Bongocat
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2020
This is a branch off of this thread, but focused on solutions rather than the problem.
I think we can safely say that search (specifically Google) has gotten worse to an astonishing degree. I'm spending roughly x10 more effort scouring compared to what I used to do for work related searches. This thread is about asking the question of what we can do about it as users.
TL;DR of above, "Google Fu" does not appear to be a thing anymore, at least not in the way it used to work.
Stuff I've discovered that sometimes works:
I think we can safely say that search (specifically Google) has gotten worse to an astonishing degree. I'm spending roughly x10 more effort scouring compared to what I used to do for work related searches. This thread is about asking the question of what we can do about it as users.
There used to be a thing called 'Google fu', which is a general term for using Google effectively, but in practice (in ye old days of 2014) it meant taking your search term and changing it in subtle ways to get the results you want. That no longer seems to apply today as everything filters to the same normie-centric results, even with drastic changes or complete replacements of words. For example, earlier today I was searching for disabling scripts/macros in epub readers. "<program name> disabling macros", "<program name> disable javascript", "<program name> block scripts", "<program name> disable network access". I did this for several readers. EVERYTHING gave me the same irrelevant results about either DRM or generic pages that had literally nothing to do with anything.
Even the classic "quotes" method no longer works the way you'd expect it to. There are times I know for absolute certain that my search in quotes should return what I want, and Google knows about it, but 9/10 times I get "It looks like there aren't any great matches for your search". Quoting single words seems to be almost entirely ineffective now as often Google will simply ignore the request and return nothing but normie shit about how to share photos with grandma on facebook.
From what I can tell, Google has shifted emphasis of their search algorithm off of literal words and onto synonyms of trending topics. In other words, it just assumes that you're a child and have no idea what you're talking about, but you're probably trying to search for what everyone else is searching for.
As a side note: If you search for "has Google search gotten worse" on Google (I'm a genius, I know), you do get legitimate results but also a lot of shilling. They say "It's gotten more accurate for most people". You know what? I actually believe that. It's because most people do not search for anything except the most basic possible pop culture and commercial results. For professionals that need precision results, however, Google's usefulness has tanked to the point that it's likely causing vast economic damage by obfuscating information that professionals need for reference.
I've started using Duckduckgo as a daily driver, and I can say that it and Google are about equal in usefulness now. They both shit the bed in different ways, but DDGs failures of shooting you off in a random direction are a lot less frustrating than Google's failures of sucking you into a black hole containing only WAP, Nike shoes and WSJ articles.
Even the classic "quotes" method no longer works the way you'd expect it to. There are times I know for absolute certain that my search in quotes should return what I want, and Google knows about it, but 9/10 times I get "It looks like there aren't any great matches for your search". Quoting single words seems to be almost entirely ineffective now as often Google will simply ignore the request and return nothing but normie shit about how to share photos with grandma on facebook.
From what I can tell, Google has shifted emphasis of their search algorithm off of literal words and onto synonyms of trending topics. In other words, it just assumes that you're a child and have no idea what you're talking about, but you're probably trying to search for what everyone else is searching for.
As a side note: If you search for "has Google search gotten worse" on Google (I'm a genius, I know), you do get legitimate results but also a lot of shilling. They say "It's gotten more accurate for most people". You know what? I actually believe that. It's because most people do not search for anything except the most basic possible pop culture and commercial results. For professionals that need precision results, however, Google's usefulness has tanked to the point that it's likely causing vast economic damage by obfuscating information that professionals need for reference.
I've started using Duckduckgo as a daily driver, and I can say that it and Google are about equal in usefulness now. They both shit the bed in different ways, but DDGs failures of shooting you off in a random direction are a lot less frustrating than Google's failures of sucking you into a black hole containing only WAP, Nike shoes and WSJ articles.
Stuff I've discovered that sometimes works:
- Specifying Site: if you do not specify "site:something.com", 90+% of the time Google will redirect you to useless results from sites that are probably just paying to be in the top results or doing SEO abuse. The downside of course, is that you often have to be aware of the sites that contain your answers, which often is not the case (especially for tech related searches like I do).
- Asking things as questions: This is a complete inversion of how Google used to work and I cannot explain it, but often putting your search in the form of a question will yield better results than the classic keyword search. For instance, while I was writing this, I got the thought to try another variant of what i said in [complaining], "how do I turn off javascript on <program name>". That gave me far, far more relevant results, even though nobody actually phrased the question that way in the search results.
