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There is a growing sentiment, mine included, that Google search isn't getting better. In fact, I feel it's markedly worse for many queries. The problem for me

There is a growing sentiment, mine included, that Google search isn't getting better. In fact, I feel it's markedly worse for many queries. The problem for me are all the blogspams out there. These -should- be easy to just punt, but alas, they do not. I'd gladly switch to any search that didn't show me such results.

1123581321 5y ago
I share the sentiment. Unfortunately it means other engines struggle even more, because they are all using roughly the same basket of techniques. I’m familiar with the claims that DDG and Brave serve equally good or better results. An insightful breakthrough in quality that vastly reduces the computing and engineering required to serve great results that keep up with expanding information, similar to what Google did for search 20 years ago, would be wonderful, but it won’t come from DDG or Brave unless they can develop new models that completely replace their current search products.
psyc 5y ago
My growing disdain for Google isn’t even about their tech. In the beginning, Google’s SRP was an ad or two, followed by ~10 magically-relevant <a> links. For some years they were praised for a restrained approach. Today, the SRP is ads, the info box, the Reddit-cluster, the Quora-cluster, images, videos, “people also searched…”, “did you mean…”, and somewhere near the bottom a couple of those good ol’ fashioned links for old time sake. Do not want.
arp242 5y ago
I don't know if it's really Google getting worse or the web (or perhaps even the world) is getting worse. I have the impression it's more the latter than the former, and suspect other search engines will struggle with blogspam just as much.
- soundnote 5y ago
  I think it's both. Google does seem to editorialize search results but the web's also becoming more obsessed with SEO and some sites are just hard to search, either internally or with an external search engine.

1123581321 5y ago

I share the sentiment. Unfortunately it means other engines struggle even more, because they are all using roughly the same basket of techniques. I’m familiar with the claims that DDG and Brave serve equally good or better results. An insightful breakthrough in quality that vastly reduces the computing and engineering required to serve great results that keep up with expanding information, similar to what Google did for search 20 years ago, would be wonderful, but it won’t come from DDG or Brave unless they can develop new models that completely replace their current search products.

psyc 5y ago

My growing disdain for Google isn’t even about their tech. In the beginning, Google’s SRP was an ad or two, followed by ~10 magically-relevant <a> links. For some years they were praised for a restrained approach. Today, the SRP is ads, the info box, the Reddit-cluster, the Quora-cluster, images, videos, “people also searched…”, “did you mean…”, and somewhere near the bottom a couple of those good ol’ fashioned links for old time sake. Do not want.

arp242 5y ago

I don't know if it's really Google getting worse or the web (or perhaps even the world) is getting worse. I have the impression it's more the latter than the former, and suspect other search engines will struggle with blogspam just as much.

soundnote 5y ago
I think it's both. Google does seem to editorialize search results but the web's also becoming more obsessed with SEO and some sites are just hard to search, either internally or with an external search engine.