this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
98 points (96.2% liked)

Technology

84816 readers
3896 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47107360

Google is making its Search more centred around AI, turning it into a conversation.

Besides being a worse experience, the websites from which it sources its information are losing all traffic and recognition.

Recommend a list of alternatives:

  • Kagi - Paid but better experience than Google
  • Ecosia - Similar experience while supporting a good cause
  • Qwant - Increasingly unique results and building a EU-first index
  • DuckDuckGo - Privacy-focused search, but quality of results may vary

More options: https://purchasewithpurpose.io/category/search-engine/

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 44 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

Google Search has long since diminished from it's peak. 15 years ago we used to play a "game" by describing something as vaguely or strangely as possible and would be entertained to find it still on the first page of search results.

SEO and paid ranking caused a steady decline in Google search performance, and LLMs are the kill shot.

Indexing and ranking were already a solved problem, and conventional algorithms accomplished it much better than LLMs do. Unfortunately, LLMs need to find uses to justify investment, so now they must be used for any task that they can be used for, even if its worse than the solutions that we already had.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 14 points 9 hours ago

even if its worse than the solutions that we already had.

Like Gemini replacing Assistant. Holy shit, what a dumpster fire.

[–] bedwyr@piefed.ca 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The other factor is companies, interests, paying the Google and their ilk to not include things in search results. And only include what they choose as an alternative.

Then you might have different interests gaming the search results to bury something they don't like.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

This is only amplified by LLMs

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 2 points 1 hour ago

At the moment, I do find that the LLMs bring me more of what I want to see than the basic search engine used to a few years back... 15-20 years ago the basic search engine seemed to be much better then slowly deteriorated from there.

I have confidence, they'll sell this version to the highest bidder faster than they did the last one, then it will be just as bad as listening to radio advertisements as a way to find a good local restaurant to eat at...