Has search gotten worse?

[Dick Justice]

This is mostly a strawpoll. I've noticed that over the last decade or so the quality of web search results has gradually deteriorated for me. It seems like searches are less useful than they've ever been, but you can't really draw conclusions from a sample of one. What do fellow kiwis think? Are the quality of search results getting worse?

 

[Celebrate Nite]

You get different results depending on what you use (eg. using Google compared to using any of the Searx instances)

The problem is that a lot of search engines lack their own index and rely on other big ones for their search results (i.e. the ones doing all the hiding and misinformation in the first place.

Here's a link regarding it if you're interested.

 

[Dick Justice]

You get different results depending on what you use (eg. using Google compared to using any of the Searx instances)

The problem is that a lot of search engines lack their own index and rely on other big ones for their search results (i.e. the ones doing all the hiding and misinformation in the first place.

Here's a link regarding it if you're interested.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm not asking for an explanation. I know about search bubbling, search filtering, webcrawlers, SEO and astroturfing, pagerank manipulation, regional results, metasearch etc. I'm just trying to get a decent sample of everyone's own subjective opinion.

 

[Superman93's Bitch]

I agree it's gone to shit for a lot of reasons. Can't search for anything anymore without having some results unlisted or pushed a few pages back for one reason or another.

Ad spaces, aggregates, and censorship, oh my.

 

[break these cuffs]

It's definitely changing. I use different search engines depending on what I'm looking for. I also use privacy measures so nothing is customized for me before I start the search. I've searched using Startpage (google based) and gone through multiple pages not finding what I want. A search with Bing had it as the first hit.

 

[Sir Bartleby Montclair]

Yes! Any time I search for something that could somehow relate to something that relates to something that relates to something someone may want to sell me, the results are filled to the brim with shitty store listings and T-shirts. It's ridiculous. Other times if I search something on Google that's current events related, the results are all extremely biased. I don't have these problems as much using DuckDuckGo, but sometimes their results are unrelated or there's a lot of porn for no reason

 

[Dick Justice]

a lot of porn for no reason

I'm calling that a feature, not a bug.

 

[ZombiefiedFerret]

I've only had problems with search engines when I'm not entirely sure what I'm searching for, which is really more my fault than theirs. Otherwise they've been pretty good.

 

[Bongocat]

I work in tech so the majority of my searches have absolutely nothing to do with politics, and I'm still getting screwed over by whatever google changed in their algorithms. One thing I'm near certain about is that it's deranking forums (with the exception of stackoverflow). I think that's likely related to their "raising authoritative sources" strategy they talked about before.

When looking for solutions to obscure problems or error messages, I used to get hits on lesser known forums containing exactly what I needed on the first or second link. Now they hardly come up at all. The first pages are usually irrelevant garbage that just sort of sound like what I'm looking for, but they're "authoritative sources" so they get first dibs.

 

[Dick Justice]

I work in tech so the majority of my searches have absolutely nothing to do with politics, and I'm still getting screwed over by whatever google changed in their algorithms. One thing I'm near certain about is that it's deranking forums (with the exception of stackoverflow). I think that's likely related to their "raising authoritative sources" strategy they talked about before.

When looking for solutions to obscure problems or error messages, I used to get hits on lesser known forums containing exactly what I needed on the first or second link. Now they hardly come up at all. The first pages are usually irrelevant garbage that just sort of sound like what I'm looking for, but they're "authoritative sources" so they get first dibs.

This and also take a shot every time your search is *nix or BSD specific and the first three pages are all Windows and a token askubuntu entry.

 

[Xerxes IX]

I work in tech so the majority of my searches have absolutely nothing to do with politics, and I'm still getting screwed over by whatever google changed in their algorithms. One thing I'm near certain about is that it's deranking forums (with the exception of stackoverflow). I think that's likely related to their "raising authoritative sources" strategy they talked about before.

When looking for solutions to obscure problems or error messages, I used to get hits on lesser known forums containing exactly what I needed on the first or second link. Now they hardly come up at all. The first pages are usually irrelevant garbage that just sort of sound like what I'm looking for, but they're "authoritative sources" so they get first dibs.

I've noticed that too just as someone trying to troubleshoot tech issues. Search engines seem to prioritize the "official" support forums whenever possible, where any thread on technical issues is lots of replies like "I have that problem too" before the thread is locked by a janny.

 

[Coffee Shits]

Yes, because all search engines - the big ones and smaller, single-site ones - are now expected to be "Googly". As in, the engine is supposed to know what you mean even if you don't know what you mean. Instead of relying on the user to punch in exactly what he's looking for and treating a search engine as an inverse index, (archive) it has become expected that every vague keyword is to expanded to mean more than what you typed based on context, that being other keywords in the query or based on some external knowledge on who the user is.

Being able to read the user's mind is great and everything but it opens dozens of avenues to fuck up even the simplest search query because computers are braindead. So unless you are Google and have everyone's information it means you have to do it in aggregate and make a best effort and hope the individual's vague query is close to the average on what the engine determines it to be.

Since we let retards onto the internet, though, that means if you actually do know what you want, ask for it specifically, and it's not on the radar of the average moron, you're likely to get a poor result. And that's discounting any tampering the engine might be doing anyway.

 

[Samson Pumpkin Jr.]

whoever has made the search engine worse should face torture and years behind bars (if convicted)

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

Oh, believe me: I've noticed this too. Google is still the gold standard of search results compared to shit like bing or Yahoo!, but Google has been declining since around 2015 or so. I've noticed search results getting less and less comprehensive and more geared towards ads. Also, the reverse image search sucks balls now. You used to be able to triangulate peoples' Facebook profiles based off their Tinder photos before! Before the search engine was changed, I used to screencap questionable Tinder bios, do a reverse image search, and find out if they were real or bot accounts. It doesn't work anymore, and now when you reverse image search a girl's Tinder photos, the results are all generic stock images of women's photos with the search result saying, "Image results for 'woman'." Before it would actually show the person's Facebook profile since their Tinder photos were linked to Facebook. This was also a great way for finding out if a girl on Tinder is actually married or has kids but doesn't put it in their bios.

And don't get me started on how the Google Image search function was completely fucked in 2018 when Google kowtowed to Getty Images. That still pisses me off.

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

a token askubuntu entry.

A fatwa upon Ubuntu users would do a world of good.

 

[Jarolleon]

Oh, believe me: I've noticed this too. Google is still the gold standard of search results compared to shit like bing or Yahoo!, but Google has been declining since around 2015 or so. I've noticed search results getting less and less comprehensive and more geared towards ads. Also, the reverse image search sucks balls now. You used to be able to triangulate peoples' Facebook profiles based off their Tinder photos before! Before the search engine was changed, I used to screencap questionable Tinder bios, do a reverse image search, and find out if they were real or bot accounts. It doesn't work anymore, and now when you reverse image search a girl's Tinder photos, the results are all generic stock images of women's photos with the search result saying, "Image results for 'woman'." Before it would actually show the person's Facebook profile since their Tinder photos were linked to Tinder. This was also a great way for finding out if a girl on Tinder is actually married or has kids but doesn't put it in their bios.

And don't get me started on how the Google Image search function was completely fucked in 2018 when Google kowtowed to Getty Images. That still pisses me off.

Maybe Google intentionally fucked up reverse image search to stop stalkers, or because some troon got deadnamed by a reverse image search, sounds like something a woke company would do.

 

[JamusActimus]

Shitty news sites are are so well referenced that if you search a niche thing/person you will mostly find stale news articles for years ago

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

Maybe Google intentionally fucked up reverse image search to stop stalkers, or become some troon got deadnamed by a reverse image search, sounds like something a woke company would do.

It's probably the 1st one. I noticed that it started to get less and less comprehensive in the past few years, so maybe something in the post-2016 culture wars kicked it off, like concerns over doxing of ANTIFA members from the mysterious 4chan hacker.

 

[Jarolleon]

Shitty news sites are are so well referenced that if you search a niche thing/person you will mostly find stale news articles for years ago

Every time I look for any detailed information about something in a game like Bannerlord (i.e. what do skill points even do) , the results are clogged with bullshit like PCGamer guides on the most basic shit in the game.

 

[Trump's Chosen]

I've only had problems with search engines when I'm not entirely sure what I'm searching for, which is really more my fault than theirs. Otherwise they've been pretty good.

But why would you be searching for it if you already knew what it was you were looking for?