I still don’t think it’s talked about enough how useless Google search is becoming. It genuinely infuriates me on a daily basis.
That’s what I see AI actually replacing, along with those shit websites that write 1000 words for instructions that could be summarised in 4 bullet points.
I don’t know if Google would fully adopt AI into their search though, as they have such a strong incentive to keep things how they are.
I still don’t think it’s talked about enough how useless Google search is becoming. It genuinely infuriates me on a daily basis.
That's on us. We switched to DuckDuckGo and forgot to leave a note.
I do find it really noticable when I accidentally use Google on a new browser install, and get worse results.
Edit: Which is a change. I used to feel like I was accepting slightly worse results on DuckDuckGo to get more privacy. But today, it just feels a bit better than Google, to me.
Ddg has really gone downhill lately too. They've started injecting ads for local businesses that are completely unrelated to the search terms. Like not even a single word in common. And they serve them as regular search results so you can't even block them.
Actually now that I'm thinking about it, I actually haven't seen those in a month or two ....
There’s also so much Microsoft crap now. Why do all news articles and videos send you to Microsoft Start or whatever it’s called?
So what is an actually useful search engine these days? I want to find stuff without being infuriated by the process
I just use ChatGPT+ or Perplexity. It's 2023, why should I do web searches, that's a robot's job.
Kagi. It costs money but there are no ads and the results are literally miles better than any other search engine in the past 5 years easy. I thought it was a bit ridiculous until I tried the free trial and I’m hooked. The results are just that much better and there’s way more features.
Heh. I VPN enough that had not noticed the local business ads, as of yet.
On the non-targeted ads, I always figure if the business is dumb enough to pay for such a poor quality match, to subsidize a tool I like using, then that's a win for everybody.
Google has different goals than a search user.
Whether google uses AI or not, their goal will be at odds with the user’s and the results will only be useful enough that most people won’t completely stop using search.
The only useless results I get in search engines these days is the AI garbage. It's not better than what you mentioned - it's the same, if not worse.
Have a look at Kagi search. I’m no longer infuriated by the search results.
You used to be able to type the most vague shit in to Google (who was that one guy in that movie with sharks?) and it would be the top result. Now you can basically spell it out for Google and it will still be on the 4th page.
4th under all the sponsored links followed by websites that have 1 mention of a word you used that wasn't even that important
And let's not forget the following two dozen AI voice responses regurgitating AI generated articles that contain a whole lot of clickbait words but never actually provide any information of value. You won't believe what happens next.
Search for "This super specific thing" Google: Oh wait you probably meant "This super common general thing", here are a billion results on that
Or the first 10 results are actually somewhat related, but after that it's just random bullshit.
Not to mention the thousands of AI generated pages with a heading with the exact thing you want to find out, only to have 8000 words without the actual answer. Or the video equivalent where people make a 20 minutes video filled with useless filler and not actually answering the question posed in the title.
Search engines are the worst these days.
I once almost got fired from my job back in 2006 or so, the company I worked at wanted to use SEO to improve their search ranking. I said their pages didn't really add anything and wouldn't be relevant to the people searching for the terms they mentioned. But the marketing lady said if they used SEO they would be the first search result, which somehow would generate more revenue. As the IT guy I refused to do the SEO stuff, more than simply making sure the search engine could properly index their pages. They hired a SEO firm after I refused, but I would challenge everything they said. They had no response to that, I don't think they actually knew how search engines worked, they just spouted the same shit the SEO circle jerk was spouting at the time.
Try kagi. It’s the best search engine I’ve used in years
They should stick to satire, this is just straight up true. Even the "power user" tricks barely work anymore
Now I use Bing which is weird that it's better now cause 5 years ago I would have never touched it
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