrrrz/DiscordChatExporterBut unfortunately discord can’t be easily scraped in one coordinated attempt unlike reddit due to the massive number of private servers and existing verification/anti-bot mechanisms. As a result, only the communities that have data hoarders will be actually archived.

caseyweederman ,

Reddit keeps asking me to use their app and they are very clearly making the mobile browser version worse and worse.
Just last week I couldn’t view a thread I found on Google without signing in. It wasn’t adult content and didn’t require verifying my age. The reason given was very vague and had something to do with the content not being vetted (despite being old).

The Reddit garden wall is already here and is currently being rolled out. For your own good, of course.

CommanderCloon ,

I use a browser extension to redirect to old reddit, which doesn’t have all this crap yet

Nastybutler ,

Which extension?

heyfrancis ,
@heyfrancis@lemmy.ml avatar

There are some extensions you can try - duckduckgo.com/?q=old+reddit+extension+firefox&t=…

But I’m using LibRedirect - libredirect.github.io

If you’re using Firefox mobile (Android), you could try this github.com/octonezd/oldlander

foggy ,

What happened is SEO got good and money got made and fortunes got made and greed has taken over.

The internet today is the equivalent of the first and last 10 pages of the old yellowbooks. Why do you think AAA Auto is called what it’s called?

redcalcium ,

Why would google even attempt to fix their search results? Just look at your own anecdote, you just spent an hour searching stuff on google, and perhaps saw an hour worth of ads in the search result. This counts as positive metrics on some exec’s report about how search usage increase year after year.

If anything, a paid search engine like Kagi actually have reverse incentive that they want you to search as little as possible to reduce their server costs, and thus must be able to produce great search result so you won’t spend more resource searching over and over again. Subscribing to Kagi is more useful than subscribing to youtube premium imo.

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

I was trying to Google “Best way to shave your head with low or no water pressure” because I was staying somewhere rural for a bit and my razor kept clogging.

All I got were straight razor blog spam and dozens of other completely unrelated shit.

I tried the shake it in a bowl method, 1/10 razor still clogged with hair.

Mathazzar ,

I get specifically pissed at all the AI generated answers.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@kbin.social avatar

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Even the CEO has acknowledged this. They serve you what makes THEM the most profits, not what YOU wanted, ever.

For years now, the only way to find something technical related was to add "Reddit" to the search. But then Reddit imploded as well, chasing profits over the needs of its customers.

And Twitter/X likewise is now chasing profits over the needs of its customers, causing many to flee.

As too is happening in so many other places, such as Stack overflow, and most of Hollywood itself was on strike for months, bc they have been chasing profits over the needs of its customers.

Managers think they know better than customers what you want, or at least what you are willing to put up with.

And now they are pushing AI to the rescue, to put even above the SEO results, but soon they'll have to think about actually monetizing those answers, and the cycle will repeat at the level of SEO'd AI answers.

DuckDuckGo works, for now. Maybe one day there will be a hostile takeover and it won't anymore.

Btw this phenomenon is called https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification of the internet - yes that's the official term afaik!!:-)

DJSpunTheDisc ,

Is there any hope of this getting better? I rely on the internet for most of my knowledge so it sounds like I’m doomed.

penquin ,

There are very good alternatives to Google nowadays actually. I haven’t used Google in a long time. I’ve been jumping between brave search and startpage. Mostly brave search. Only thing Google has going for it is maps when searching for a business. Brave only shows the business in a basic form and show when they open and close for the day, whereas Google shows a lot more, including directions that open Google maps when clicked. They also show business hours for the whole week, reveiews…blah. other than that, I’ve been very happy with brave search and startpage

HootinNHollerin ,

Ad company serves ads over useful information, news at 11… don’t use Google

teft ,
@teft@startrek.website avatar

It’s why I switched to DuckDuckGo. At least there I can find the result in a few pages. Google doesn’t even respect operators anymore. Want to search for enterprise but don’t want car ads? Good luck finding captain Picard through all that nonsense.

WarmSoda ,

I don’t know man. I’ve never had that problem before.
What movie were you searching for?

FlatFootFox ,
@FlatFootFox@lemmy.world avatar

The signal to noise ratio has seemed particularly out of wack with Google lately. The amount of blog spam SEO nonsense that crops up into the top 4 results has been pretty noticeable.

I’m not sure it’s entirely a Google thing. Reddit’s decline has made it harder to find quick answers for, “My washing machine’s making this weird string of beeps?” Niche hobbies moving from forums to Discord chats means, “How do I safely remove a keycap without damaging the switch?” is becoming a pinned message in a server you have to hear about via word of mouth. Basically any technology troubleshooting topic has moved from a blog post / forum to a YouTube video. And a 10 minute long one at that. Gotta hit those higher ad tiers.

For what it’s worth, I’m starting the new year off giving Kagi a try. It’s a startup trying to make a paid search engine work. You get 100 free searches to give it a try. After that it’s $5/mo for 300 searches, or $10/mo for unlimited. I’m not sure I’ll sign up for it just yet, but it seems pretty nice. No ads, custom components for things like Stack Overflow and Reddit, and some other nice touches for people who care about search. Their image search actually has a “View Image” link in addition to the “View Page” link. It’s hard to quantify how “good” a search result is, but I’ve been pretty impressed with it so far.

antonim ,

The last part of your comment sounds like an ad straight out of those overlong YT videos.

xantoxis ,

Kagi is very good and I’m happy to be paying for it, but you were right in your second paragraph. It’s not all google. Signal to noise in the web has gone way off. We need to throw out this Internet, it’s gone bad

send_me_your_ink ,

Story time! There is series by Tad Williams called “otherland” - it’s a rift in the standard stuck in vr story.

Anywho. There is a group of hackers, weirdos and nerds who did not like the corporate vr experience and built their own (treehouse). In all honesty it’s an expansion of the tor project.

But it’s what I hope for. A place to end up in the web that’s not saturated to hell and back by corporate interests, and you need to know someone for the ladder to be let down and you to be let in.

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.

Rhynoplaz ,

I’m really surprised that you couldn’t find a Hollywood movie in an hour. Can I ask what the movie was? Was there a specific question you couldn’t find the answer for?

jettrscga ,

I understand OP’s sentiment that google’s getting worse, but this sounds like ragebait. No examples of what they searched for an hour.

bjoern_tantau ,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

I’ve finally switched to DuckDuckGo because of this. Even though only about two months ago I said here somewhere that it’s garbage. Google just managed to convince me that they’re more garbage.

coffee_poops ,

That’s because DDG gets its results from Bing.

ebits21 ,
@ebits21@lemmy.ca avatar

I came to the exact same decision a few months ago.

DDG used to be worse; now it’s better.

ColeSloth ,

So you’re using Bing.

WarmSoda ,

It may be bing under the hood, but it gives simple results without having ads and giant boxes everywhere.

CobblerScholar ,

Over the last year of me using DDG as my primary search engine it has noticeably improved, give it another and we might see a trace of that spark Google had

caseyweederman ,

I find my DDG results are only getting worse with time.
Same problem as with Google, and then some.
Carefully craft search string and submit.
Click through to a result, scroll and try to find the part that addresses my question.
Get frustrated and Ctrl+F for the active part of my search string.
Don’t find it.
Hit back to search results to repeat (but now the results are shuffled for some reason?)
Eventually give up and put the active parts into quotes to force their inclusion.
Same results.

Why am I getting these results if they don’t even match my search string?

KpntAutismus ,

been using duckduckgo for a while now. it definetely could be better, but google is just hot garbage.

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