this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023

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No Stupid Questions

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Has google stopped working for finding anything? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 years ago by sighofannoyance@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

top 13 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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.

[–] ironeagl@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

Also, starting in 2018 Google no longer actually searches for the words you entered. Instead, it tries to figure out "what you really mean" and shows results for that. See BERT

[–] Aurix@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Even if ur logged into FB if ur not in the private group u can't see the content.

Well yes, that's entirely the point of the comment above: unlike old school forums, discord is just as useless as Facebook in helping search engines deliver useful content.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You can see the content, but it isn't categorized, tagged or organized in any way. If you're looking for some specific information but you don't know which server/channel it was discussed on, you'll never find it.

[–] AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yeah I can't stand discord. Impossible to find anything, constantly feel like I've joined a conversation that has been in progress for months so have to scroll up ages to get any sort of context.

[–] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] FlatFootFox@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] CliveRosfield@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You can’t just write an essay like that and not tell us what terms you used for your searches

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I mean, they probably used quite a few permutations, if they really did try for anything close to an hour...

[–] caturra@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 2 years ago

This is starting to look suspicious. I have seen several threads redacted in a similar way in the last days, and all of them don't disclose the search term. When disclosed in comments everybody answer, it works ok for me. Common factor, in all threads there is advertising for paid kagi search engine. Connecting the dots, I think this is just a marketing campaign spamming lemmy forums (and probably others)