Has search gotten worse?

Is the quality of web search results getting worse?

  • Yes

    Votes: 1,184 94.3%
  • No

    Votes: 19 1.5%
  • IDK

    Votes: 52 4.1%

  • Total voters
    1,255

Microsoft clearly hasn't learned (or changed) since 2016:

gC6gIku.png
 
The worst example I can think of was when I was looking for a picture of a ladybug and the search engines that weren't google returned nothing but porn.
Wow you weren't kidding. Tried on Brave search and DDG and I got the same thing. Did a little bit of testing on this with other character names that can be false positives and/or have a lot of porn (Kantai Collection, MLP, Fate, etc.) and none of those brought up a full page of full-on porn like just looking up ladybug. I wonder if this is just a freak accident with this particular search term on the non-Google engines.
 
In my experience with Google it's really a lottery based on your history. I've had more luck with one Google account than another one depending on the searches. Admittedly, specific porn is one of those things that can be lottery, though it's not limited to just porn. Some very specific topics of any kind are really SEO lottery.

Honestly, I've had many instances of trying many different search engines, whether it's DuckDuckGo, Bing, or even Yahoo! Then again, it could also just be that back when I was 9 or 10 there wasn't an influx of Pajeets online, at least to the same degree as today, that tend to shit up the search results, whether it's regular web search or YouTube search.

I distinctively remember, when I was about 9 or 10, finding TV test patterns, such as the FuBK and PM5544 test patterns, quite fascinating, and I would try to get up early so I could catch the PM5544 pattern on RAI 3 which looked different than the FuBK pattern HRT (Yes, BBC is not the only broadcaster with another questionable interpretation for the acronym) used. I was also looking for test patterns on YouTube at that time, and I distinctively remember my recommended section being FILLED with this type of videos.
 
A search engine that can seamlessly browse the internet, i2p and TOR would be pretty neat tbh
 
Yes, the quality of search results are absolutely getting worse. The Page Rank algorithm should never have been copyrightable. It is exactly "Two friends recommend so +2." They have the best most simple algorithm used by mankind for thousands or millions of years, but they put it in a mathematical equation so they had a monopoly on it for decades. Fuck even birds, dogs and other primates use the algorithms. Can ants count? They probably use it too.

Google also censors the results like hell. The quickest, most superficial proof-positive way to view the censorship in real time is to put Google vs most other search engines and watch the auto suggest.

While Google purports it helps you find things, sometimes they actively and blatantly work to prevent you from finding things. Google is the better search engine IMO, but DuckDuckGo seems more truthful so far. Wouldn't be surprised if they censor some shit too, so I use other search engines, including foreign depending on the topic. Thought about making my own locally based text-only private search engine because I'm a nut. Any suggestions? I definitely don't have the time to fucking build one. I just know I wont be censoring my own shit.

Good poll by the way.

GoogleVsDuckDuckGo.jpg
 
Yes, the quality of search results are absolutely getting worse. The Page Rank algorithm should never have been copyrightable. It is exactly "Two friends recommend so +2." They have the best most simple algorithm used by mankind for thousands or millions of years, but they put it in a mathematical equation so they had a monopoly on it for decades. Fuck even birds, dogs and other primates use the algorithms. Can ants count? They probably use it too.

Google also censors the results like hell. The quickest, most superficial proof-positive way to view the censorship in real time is to put Google vs most other search engines and watch the auto suggest.

While Google purports it helps you find things, sometimes they actively and blatantly work to prevent you from finding things. Google is the better search engine IMO, but DuckDuckGo seems more truthful so far. Wouldn't be surprised if they censor some shit too, so I use other search engines, including foreign depending on the topic. Thought about making my own locally based text-only private search engine because I'm a nut. Any suggestions? I definitely don't have the time to fucking build one. I just know I wont be censoring my own shit.

Good poll by the way.

View attachment 2954722
cool pic
why not host a searx instance?
 
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As part of my job, I often have to write in a language I'm not exactly proficient in. When in doubt, I punch some words or phrases I'm using into Google to see whether that usage would sound natural to native speakers.
No matter how hard I try as of lately, it's straight up fucking impossible to get Google to respect those quotes I put around my words. It keeps giving me random stuff that's only kinda tangentially related to what I'm looking for. It's so much worse for languages other than English.
DDG is much better, but it doesn't show the number of results it's found. Same with Brave.
 
As part of my job, I often have to write in a language I'm not exactly proficient in. When in doubt, I punch some words or phrases I'm using into Google to see whether that usage would sound natural to native speakers.
No matter how hard I try as of lately, it's straight up fucking impossible to get Google to respect those quotes I put around my words. It keeps giving me random stuff that's only kinda tangentially related to what I'm looking for. It's so much worse for languages other than English.
DDG is much better, but it doesn't show the number of results it's found. Same with Brave.
With all the manipulation they do already, would you really know if the big Gew was faking result figures as well?
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Toolbox
While Google purports it helps you find things, sometimes they actively and blatantly work to prevent you from finding things. Google is the better search engine IMO, but DuckDuckGo seems more truthful so far. Wouldn't be surprised if they censor some shit too,
they supposedly did!
or atleast they used to do so as entering the same fields into duckduckgo does not give the same results shown.
 
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As of the past several months YouTube has been frequently forcing the first search result to be based on my IP address country/region. My browser's contenet language is set to English, my YouTube account locale is USA. Yet when I search software dev videos or tech reviews, with English words in the query even, first result is some local youtuber or at least same language spoken in my region. Appears to only affect result #1, #2 onward are as intended as far as I noticed.

I want results in English because it's usually the primary source, has way higher engagement, more comments that may be related to my situation and help me, more up-to-date. YouTube deliberately serves me results they know to be objectively worse matches because they have a vested interest in fostering non-English language creators.
 
Discord is a black hole for information. Most relevant caps:

discord_op.png

discord_followup.png

The prevalence of JS obfuscating content and walled gardens has the potential to impact the availability of information to search engines even more than shitty SEO content farms. It also creates a sort of Tower of Babel of the Internet. Either you can't easily crawl a website because it's pre-loaded via flavor of the month JS framework or you're only given platform specific search to work with and crawling using other methods is a breach of their ToS. It's especially annoying when people from the tech sector, who should know better, promote this cancer. Discord as the sole means of dev communication, writing articles on JS-heavy platforms like Medium, etc.
 
As of the past several months YouTube has been frequently forcing the first search result to be based on my IP address country/region. My browser's contenet language is set to English, my YouTube account locale is USA. Yet when I search software dev videos or tech reviews, with English words in the query even, first result is some local youtuber or at least same language spoken in my region. Appears to only affect result #1, #2 onward are as intended as far as I noticed.

I want results in English because it's usually the primary source, has way higher engagement, more comments that may be related to my situation and help me, more up-to-date. YouTube deliberately serves me results they know to be objectively worse matches because they have a vested interest in fostering non-English language creators.
That is a pet peeve of mine. I search for a name or something and add "wiki" and top result is the local one that have half a paragraph on the subject. I never click on that and you'd think it should learn. Below that is shit articles in english and maybe below that is "regular" ie English wikipedia. Most of the time, sometimes it's on page two.

Searching and clicking the news tab is also absolute garbage now despite using the local language, it used to work but now it is like querying dementia riddled grandpas memory.
I want to know about the shooting last night, "oh, *cough*, shooting, I can tell you about that. In 1994 we were hunting pheasant, a reporter from the local newspaper came along and lady luck must have smiled on us because we shot..."
Ok, now tell me about the bombing that happened today grandpa. "that was the hells angels in 1993, terrible people, let me tell you..."
Ok, what about the bombings in 1946. "in 2018 they blew up..."

Garbage.
 
I'm guilty of adding "reddit" on my searches lately because the results are often clogged with pajeet spam blogs trying to sell you shit. But sometimes I notice Google would omit results coming from reddit on certain topics, I think stuff about health/meds and covid vax.

DDG shows things fine.
 
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