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It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggesti

It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. Based on the search box suggestions I get, it seems many people work around this by appending reddit to their searches. If I search for "warmest winter coat" it's a bunch of untrustworthy content marketing until you try something like "warmest winter coat reddit" Unfortunately I prefer to avoid reddit (which also has a fair amount of astroturfing), but I haven't found a good alternative. I severely miss Google's old "discussions" (or was it forums?) filter.

honkycat 5y ago
For me, Discord is the new reddit. When I want information about a product, I join the discord forum associated with that hobby and I ask for recommendations. Since Discord is a chat service like IRC, I get replies from humans instead of shady astro-turfed websites.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  This is a decent solution, but not at scale. A big reason to even have all previous discussion archived is searchability and information availability. If the question has been answered it shouldn't be hard to find it. Having to have a human do the work of explaining something every time someone on the internet wonders about it is infeasible.
  - honkycat 5y ago
    How often is information like: "What is the best quality X for this price point" evergreen to the point it is even worth writing down? And the entire point of the discussion is that astro-turfing has papered over everything useful on the internet in order to sell low-quality crap. The fact it doesn't scale is exactly why I use this method. Nobody is paying people to sit in a discord chat and recommend fishing poles. I know the information I am getting is from an enthusiast, if not a professional.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      Yeah, the astroturfing is a huge problem. The entire internet has become a way for people to ruthlessly compete for your attention, it's like pulling up to a used car lot every time you try to find information. What is needed is a way to archive actual useful information for lookup later.
blackhaz 5y ago
That's probably my default search query for now to avoid all the marketing crap. But if this becomes the norm we will definitely see robots discussing their winter coat preferences.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  You already need to be a little careful. I can't remember the specific search where I ran into it... but if you follow some user accounts recommending a specific brand you'll find that they have very shallow post histories. This happens on Amazon reviews all the time as well. What I end up doing is trying to find a post that isn't all-in on any specific solution... but lists pros and cons of multiple options, because it seems less likely that a content advertiser will post anything negative (or positive about a competitor).
  - tmp_anon_22 5y ago
    There's been a steady increase in astroturfing and blogspam over the years on reddit to subs like /r/frugalmalefashion where small indie shops are able to pump and dumb objectively low quality wares. The mod team does the best they can but they can only do so much as the effort to surface good content costs way more then the effort to artificially boost bad content. In a few years Reddit will be just like the generic google searches for everything but the most heroicly moderated or obscurely small subreddits.
hef19898 5y ago
Sometimes it feels the less SEO-optimized content there is for a topic, the better the search results are. Privately I de-googled a while ago (exceptions are youtube and youtube music, but then I don't have spotify). Now using DDG, and I don't miss anything. Google is better for picture search by proposing similar ones when clicking on one.
jeffbee 5y ago
Isn't this just a defect in the corpus? There is likely no quantitative, objective information about the warmth of winter coats in articles that would include the phrase "warmest winter coat" because someone who undertook an objective analysis would be uncomfortable using that phrase, which has no real meaning. With your refinement, adding "reddit" to the end of the search, you just get a bunch of randos holding forth unscientifically and no real information. You've just gratified some bias of yours. On the other hand, a different search for "R-values of winter coats" produces a few real gems, like https://outdoorcrunch.com/jackets/ https://outdoorcrunch.com/jackets/
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  The first results used to be blog posts, forum discussions, etc... I'm not expecting scientific accuracy (it's a bonus if I find it)... I'm expecting personal investigations and opinions. I'm ok with that. I'm not ok with content marketing supplanting it. The entire front page of a search is often some "blogs" listing products with affiliate links and no actual experience. The information is outrageously shallow and the search results as listed try to hide this. > "R-values of winter coats" This is a valid alternative... but I don't want to be an expert on winter coats to be able to Google basic information. I'd have to weed through a fair amount of marketing content to even find that the phrase "r-value" exists. In the past this wasn't necessary. The internet used to be primarily a place for people to connect and share information... and now it feels like primarily a place to be advertised to. There's also the fact that many ads have evolved beyond simple billboards to psychological manipulative clickbait. It's completely anecdotal and tangential to this topic, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the way marketing manipulates people has created unhealthy amounts of skepticism that further fuels the affinity for conspiracy theories... which tend to be so toxic that they're almost inoculated from marketing.
  - Drew_ 5y ago
    Social media killed forums so there's no surprise that they don't surface in search results since they are no longer active. The discussions you're looking for are now happening pretty much exclusively on Facebook and Reddit and only Reddit is well indexed.
smrtinsert 5y ago
I use the reddit suffix for topic expansion. It helps to observe people discussing a topic and discover its facets that way as opposed to potentially getting a one sided treatment in a reference starting point like wikipedia. After I get a lay of the land, that's when I start down Wikipedia sources.
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
What's kind of funny is there was a time where Google used to stand for --literally anything-- and would punish a site like reddit on search results for having such a user hostile interface. For some reason though (probably because they used AMP) they basically allow them to do anything they want. Multiple popups, hijacking click events for login modals, and hiding the content with no impact to search results. So now, in all the glory of the Internet, the person who genuinely wrote the best blog post on the "warmest winter coat" is completely unfindable on normal Google search or you force yourself via a reddit query to a completely hostile user experience unless you login. It would be cool to just be able to do something like this "warmest winter coat --hobbyist-only".
- necovek 5y ago
  GP was saying how reddit is actually more useful than whatever Google returns today: that's the "hobbyist-only" shortcut for today. Because that blog post is long gone from Google's indexes, since replaced with SEO-optimized or "influencer" driven sales/content marketing. I like to compare with search.marginalia.nu results from time to time, but the restrictions it puts on the content it traverses do not make for a good daily driver.
  - WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
    We are saying the same thing. I reiterated it poorly. Just also poking fun of how Google both killed the "real" blog industry and forced all the good content on reddit (which ironically does every anti-SEO thing ever and where people are trying to go).
    - wayoutthere 5y ago
      Because most people who use Reddit on a semi-regular basis use their old desktop UI (old.reddit.com), which doesn’t have the dark patterns found on their newer / mobile site. It’s a much more usable site for the few communities I still have left on Reddit. It’s also much better supported by the individual subreddits via style sheets (most didn’t bother updating layouts when Reddit introduced a new UI because all the power users who would have updated them kept using the old interface).
siproprio 5y ago
Specifically for search, my experience today when I search something on google: - captcha (because vpn) - spam results (based on location, my location was never very good for technical content) - paywalls - no pictures cause photos is now paid (i've signed up for unlimited forever) And on bing basically I get shopping coupons, games and, well, and microsoft's "anything's valid, except customer sat" approach.
piaste 5y ago
"Thread" is a good keyword to include to find discussions, even though it's a bit overloaded. Eg. 'good cheap mountain bike' -> 10 results out of the first 10 are commercial spam and listicles. 'thread good cheap mountain bike' -> 5 human discussions on entry-level MBs, 1 link to a MB forum home page (not a specific thread), 2 commercial spam, 1 paywalled magazine article testing MBs, and 1 online shop product page for a MB that happened to mention a "73mm Threaded BB shell" multiple times.
- ape4 5y ago
  Until the spammers figure that one out. It would be nice if google had a keyword for this.
  - accoil 5y ago
    Like discussion? https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/23/search-discussions-blogs-places-google-now/ https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/23/search-discussions-blogs-p... I don't use them enough, but the replacements are interesting: they seem to mostly search for indicators of a forum (e.g the existence of a next page button).
- systemBuilder 5y ago
  I also use "forum" to skip the link farms and content farms that Google so often serves up.
bluedino 5y ago
I include 'forums' in my search, or something like 'site:coattalk.com' if I know of one It's also funny how Google basically nuked groups and made it unsearchable, while once in a blue moon you get a search result to alt.coats.winter or something
micromacrofoot 5y ago
This is a reply to myself... but does anyone have ideas about how this can go away? Have we lost the internet to eternal marketing and data-mining arms races? Is this why people are flocking to search-opaque places like Discord? Sometimes I feel like that internet isn't for me anymore, and that's a little distressing.
- jdgoesmarching 5y ago
  This is the consequence of arranging a society around infinite financial corporate growth; everything is optimized to squeeze out every dollar for the balance sheet. Ironically we’re watching this play out now with products and techs that market themselves as “decentralized.” Maybe after this phase the tech community will consider this isn’t something we can tech our way out of.
  - systemBuilder 5y ago
    No. It's Google squeezing money out of search to subsidize the CEO's flavor of the month money-losing AI project, that's what it is ... Ex-Search-Engineer
    - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
      I think so too. Recent results are clearly ML garbage. The reason Google isn't explaining it is because they can't explain it. They don't know why the ML is returning the results it's returning. And whatever it's doing in that black box, it's making gobs of money—Google's sole purpose since Ruth Porat started squeezing every dime out of every orifice–so just keep on keeping on.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Tech companies like G/FB don't have to care about infinite growth. It's nice to see your RSUs go up, but the shareholders don't have voting rights.
- majkinetor 5y ago
  We need a new protocol that will not allow that, such as gemini, which is not that good IMO and severely limited (you can't even add pics ffs). And of course, new search engine, something distributed and in the GNU domain.
mda 5y ago
When I searched it "warmest winter coats", I get: first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information. Second result is RT online with black Friday recommendations Third is oprah daily with recommendations and shop links So, reddit is also, as you said, full of false information + astroturfing as well. Besides not everyone is interested in diving into reddit rabbithole to find information on warm coats. What do we want google to do? It tries to blend whatever is available, I don't think google got worse on this particularly, but it is probably a hopeless pursuit considering the status of the web. As for forums, adding "forum" at the end sees to work, but I agree it would be nice to have the option in the toolbox.
- notJim 5y ago
  > first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information. Most of the time, this is just a list of coats someone googled and copy-pasted info from the marketing pages. This page is an affiliate-marketing site masquerading as a review site. Not sure if specifically that page is, but that's what the majority of "product review" results in Google are nowadays.
  - mda 5y ago
    I know these review pages are usually affiliate links, but the problem is, when the subject is something like this (commercial interest), it is extremely hard to find anything that is objective. Emergency prep guy seems like at least owns or knows about the products he lists, however he also discloses his site is owned by a company which is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest. This is a very hard task to do and also prone to manipulation as well. In the end maybe Google needs some real competition for this to happen.
    - notJim 5y ago
      > So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest As you say, this is harder to do well than it sounds. There are definitely a lot of hobbyist types who review things and make a side (or even major) income from affiliate sales. With human judgment, it's quite easy to differentiate the honest hobbyist from the spam sites. I fear that any automated attempt to punish the spam sites would end up hurting the hobbyists more.
root_axis 5y ago
I don't get the appending reddit thing. I don't see why reddit is considered trustworthy, marketers have been planting "organic discussion" on reddit for years.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  In my experience reddit comments are less likely to be marketing than Google results are. Still not entirely trustworthy, absolutely.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The trick is to find an active community where they know their stuff and will downvote/delete spam. Unfortunately those needs to be extremist for their hobby and so they will look down on perfectly fine for normal use low budget things.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  But our uncanny valley detector is pretty good at sensing it imo and the upvote system helps and authentic people will comment or disagree. SEO blogs are full uncanny valley for me.
- vankessel 5y ago
  Yeah, I can't confirm it, but the weirdest I think I've seen is in r/science about research that was funded by the meat industry saying that a diet with meat is healthier than vegetarianism or veganism. The study was poorly done and there were tons of comments pushing the same message: "vegetarians/vegans are annoying hipsters who will lecture you for eating meat and they'll be so deservedly upset by this." Found it and most of those comments are deleted now (https://redd.it/qskxol https://redd.it/qskxol). Is the meat industry losing a sizable chunk of profits to more people swearing off meat for moral reasons, or ditching meat as a financial decision? Edit: Threw that link into a website that restores deleted comments (https://www.reveddit.com/v/science/comments/qskxol/meat_consumption_is_associated_with_better_mental/ https://www.reveddit.com/v/science/comments/qskxol/meat_cons...). Mods deleted all references to fact that the study was funded by a beef company. Blatant corruption?
moffkalast 5y ago
Damn I have been doing this exact thing to get "more organic" results in recent months and didn't even think about it, but it's pretty obvious now that there has been some major exclusion when it comes to results.
kawfey 5y ago
Gotta use "site:reddit.com" If I'm asking google or DDG for advice on a product, it's either going to be a reddit or Wirecutter for me. 99% of results on "best *" results in _*literally hundreds*_ of domains like "best*for2021.com" "buybest*.com" "top10*reviews.com" that are all generated by bots containing only the worst knockoff / counterfeit / Chinesium products and tons and tons of Amazon affiliate links. E.g. I was trying to remember the name of a top-of-the-line soldering station brand (Metcal) I used back in college, so I kept trying permutations of "best professional soldering rework station" on google [0] and DDG [1]but it only comes up with low-end Chinese stations, a few mentions of Weller and Hakko, but no impartial reviewers, no forums or blogs, no discussions...nothing leading to Metcal. Then I searched "best professional soldering rework station site:reddit.com" [2], I clocked the first 3 links, scrolled, and found Metcal on the second hit. [3] I was surprised to see Wirecutter did a review [4], and arguably the Hakko FX-888D is the best soldering station ever made (and the X-Tronic is a fine budget runner-up) for *_MOST_* people, but it's still not a Metcal (the thermal capacity and regulation of their iron tips is just unparalleled even with nice Wellers and Hakkos - you can really feel the difference when working with THICC power ground planes and RF connectors). [0] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=best%20soldering%20rework%20station https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=best%20soldering%20rew... [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+soldering+rework+station&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+soldering+rework+stati... [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+professional+soldering+rework+station+site%3Areddit.com&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+professional+soldering... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/2c4hnl/best_soldering_station_for_hobbyist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/2c4hnl/best_so... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-soldering-irons/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-soldering-ir...
- pja 5y ago
  WireCutter has really gone downhill since they were bought out imo.
- richardsocher 5y ago
  You can set that once on you.com and then it will keep that preference and show you reddit results whenever relevant.
cowmoo728 5y ago
The other thing I hate is the flood of reposts and blogspam around any announcement. Company 1 will give an interview to outlet A. Blogspam outlets B,C,D,E.... will publish "articles" that don't even link to the original but will highlight several out of context quotes, add minimal commentary that reads like it was generated by OpenAI, and hit publish. Then google appears to have a difficult time deciphering what the authoritative source should be.
pja 5y ago
Recently my Google suggested search completions has started suggesting that I add "reddit" to a lot of my searches. I can only presume that so many people have given up on the web as indexed by Google and are just searching for "<whatever> reddit" now as the only way to get any kind of content written by real people on a subject instead of SEOd filler "content". Presumably it won't be long before Reddit itself is flooded with spam content to take advantage of this - I'm sure it's already happening to high value keywords.
throwitawayfam 5y ago
Sadly this no longer works either. Reddit is now doing some SEO work to mark stuff as a later date than posted. You can search "warmest winter coat site:reddit.com" and filter by past year, only to get a result from 7 years ago. I really don't know how to search the web anymore.
skinkestek 5y ago
> It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. This always gets brought up but the problem is far deeper: When I search for: > "weirdly specific ab345" and the results contains thousands of pages without "weirdly specific ab34" then the problem isn't spam sites. It is Google not respecting my queries.

honkycat 5y ago

For me, Discord is the new reddit. When I want information about a product, I join the discord forum associated with that hobby and I ask for recommendations. Since Discord is a chat service like IRC, I get replies from humans instead of shady astro-turfed websites.

betwixthewires 5y ago
This is a decent solution, but not at scale. A big reason to even have all previous discussion archived is searchability and information availability. If the question has been answered it shouldn't be hard to find it. Having to have a human do the work of explaining something every time someone on the internet wonders about it is infeasible.
- honkycat 5y ago
  How often is information like: "What is the best quality X for this price point" evergreen to the point it is even worth writing down? And the entire point of the discussion is that astro-turfing has papered over everything useful on the internet in order to sell low-quality crap. The fact it doesn't scale is exactly why I use this method. Nobody is paying people to sit in a discord chat and recommend fishing poles. I know the information I am getting is from an enthusiast, if not a professional.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Yeah, the astroturfing is a huge problem. The entire internet has become a way for people to ruthlessly compete for your attention, it's like pulling up to a used car lot every time you try to find information. What is needed is a way to archive actual useful information for lookup later.

blackhaz 5y ago

That's probably my default search query for now to avoid all the marketing crap. But if this becomes the norm we will definitely see robots discussing their winter coat preferences.

micromacrofoot 5y ago
You already need to be a little careful. I can't remember the specific search where I ran into it... but if you follow some user accounts recommending a specific brand you'll find that they have very shallow post histories. This happens on Amazon reviews all the time as well. What I end up doing is trying to find a post that isn't all-in on any specific solution... but lists pros and cons of multiple options, because it seems less likely that a content advertiser will post anything negative (or positive about a competitor).
- tmp_anon_22 5y ago
  There's been a steady increase in astroturfing and blogspam over the years on reddit to subs like /r/frugalmalefashion where small indie shops are able to pump and dumb objectively low quality wares. The mod team does the best they can but they can only do so much as the effort to surface good content costs way more then the effort to artificially boost bad content. In a few years Reddit will be just like the generic google searches for everything but the most heroicly moderated or obscurely small subreddits.

hef19898 5y ago

Sometimes it feels the less SEO-optimized content there is for a topic, the better the search results are. Privately I de-googled a while ago (exceptions are youtube and youtube music, but then I don't have spotify). Now using DDG, and I don't miss anything. Google is better for picture search by proposing similar ones when clicking on one.

jeffbee 5y ago

Isn't this just a defect in the corpus? There is likely no quantitative, objective information about the warmth of winter coats in articles that would include the phrase "warmest winter coat" because someone who undertook an objective analysis would be uncomfortable using that phrase, which has no real meaning. With your refinement, adding "reddit" to the end of the search, you just get a bunch of randos holding forth unscientifically and no real information. You've just gratified some bias of yours. On the other hand, a different search for "R-values of winter coats" produces a few real gems, like https://outdoorcrunch.com/jackets/ https://outdoorcrunch.com/jackets/

micromacrofoot 5y ago
The first results used to be blog posts, forum discussions, etc... I'm not expecting scientific accuracy (it's a bonus if I find it)... I'm expecting personal investigations and opinions. I'm ok with that. I'm not ok with content marketing supplanting it. The entire front page of a search is often some "blogs" listing products with affiliate links and no actual experience. The information is outrageously shallow and the search results as listed try to hide this. > "R-values of winter coats" This is a valid alternative... but I don't want to be an expert on winter coats to be able to Google basic information. I'd have to weed through a fair amount of marketing content to even find that the phrase "r-value" exists. In the past this wasn't necessary. The internet used to be primarily a place for people to connect and share information... and now it feels like primarily a place to be advertised to. There's also the fact that many ads have evolved beyond simple billboards to psychological manipulative clickbait. It's completely anecdotal and tangential to this topic, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the way marketing manipulates people has created unhealthy amounts of skepticism that further fuels the affinity for conspiracy theories... which tend to be so toxic that they're almost inoculated from marketing.
- Drew_ 5y ago
  Social media killed forums so there's no surprise that they don't surface in search results since they are no longer active. The discussions you're looking for are now happening pretty much exclusively on Facebook and Reddit and only Reddit is well indexed.

smrtinsert 5y ago

I use the reddit suffix for topic expansion. It helps to observe people discussing a topic and discover its facets that way as opposed to potentially getting a one sided treatment in a reference starting point like wikipedia. After I get a lay of the land, that's when I start down Wikipedia sources.

WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago

What's kind of funny is there was a time where Google used to stand for --literally anything-- and would punish a site like reddit on search results for having such a user hostile interface. For some reason though (probably because they used AMP) they basically allow them to do anything they want. Multiple popups, hijacking click events for login modals, and hiding the content with no impact to search results. So now, in all the glory of the Internet, the person who genuinely wrote the best blog post on the "warmest winter coat" is completely unfindable on normal Google search or you force yourself via a reddit query to a completely hostile user experience unless you login. It would be cool to just be able to do something like this "warmest winter coat --hobbyist-only".

necovek 5y ago
GP was saying how reddit is actually more useful than whatever Google returns today: that's the "hobbyist-only" shortcut for today. Because that blog post is long gone from Google's indexes, since replaced with SEO-optimized or "influencer" driven sales/content marketing. I like to compare with search.marginalia.nu results from time to time, but the restrictions it puts on the content it traverses do not make for a good daily driver.
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 5y ago
  We are saying the same thing. I reiterated it poorly. Just also poking fun of how Google both killed the "real" blog industry and forced all the good content on reddit (which ironically does every anti-SEO thing ever and where people are trying to go).
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Because most people who use Reddit on a semi-regular basis use their old desktop UI (old.reddit.com), which doesn’t have the dark patterns found on their newer / mobile site. It’s a much more usable site for the few communities I still have left on Reddit. It’s also much better supported by the individual subreddits via style sheets (most didn’t bother updating layouts when Reddit introduced a new UI because all the power users who would have updated them kept using the old interface).

siproprio 5y ago

Specifically for search, my experience today when I search something on google: - captcha (because vpn) - spam results (based on location, my location was never very good for technical content) - paywalls - no pictures cause photos is now paid (i've signed up for unlimited forever) And on bing basically I get shopping coupons, games and, well, and microsoft's "anything's valid, except customer sat" approach.

piaste 5y ago

"Thread" is a good keyword to include to find discussions, even though it's a bit overloaded. Eg. 'good cheap mountain bike' -> 10 results out of the first 10 are commercial spam and listicles. 'thread good cheap mountain bike' -> 5 human discussions on entry-level MBs, 1 link to a MB forum home page (not a specific thread), 2 commercial spam, 1 paywalled magazine article testing MBs, and 1 online shop product page for a MB that happened to mention a "73mm Threaded BB shell" multiple times.

ape4 5y ago
Until the spammers figure that one out. It would be nice if google had a keyword for this.
- accoil 5y ago
  Like discussion? https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/23/search-discussions-blogs-places-google-now/ https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/23/search-discussions-blogs-p... I don't use them enough, but the replacements are interesting: they seem to mostly search for indicators of a forum (e.g the existence of a next page button).
systemBuilder 5y ago
I also use "forum" to skip the link farms and content farms that Google so often serves up.

bluedino 5y ago

I include 'forums' in my search, or something like 'site:coattalk.com' if I know of one It's also funny how Google basically nuked groups and made it unsearchable, while once in a blue moon you get a search result to alt.coats.winter or something

micromacrofoot 5y ago

This is a reply to myself... but does anyone have ideas about how this can go away? Have we lost the internet to eternal marketing and data-mining arms races? Is this why people are flocking to search-opaque places like Discord? Sometimes I feel like that internet isn't for me anymore, and that's a little distressing.

jdgoesmarching 5y ago
This is the consequence of arranging a society around infinite financial corporate growth; everything is optimized to squeeze out every dollar for the balance sheet. Ironically we’re watching this play out now with products and techs that market themselves as “decentralized.” Maybe after this phase the tech community will consider this isn’t something we can tech our way out of.
- systemBuilder 5y ago
  No. It's Google squeezing money out of search to subsidize the CEO's flavor of the month money-losing AI project, that's what it is ... Ex-Search-Engineer
  - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
    I think so too. Recent results are clearly ML garbage. The reason Google isn't explaining it is because they can't explain it. They don't know why the ML is returning the results it's returning. And whatever it's doing in that black box, it's making gobs of money—Google's sole purpose since Ruth Porat started squeezing every dime out of every orifice–so just keep on keeping on.
- astrange 5y ago
  Tech companies like G/FB don't have to care about infinite growth. It's nice to see your RSUs go up, but the shareholders don't have voting rights.
majkinetor 5y ago
We need a new protocol that will not allow that, such as gemini, which is not that good IMO and severely limited (you can't even add pics ffs). And of course, new search engine, something distributed and in the GNU domain.

mda 5y ago

When I searched it "warmest winter coats", I get: first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information. Second result is RT online with black Friday recommendations Third is oprah daily with recommendations and shop links So, reddit is also, as you said, full of false information + astroturfing as well. Besides not everyone is interested in diving into reddit rabbithole to find information on warm coats. What do we want google to do? It tries to blend whatever is available, I don't think google got worse on this particularly, but it is probably a hopeless pursuit considering the status of the web. As for forums, adding "forum" at the end sees to work, but I agree it would be nice to have the option in the toolbox.

notJim 5y ago
> first result is a list from a blog by some "Emergency prep guy" it basically lists 27 coats with information. Most of the time, this is just a list of coats someone googled and copy-pasted info from the marketing pages. This page is an affiliate-marketing site masquerading as a review site. Not sure if specifically that page is, but that's what the majority of "product review" results in Google are nowadays.
- mda 5y ago
  I know these review pages are usually affiliate links, but the problem is, when the subject is something like this (commercial interest), it is extremely hard to find anything that is objective. Emergency prep guy seems like at least owns or knows about the products he lists, however he also discloses his site is owned by a company which is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest. This is a very hard task to do and also prone to manipulation as well. In the end maybe Google needs some real competition for this to happen.
  - notJim 5y ago
    > So maybe Google should stop feeding this affiliate spam loop and try to create algorithms that try to actually understand which information is based on personal experiences and not created by financial interest As you say, this is harder to do well than it sounds. There are definitely a lot of hobbyist types who review things and make a side (or even major) income from affiliate sales. With human judgment, it's quite easy to differentiate the honest hobbyist from the spam sites. I fear that any automated attempt to punish the spam sites would end up hurting the hobbyists more.

root_axis 5y ago

I don't get the appending reddit thing. I don't see why reddit is considered trustworthy, marketers have been planting "organic discussion" on reddit for years.

micromacrofoot 5y ago
In my experience reddit comments are less likely to be marketing than Google results are. Still not entirely trustworthy, absolutely.
- bluGill 5y ago
  The trick is to find an active community where they know their stuff and will downvote/delete spam. Unfortunately those needs to be extremist for their hobby and so they will look down on perfectly fine for normal use low budget things.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
But our uncanny valley detector is pretty good at sensing it imo and the upvote system helps and authentic people will comment or disagree. SEO blogs are full uncanny valley for me.
vankessel 5y ago
Yeah, I can't confirm it, but the weirdest I think I've seen is in r/science about research that was funded by the meat industry saying that a diet with meat is healthier than vegetarianism or veganism. The study was poorly done and there were tons of comments pushing the same message: "vegetarians/vegans are annoying hipsters who will lecture you for eating meat and they'll be so deservedly upset by this." Found it and most of those comments are deleted now (https://redd.it/qskxol https://redd.it/qskxol). Is the meat industry losing a sizable chunk of profits to more people swearing off meat for moral reasons, or ditching meat as a financial decision? Edit: Threw that link into a website that restores deleted comments (https://www.reveddit.com/v/science/comments/qskxol/meat_consumption_is_associated_with_better_mental/ https://www.reveddit.com/v/science/comments/qskxol/meat_cons...). Mods deleted all references to fact that the study was funded by a beef company. Blatant corruption?

moffkalast 5y ago

Damn I have been doing this exact thing to get "more organic" results in recent months and didn't even think about it, but it's pretty obvious now that there has been some major exclusion when it comes to results.

kawfey 5y ago

Gotta use "site:reddit.com" If I'm asking google or DDG for advice on a product, it's either going to be a reddit or Wirecutter for me. 99% of results on "best *" results in _*literally hundreds*_ of domains like "best*for2021.com" "buybest*.com" "top10*reviews.com" that are all generated by bots containing only the worst knockoff / counterfeit / Chinesium products and tons and tons of Amazon affiliate links. E.g. I was trying to remember the name of a top-of-the-line soldering station brand (Metcal) I used back in college, so I kept trying permutations of "best professional soldering rework station" on google [0] and DDG [1]but it only comes up with low-end Chinese stations, a few mentions of Weller and Hakko, but no impartial reviewers, no forums or blogs, no discussions...nothing leading to Metcal. Then I searched "best professional soldering rework station site:reddit.com" [2], I clocked the first 3 links, scrolled, and found Metcal on the second hit. [3] I was surprised to see Wirecutter did a review [4], and arguably the Hakko FX-888D is the best soldering station ever made (and the X-Tronic is a fine budget runner-up) for *_MOST_* people, but it's still not a Metcal (the thermal capacity and regulation of their iron tips is just unparalleled even with nice Wellers and Hakkos - you can really feel the difference when working with THICC power ground planes and RF connectors). [0] https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=best%20soldering%20rework%20station https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=best%20soldering%20rew... [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+soldering+rework+station&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+soldering+rework+stati... [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+professional+soldering+rework+station+site%3Areddit.com&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=best+professional+soldering... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/2c4hnl/best_soldering_station_for_hobbyist/ https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/2c4hnl/best_so... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-soldering-irons/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-soldering-ir...

pja 5y ago
WireCutter has really gone downhill since they were bought out imo.
richardsocher 5y ago
You can set that once on you.com and then it will keep that preference and show you reddit results whenever relevant.

cowmoo728 5y ago

The other thing I hate is the flood of reposts and blogspam around any announcement. Company 1 will give an interview to outlet A. Blogspam outlets B,C,D,E.... will publish "articles" that don't even link to the original but will highlight several out of context quotes, add minimal commentary that reads like it was generated by OpenAI, and hit publish. Then google appears to have a difficult time deciphering what the authoritative source should be.

pja 5y ago

Recently my Google suggested search completions has started suggesting that I add "reddit" to a lot of my searches. I can only presume that so many people have given up on the web as indexed by Google and are just searching for "<whatever> reddit" now as the only way to get any kind of content written by real people on a subject instead of SEOd filler "content". Presumably it won't be long before Reddit itself is flooded with spam content to take advantage of this - I'm sure it's already happening to high value keywords.

throwitawayfam 5y ago

Sadly this no longer works either. Reddit is now doing some SEO work to mark stuff as a later date than posted. You can search "warmest winter coat site:reddit.com" and filter by past year, only to get a result from 7 years ago. I really don't know how to search the web anymore.

skinkestek 5y ago

> It feels like the algorithm (combined with the SEO/marketing industry) has effectively nuked discussions from organic results. This always gets brought up but the problem is far deeper: When I search for: > "weirdly specific ab345" and the results contains thousands of pages without "weirdly specific ab34" then the problem isn't spam sites. It is Google not respecting my queries.