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Search for "carbon monoxide" on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. Google serves you an entire page about carbon monoxide poisoning, and recent news stories about c

by raoa 5y ago

Search for "carbon monoxide" on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. Google serves you an entire page about carbon monoxide poisoning, and recent news stories about carbon monoxide poisoning. You have to scroll through a lot of junk to get to Wikipedia's entry on "carbon monoxide". Bing and DuckDuckGo do a serviceable job telling you about the substance CO. You cannot search "carbon monoxide" to learn about carbon monoxide, and that is the issue.

ahelwer 5y ago
I have no idea why they stopped making wikipedia the first or second result for a given topic. Seemed to happen a few years ago.
Deaimel 5y ago
The Wikipedia article is showing up as a featured snippets for me (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9351707?p=featured_snippets https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9351707?p=featur...). With the following text just bellow the search box. > Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom. It is the simplest molecule of the oxocarbon family.
- raoa 5y ago
  Odd I don't see that. I am told "People also ask" about five different questions that each of them amount to "what is carbon monoxide poisoning", which replicate the results of the search itself. the fact other search engines get this right, even if not nearly as well as Google would have in 2008, tells me the problem is not advertising or a contentless web as much as Google specifically and deliberately preventing you from searching about what you mean.
BbzzbB 5y ago
Odd how much Google became so vastly different between users. For me DDG and Google do just about the same thing here. Wikipedia first link (well, 1st at Google, 2nd at DDG) with a card and then governmental websites with regards to health and hazards. Both have one row in their own card dedicated to news. The only difference is that Google also gives me links to Canda and Québec govs links (where I live) while DDG is all American links. DDG is absolutely not better at giving me a chemistry lesson than Google is in this instance, they're both all about poisoning, and to be honest it makes ample sense.

by raoa 5y ago

ahelwer 5y ago

I have no idea why they stopped making wikipedia the first or second result for a given topic. Seemed to happen a few years ago.

Deaimel 5y ago

The Wikipedia article is showing up as a featured snippets for me (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9351707?p=featured_snippets https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9351707?p=featur...). With the following text just bellow the search box. > Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom. It is the simplest molecule of the oxocarbon family.

raoa 5y ago
Odd I don't see that. I am told "People also ask" about five different questions that each of them amount to "what is carbon monoxide poisoning", which replicate the results of the search itself. the fact other search engines get this right, even if not nearly as well as Google would have in 2008, tells me the problem is not advertising or a contentless web as much as Google specifically and deliberately preventing you from searching about what you mean.

BbzzbB 5y ago

Odd how much Google became so vastly different between users. For me DDG and Google do just about the same thing here. Wikipedia first link (well, 1st at Google, 2nd at DDG) with a card and then governmental websites with regards to health and hazards. Both have one row in their own card dedicated to news. The only difference is that Google also gives me links to Canda and Québec govs links (where I live) while DDG is all American links. DDG is absolutely not better at giving me a chemistry lesson than Google is in this instance, they're both all about poisoning, and to be honest it makes ample sense.