It all of a sudden became TERRIBLE and now I can’t find anything? When did this happen? Why did this happen?
Google is really useless for some things unless you know how to use search operators
My guess would be that it’s increasingly using AI/ML and natural language over search terms to sort the results, which results in much shittier results. Power users are used to specifying the search term precisely and it no longer does anything about it.
It tries way too hard to also return news articles and blog posts instead of forum posts and other types of user-generated content. If it can find a plain “well written” english blog it’ll return that over a 10 year old forum post that’s super detailed but full of grammar mistakes. It’s gone full corporate and strongly favors corporate interests and pushes commercial offerings more.
It used that ads were clearly labeled ads but it wouldn’t surprise me now regular results gets quietly prioritized based on some sort of financial incentives.
I think you’re right (and I recall Google engineers have been open about using AI in past press releases.)
I suspect that Google is on the bleeding edge of what happens when a bunch of AIs try to convince other AIs to pick their schlop over the next schlop over. Very few of the involved parties are still focused on helping people (it’s hard to get an AI to focus on anything) and it’s starting to show.
All of a sudden? It’s been terrible for at least 10 years now. I have about 5 or 6 FireFox extensions just to make Google not suck.
Maybe all the deleted and edited Reddit posts and comments are finally syncing up.
Google has really gone down hill to the point I can no longer find obscure searches anymore. Even youtube searches sorting by new has gone downhill to the point that most of the results are youtube shorts with half of them having multiple hashtags in the title.
I’ve found myself using DDG and Bing (fucking BING!) more than google lately.
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Search operators for YouTube might help with that
It’s been progressively getting worse over the past few years as they’ve continued to “optimize” their search engine for more ad placement and sponsored content. I’d say these past few months, it’s become borderline unusable for finding actual information.
This is the thing. It really has become unusable. Trying to find obscure information is insane no matter the keywords. It’s always the same results and, ugh, YouTube videos. You can’t find parts for older stuff easily, simple answers are gone.
Amazon is similar. Change the keywords all you like you still will get the same ‘amazon choice’ products and recommended alternatives for whatever you searched for lead to the same list. But i have to agree it really got worse unreasonably fast last few months.
Someone posted it on here, it works soooo much better and no ad bullshit
Oh wow i just now saw this reply (thanks boost!) Seems very cool, many thanks!
You are not alone, google search results quality has declined.
I’ve come to the conclusion that blaming a company for being evil or greedy is pointless because companies do not have ears to hear nor brains to think or feel with (as they are social constructs and nothing more). Therefore, when the Google search engine sucks, it’s because the developers who work at Google are incompetent. When the new Battlefield game launched and was a mess, it was because the developers who worked on it had no idea what they were doing.
It’s probably because you don’t know how to search
I’ve switched to using ChatGPT for simple but weird stuff like “give me a list of verbs to describe bird behaviour” or “what part of the leg can you be hit at by a bullet and have a chance to survive for a few days, using a tourniquet” (I’m a writer, lol). Try to google that, no chance you’ll come up with anything useful.
Chatgpt doesn’t give factually accurate information
