Has search gotten worse?

[Ilikeoreos]

Man, Google's "people also asked" feature has some of the stupidest questions I've ever heard. Apparently soneone seriously asked "Will there be a Donkey Kong Country 3?"

Only someone who's been cryogenicly frozen since 1995 would ask that.

 

[HahaYes]

Man, Google's "people also asked" feature has some of the stupidest questions I've ever heard.

That "also asked" shit is always spelt in the most broken english you can find as well. You can almost guarantee it's pajeets shitting up search results right along with the streets, it's complete eye cancer and one of the many reasons I stay away from google these days

 

[ToroidalBoat]

If you search for "Paris then and now" in Google Images, you may see sanitized results that do not convey Paris getting worse in Current Year. At least not with the first several results. On Yandex -- once you get past the seemingly constant captchas, that is -- you can see images conveying that Paris is indeed going worse in Current Year.

 

[Mysterious Figure]

Man, Google's "people also asked" feature has some of the stupidest questions I've ever heard. Apparently soneone seriously asked "Will there be a Donkey Kong Country 3?"

Only someone who's been cryogenicly frozen since 1995 would ask that.

That "also asked" shit is always spelt in the most broken english you can find as well. You can almost guarantee it's pajeets shitting up search results right along with the streets, it's complete eye cancer and one of the many reasons I stay away from google these days

Many times the "people also asked" has wrong information.

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

I think it's because of two reasons

1.) Censorship, pretty self explanatory. You remove search terms in the backend, you probably kill off some other terms that are not the target for the censorship in question. This phenomena has escalated a lot the last 5 - 10 years. It's to such a retarded level that searching for a bread recipe is a dead end now.

2.) Traditional/old models being replaced with newer ones that are heavily dependent on machine learning (the AI meme). These new "AI" models are often under developed and lacks "training"/data. These companies are hoping that it's only shit now, but when it gets trained it will surpass the old model eventually, that it's only a temporary performance bump that will pay off later. I think it can work (the theory says it does), but it won't in practice because of reason number 1.), they are tampering the models and data in order to censor the searches and that constantly breaks it. Machine learning models are just average values on steoroids, and if you are constrantly removing points for the computer to interpolate, it will end up being a useless meme.

This is what I think is going on, they want to censor the engines, but it breaks the new models (AI ones) in the backend because it's more sensitive to tampering, compared to older models.


Keep in mind, they have a team dedicated to train models just to detect "disturbing" memes. It's pretty much googles version of the attached image. There is a database for detecting happy merchant memes.

This is absolutely true if you look up spicy memes of current events that rustle jimmies of shitlibs and assorted faggots from Reddit. Often you'll be slapped with the dreaded "Looks like there aren't many results for this search" label that takes up half of the screen, which is deliberate to prevent normies from scrolling down further*. For example, looking up terms like "Aaron Bushnell", "Audrey Hale", or "Darrell Brooks Jr." followed by the word "meme" within the same search query will often cause this form of censorship. If you manage to scroll through the first few results, you'll notice your words being omitted with strikethroughs in an attempt to stop you from searching further. So eventually you'll end up with:

showing results for 'meme', omitting Aaron Bushnell.

Which in turn just shows you irrelevant normie memes from 9gag that have nothing to do with the cuck who set himself on fire and became an hero for sandniggers.

*They also do this for hot topic news events that go against the left wing narrative. For example, when the Francis Scott Key bridge was obliterated due to incompetent brown hands, doing a Google search for the ship's company or the bridge disaster along with the query "Indian crew" in the immediate aftermath would result with the dreaded "Looks like there aren't many results" bullshit.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

"Looks like there aren't many results for this search"

There can also be a pale red box with a disclaimer claiming that "memes about groups of people can be offensive" if you do get results. Just like you can get pale blue infoboxes on YT with a link to what The Narrative™ says on a "controversial" topic. I miss internet search before Current Year: they weren't so blatantly manipulative.

 

[crowabunga]

>Put a search term in quotes
>Get results not exactly matching my quoted search term(s)

Yes, unequivocally it has (rate me late).

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Yes, unequivocally it has (rate me late).

Even worse, the search can cut out one or more words you were searching for, so you have to click that "must include [this]" link.

(not the first to mention this BTW)

 

[Mysterious Figure]

The Google algorithm is shit because it tries to sell everybody expensive shit instead of showing everybody what they are looking for. A few minutes ago I couldn't find pictures I wanted on Google, so I ended up finding them on a Ebay search because posters include lots of pictures of the things they are selling.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

Just needed a place to vent. Working on a hack the box and had to consult a walk-through for hints. Followed some instructions and hit a error message (about jar xvf can't remember the exact message)

Googling this error message gives me two things:
Listing for similar but not the same message that does nothing.

And the one that annoys me the most. A bunch of medium walkthroughs with the same error message but they just bulldozed right through posting the entire walk through without acknowledging the error meaning that they just copy and pasted someone else's walkthrough and put their own screenshots in. Every goddamn time I see who the author is its goddamn RajHadji Pooinstreet shitskin.

 

[khaine]

This is one reason why search has gotten worse. The other is wokeness. Now, being neutral and just returning information is violence. If you are not promoting woke things, then you are evil.

 

[BiggestKai]

It's self defeating assuming you know that much regarding the subject you're searching but adding site:<url, can also exclude a site by prefixing -> helps immediately zero in on a good result if you know the sites you're looking for.

But to answer your question, I think it's gotten worse in 2021 and then has gotten worse every now and then, I'm pretty sure it got a month or two ago. Here's an example.

I'm pirating a tv show called Elsbeth(don't judge, I like Columbo clones). The rips I download don't come with subtitles so I have to and find my own. Doing so for any recent, show that isn't mega popular is a pain in the ass but it's manageable.
Anyways, episode 6 has been released. I go and search for "Elsbeth subtitles" and I can't find it. I search for "Elsbeth S1E6 subtitles" and "Elsbeth episode 6 subtitles", no luck.
I then search for the episode's name, "Elsbeth Ear for an Ear subtitles" and I get a match, for a site that I used to get as the top result months ago and one that I haven't gotten a result for in the previous three search queries.

Don't even get me started on manga raws because most of the sites ripping those have absolutely godawful search engines, most likely due to how everyone has to be special and call the manga by a different name.

 

[Merton J. Dingle]

Is anyone familiar with a particular search engine that shows results from several different sources at the same time? Like it showed results from Google, Google images, YouTube, and Reddit among others and you could look at them all on the same page. I used this site months ago, and I cannot for the life of me find it again. I specifically remember that it had an option to swap out Google for Bing, if that rings a bell for anyone.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

Now, being neutral and just returning information is violence. If you are not promoting woke things, then you are evil.

Hitting that with brave ai. I know it's nothing new to complain about but even just asking "on the general consensus of the internet what is considered the best shrek movie" just gives me "that are all good in their own special way with the memories you make~~~"

 

[Bongocat]

Is anyone familiar with a particular search engine that shows results from several different sources at the same time? Like it showed results from Google, Google images, YouTube, and Reddit among others and you could look at them all on the same page. I used this site months ago, and I cannot for the life of me find it again. I specifically remember that it had an option to swap out Google for Bing, if that rings a bell for anyone.

searx?

 

[Merton J. Dingle]

searx?

Sadly, that's not it. I think this was super obscure. I saw it on the list of /g/'s recommended websites, which was linked to here on the Farms; I can't find the post containing that link either, but the link died, from what I recall. I've since found some other pages that serve as an updated version of /g/'s recommended sites, but they seem to be missing the search engine.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The Google algorithm is shit because it tries to sell everybody expensive shit instead of showing everybody what they are looking for.

This is one reason why search has gotten worse.

The Man Who Killed Google Search | Kiwi Farms

tl;dr:

"just cram in a tonne of shitty new user elements onto the search page that hijack the desired search and send people to our advertisers"

 

[Sperghetti]

It occured to me recently that another huge problem is that people are increasingly putting desirable information in un-indexable places.

Think back to 15+ years ago: If you were looking for stuff on a particular hobby or interest, the most current info from fellow enthusiasts was still located on websites, forums, and blogs. You know, all things that are indexed by search engines, because that’s literally what search engines were built to do.

Now, that sort of content is increasingly stashed away in little internet hidey-holes like Twitter or Instagram or Discord, that aren’t really indexed and thus will never actually show up in search results. I’ve had several hobbies now where one of the main websites or forums I went to for general updates and discussion just ceased all activity several years back and now directs you to join their Discord server instead. And of course, since those websites haven’t seen any activity or updates in years, Google believes they’re irrelevant and won't display them in results.

So what’s left on the web for a Google search to barf up? Shopping websites and SEO spam.

>Put a search term in quotes
>Get results not exactly matching my quoted search term(s)

Yes, unequivocally it has (rate me late).

Every day I’m reminded more and more of the part in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur gets into an argument with the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser, a device which supposedly analyzes the user’s tastebuds and brain waves to produce their ideal drink, but completely fails at making the basic cup of tea he asked for.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

try to reverse search any image , get links to amazon, etsy, temu or aliexpress for articles of clothing, some object or some furniture in the background instead of the actual image or something actually related to the pictured subject. Write any search term in google, get a bunch of garbled SEO articles and AI images. Maybe you get lucky and get an actual hit, but its a link to a social media site and the post isn't actually there once you open the link or the link doesn't lead to the image but a directory with thousands of pages.

I was looking for a picture of a labrador and most results i was getting were AI images. Can't even get a normal picture of a real fucking dog. I was looking for 50s and 60s movie posters and every result was some retard who used that prompt to generate AI slop rather than the real thing.

I am using duckduckgo and Yandex more and more every day. Google even says their search engine doesn't lead back to people now.

 

[dick brain]

I don't want to read 38 pages, what search engines do you guys use now?

I've been using yandex and it's better but the video results are always full of porn and it's annoying.