The Open Secret of Google Search

[Super-Chevy454]

Perhaps it would have fit more Article & News section but I put it here for the moment. The Drudge Report referred the link as "Is Google dying?". https://archive.ph/N96Ad#selection-1437.0-1437.16

Let's see how long before Google became relevant as Yahoo, Excite, AltaVista, Geocities, ICQ, AOL,....
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/google-search-algorithm-internet/661325/ ( https://archive.ph/Ayj2R )

 

[CumDumpster]

And to think I was one of the few that understood the decline started with copyright enforcement...

Seriously, people should avoid paid OTT, pay-TV and industrial film like the plague.

 

[Toolbox]

I've even started to notice a lot of non technically inclined people noticing just how bad google search is now.
Pretty good representation of how the common consensus is

Google has spent so much time neutering their search to placate (left leaning) political ideals and to suck up more and more ad money from other corporations, that they have trashed online search in general. This infects Youtube as well, in fact it is much more obvious there. Even their recommendation algorithms have down syndrome now.

 

[Knight of the Rope]

Brereton argued, therefore “we resort to using Google, and appending the word ‘reddit’ to the end of our queries.” Brereton cited Google Trends data that show that people are searching the word reddit on Google more than ever before.

Actually you know what? I have noticed this myself in my own Googling. Perhaps not so much with Reddit, but especially with shit like StackOverflow. I need to specifically specify "site:stackoverflow.com" to get useful information, otherwise more often than not the search returns me garbage from random blogs and/or Quora instead.

 

[FruitFighter]

Google is getting worse because the people using it are getting worse. If you look at Google Trends most searches are related to sportsball, celeberties, or ordering fried meats. The Internet is essentially just becoming a platform for consumption at this point. Not to mention that so much more of the Internet is locked away behind services like Discord that Google doesn't index.

For technical stuff I usually don't even bother with Google any more and go straight to Wikipedia, which is still reliable for non-controversial stuff.

 

[SiccDicc]

“Most of the web has become too inauthentic to trust,” Brereton argued, therefore “we resort to using Google, and appending the word ‘reddit’ to the end of our queries.”

Nigga... my nigga... you were so close.

 

[Maurice Caine]

Nigga... my nigga... you were so close.

What, it's true! r/piracy works like a charm.

 

[Toolbox]

Google is getting worse because the people using it are getting worse.

I do not believe this for a second. Sure, in some ways it could be true. But you can modify algorithms to ignore the majority's data being the same. Google intentionally cripped their search to cut off the mythical 'pipelines' that they believe magically lead innocent victims to political ideologies Google does not support. Google could also actively make defenses against SEO manipulation, which I do believe has more of a negative impact on search, but they don't because they are paid not to. They have added more and more ad slots into search on top of everything else.

Not to mention that so much more of the Internet is locked away behind services like Discord that Google doesn't index.

And yet a massive amount of the old net is still present. Yes, I blame modern internet audiences for going for convenience and consolidating the internet more onto fewer sites, but there is still plenty that exists outside of it. But these sites don't manipulate Google's SEO to get to the top that Google does nothing to filter.

For technical stuff I usually don't even bother with Google any more and go straight to Wikipedia, which is still reliable for non-controversial stuff.

Sure, a lot of science is still explained in decent general terms on wikipedia but even that stuff is getting ruined by terminally online autists that want to manipulate anything into their own special corner of the net. Not to mention a lot of info is just false because the editors don't care to look into things in detail. Or go back and review old content.

 

[FruitFighter]

I do not believe this for a second.

Have you interacted with the average Internet user lately? There's a reason why the Farms closed registration.

 

[Toolbox]

Have you interacted with the average Internet user lately? There's a reason why the Farms closed registration.

I do not believe for a second Google does not have the ability to filter massive outliers like a bunch of searches being the same. They have years of different data to fall back on.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

I do not believe for a second Google does not have the ability to filter massive outliers like a bunch of searches being the same. They have years of different data to fall back on.

Unless they failed to do their 3-2-1 backups or have a bus factor of pajeet.

 

[CumDumpster]

Google has spent so much time neutering their search to placate (left leaning) political ideals

This started with the music industry having a conniption fit over ThePirateBay.

http://archive.md/7DgRE

Placating left-wing extremism came later...
Google's copyright enforcement seeped into their search engine following Youtube's first advertiser boycott lead by News Corporation.

 

[killingmesoftly]

Whoever controls the more foundational aspect of the stack, operating systems, browsers, hardware gets to control the higher aspects like the default search engine: Google has Android, the world's most popular phone, Chrome, the world's post popular browser, and ChromeOS, a growing laptop/tablet operating system. They also pay apple tons to keep Google as the default on apple stuff

Google will be number 1 as long as the above 3 are still relevant it doesn't matter how bad their results are. Any potential competitor to Google needs to create something as foundational and work their way up.

 

[XYZpdq]

tbf if you still use the onlines for what they were meant for, like robot cartoons and shit, and not investigating how many "cookies" can be "baked" per year then it still works decent enough

 

[Toolbox]

This started with the music industry having a conniption fit over ThePirateBay.

http://archive.md/7DgRE

Placating left-wing extremism came later...
Google's copyright enforcement seeped into their search engine following Youtube's first advertiser boycott lead by News Corporation.

Falls into the camp of cowtowing to other corporations, which I do agree began much earlier.

 

[Boss Nigger]

the best thing you can do now if you want search is to setup your own search engine like searax, that way you control everything. ive been using it for a couple of years now. and its been way more reliable. you can also define search engines pr category. googles video algorithm is shit. but bings is pretty good.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

This started with the music industry having a conniption fit over ThePirateBay.

http://archive.md/7DgRE

Placating left-wing extremism came later...
Google's copyright enforcement seeped into their search engine following Youtube's first advertiser boycott lead by News Corporation.

There's more people to placate. You have politicians, governments, China and the EU leaning in on them and while they might not have the laws in place I think google wants to stay ahead of what might become law just to avoid getting regulated and scrutinized. They probably don't want a politically motivated deep, hard and forced investigation into their business.

I've already said this in another thread a year ago but even super casuals have noticed. One person even said "I apologize if this is a stupid question, but is google much worse now or is it just me?"

 

[Devil Buster Busters]

I've noticed it getting especially bad with reverse image searches and YouTube. The results you get from searching an image now are so generic its almost useless, if you compare it to yandex it's embarrassing.

When you search something on YouTube now you get like 5 videos actually related to your search and then just some random bullshit completely unrelated to it. Google doesn't want you to discover things on your own anymore, only through their sanitized recommendation algorithm.

 

[The Foxtrot]

I've noticed it getting especially bad with reverse image searches and YouTube. The results you get from searching an image now are so generic its almost useless, if you compare it to yandex it's embarrassing.

When you search something on YouTube now you get like 5 videos actually related to your search and then just some random bullshit completely unrelated to it. Google doesn't want you to discover things on your own anymore, only through their sanitized recommendation algorithm.

Yeah. I search a video up, I get maybe 5 actual relevant results at the top, then a separate category of shit that is "recommended", then ads, then some more "Discover!" shit, then random bullshit, *then* at the fucking bottom does it return to what I am actually looking for.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

I read the article when it was being passed around on Twitter a day or two ago. I mentioned this in our search complaint thread but the article misses this; they started to heavily discriminate against anything anecadotal and amateurish probably around 2014-2015. That's when I started to notice forum results were more infrequent. Originally I think the intent was to prevent Fringe health advice from clouding out mainstream things like WebMD which they mention in the article, but more broadly it was to basically any topic. The addition of Reddit to the end of search strings is about as close as you can get to anecadotal now. I almost never get forum results anymore unless I specifically search for a certain site.

Somewhat before that I noticed that it was harder to find personal information and therefore doxing people then it was say 2010. Reverse phone number lookups don't work as well as they did.