Probably because it's prioritising what it thinks you're more likely to click on more than the actual search term. AI recommendations basically.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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It's been bad for a few years already but it is getting worse. A good chunk of the internet isn't indexing anymore (places which require logins to get the content), and those that are largely exist to earn from the advertising, not to be helpful.
There's actually an opportunity for a disruptive force here. If you can be better at search than Google, you could steal users. But duckduckgo and related are mostly trying to be old Google rather than better Google.
It's on purpose. The longer you scroll, the longer you're on the platform. That's higher engagement numbers and is used to expose you to/negotiate higher prices from advertisements.
It's so bad. I keep searching topics on YouTube and getting 3-4 results before YouTube starts recommending videos based on past searches or past watched videos. Like, excuse me YouTube, what the fuck? You search what I tell you to search.
All the categories seems wildly divorced from what’s actually in them and half the time the category only suggests two videos… to me it feels like YouTube decides what you watch, today your suggestions are 90% old music videos, tomorrow a bunch of random machining videos, next day fail videos, rinse and repeat - obviously it’s based on your interests not mine but I’m sure everyone is having the same shitty experience
Yep. And to think we lost Songza to Google Music. To YouTube music. To YouTube.
Both have been prioritising "engagement" over "results" because it allows them to advertise to you more.
In case you didn't realise, if the product is free, you're the product and both have been doing an amazing job out of extracting value from your eyeballs.
Unsurprisingly, they're both owned by the same company.
The "results" portion they got rid of is credibility of the results based on cross linking i.e. people linking to useful resources. It was the thing that made Google the best search engine.
Noe they prioritise what sell the most ads as the top priority.
Dunno about Google but Youtube seems to be making some things harder on purpose, like seeing the date of a video or showing search results in chronological order.
Extensions are your friend. I've had to install several just to make YouTube useable!
If I need to go find something to make a service useable that’s my sign to not use the service.
I'd be interested to know if there's a way to fix this issue with extensions. Do you mean browser extensions? I use a browser sometimes and newpipe sometimes.
Using a browser and ublock origin, I find viewing youtube to work ok except for the occasional age gated video that I can't view without a google account. What's stopped working is search ordering and seeing timestamps. Like old comments might get labelled "2 years ago" with mouse-over no longer showing the actual date/time. It's not shown in the unrendered HTML in any obvious way either.
That is why I've started using Deepseek as a replacement for searches, the proven tract record and successes of the Communist Party of China to improve people's lives make tech out of China OVERWHELMINGLY more trust worthy then tech out of the blood soaked Capitalist Imperialist threat to all humanity that is the US ruling class (and those who currently serve them) (and the US itself for as long as it hasn't yet overthrown the Capitalists (basically the Billionaires, and now also a F**king Trillionare.)) (it's almost like I'm writing code lol, I should try to make my writing style more consistent or something)
Yes, it is one of the main reasons I started paying for Kagi. Google search is designed first and foremost to serve you up to advertisers who pay Google.
It also feels like some pages in top results didn't even exist before I made the search. They are filled with generic babble about the subject without ever going to details or conclusions. Dribble that no human would ever write
I just love how YouTube has a "show unwatched" button in its search that usually shows me videos I have watched multiple times.
I'm annoyed that YT got rid of the search by newest first option. At least Rumble has it still
Rumble, which hosts ‘truth’ social’s cloud services…
Either this or YT. The gaming side of Rumble is fairly normal and apolitical with decent comment and views. I really with someone would buy Rumble out and make it into a normal video hosting site instead of all this MAGA propaganda.
Peertube is so divided that it's nearly impossible to find or post. Bitchute sucks and is filled with view bots, reposters (myself included), and 0.1% of users that comment. Odysee is a pain in the butt to use as a video site. Why do I need points to comment on a video? Also not a lot of traction on it. TikTok if you enjoy being banned or censored for pro-LGBTQ+ anti-China, or too fat, not to mention that it's spyware.
I might have missed a couple, but we're screwed as uploaders.
Yes. It’s becoming shittier everyday.
Use duckduckgo and turn off ai results. Problem solved.
Yup. I had this exact thought YESTERDAY, when I did a search for the name of a GitHub project I needed to read up on (I forget which project), with a couple keywords, and the GitHub page wasn't even IN the top results. Later, I was doing a search for a quoted phrase, which of course is supposed to guarantee that the phrase appears, verbatim, in the results, and found that NONE of the results contained that phrase.
And no, I wasn't looking at the AI results, I've got those removed with a plugin.
I was trying to find an anklet, obviously size matters if it’s intended to fit my body and I put “eight inch anklet” in quotes along with a few other adjectives and it flat out ignored it and gave me mostly 9” because that’s the standard size of an anklet… wtf is even the point
It's all monetization directed, no matter what. Boolean search is gone.
Search has been becoming smarter for years (decades?) by now.
The problem is that search has been made to work with the "you know what I mean" factor... fixing spelling mistakes, considering different tenses or forms of words, including related words...
Search became more friendly to the average non-technical user, but it became harder for users who know/knew how to search for exactly what they want.
Other factors include...
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where websites try to appear for as many searches as possible, occasionally regardless of relevance
- Monetization of search, where people with SEO and a lot of money pay to be included in as many "relevant" searches as possible
- AI incorporated into search by trying to find additional relevant pages
- Search engines being reluctant to return zero (or few) results and padding the results with other things you "might be interested in"
- Also, search trying to use what you "might be interested in" based on what they know about you/your account/your IP address/your location based on your IP range.
Yes
What bugs me — and Apple Music is guilty of this too — is when I search for an indie or eastern song and it only shows popular results from the west.
Marvis Pro, a feature rich front end for Apple Music, knows my favourite musicians or bands are ONE OK ROCK, Enya, and Nightwish. I don’t want American Top 40 trash. But it still pushes that stuff.