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Well I'd say they both put all their eggs in one basket & let that basket deteriorate. Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5

Well I'd say they both put all their eggs in one basket & let that basket deteriorate. Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse? So they have a monopoly product that is something like a 2 sided market (advertisers & search users) where both sides hate using it..

fragmede 4y ago
It autosuggests and I don't even have to click on links half the time anymore. I'd call that progress. Not ground shaking like ChatGPT but half the time I get the (right) answer to my question just by typing some related words into the search bar. I don't know how many Google searches I did yesterday, but it feels like a lot. It does has problems with certain queries beyond a certain depth, which I also get frustrated with, but I can go from having forgotten calculus to integrating by parts with the help of Google.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  The auto suggesting where they filter prompts to only safe terms You literally can't go to page 2 anymore It ignores what you ask and answers what it think/wants you see. Previously you controlled search now you are lucky if a site is even in the index.
hdhejenennd 4y ago
>Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse? I mean, personally I think this is very likely true. My feeling is that it's the web itself which has gotten demonstrably worse. Diagnosing the reasons for that is a more interesting problem.
- steveBK123 4y ago
  "Search hasn't gotten worse, the web has" is like the Simpsons meme "Am I so out of touch? No. It's the children who are wrong." The only score that matters is the one in real life, in the game you choose to play. If it gets harder, you need to get better.
- acdha 4y ago
  > My feeling is that it's the web itself which has gotten demonstrably worse. Diagnosing the reasons for that is a more interesting problem. I think it’s a little tricky separating the two since Google has so much influence over the web. A lot of the parts of the web which have gotten worse were due to decisions they made to do things like cut ad revenue for normal organic content, declining to punish or even rewarding blackhat SEO, pushing AMP, shuttering Reader, etc. That sold a lot of ads at the time and people said it was needed to counter Facebook but it’s left them more vulnerable now.
reaperducer 4y ago
Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse? Google's unwillingness to show any results older than Taylor Swift' last breakup song made me switch to DuckDuckGo. It was a bit rough at first, but in time Duck turned out to be just as good as Google, and sometimes better for the sorts of thing I search for. Then, about four or five months ago, something happened to Duck, and it's gotten significantly worse. Short lists of results. More results that are off-topic than on. In the last couple of weeks, for me it's as bad as Google was before. I'll stick with Duck because it's not trying to harvest every morsel of my life to make a quick buck. But I wonder if anyone else has noticed a very quick and very significant change in quality with their DuckDuckGo results?
- onetokeoverthe 4y ago
  [dead]
- discard11110 4y ago
  Yes, have noticed duck duck go result quality get worse. Anecdotally it seems they do more fuzzy match and adhere less to exact matches even when keywords or phrases are quoted. It's been frustrating to see specificity of results decline.
- elcritch 4y ago
  Brave search has been surprisingly good for me. I actually had it find me something Google was failing to find for the first time yesterday. Normally I have to occasionally try a Google search for nuanced topics, but this time it was the opposite.

fragmede 4y ago

It autosuggests and I don't even have to click on links half the time anymore. I'd call that progress. Not ground shaking like ChatGPT but half the time I get the (right) answer to my question just by typing some related words into the search bar. I don't know how many Google searches I did yesterday, but it feels like a lot. It does has problems with certain queries beyond a certain depth, which I also get frustrated with, but I can go from having forgotten calculus to integrating by parts with the help of Google.

ipaddr 4y ago
The auto suggesting where they filter prompts to only safe terms You literally can't go to page 2 anymore It ignores what you ask and answers what it think/wants you see. Previously you controlled search now you are lucky if a site is even in the index.

hdhejenennd 4y ago

>Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse? I mean, personally I think this is very likely true. My feeling is that it's the web itself which has gotten demonstrably worse. Diagnosing the reasons for that is a more interesting problem.

steveBK123 4y ago
"Search hasn't gotten worse, the web has" is like the Simpsons meme "Am I so out of touch? No. It's the children who are wrong." The only score that matters is the one in real life, in the game you choose to play. If it gets harder, you need to get better.
acdha 4y ago
> My feeling is that it's the web itself which has gotten demonstrably worse. Diagnosing the reasons for that is a more interesting problem. I think it’s a little tricky separating the two since Google has so much influence over the web. A lot of the parts of the web which have gotten worse were due to decisions they made to do things like cut ad revenue for normal organic content, declining to punish or even rewarding blackhat SEO, pushing AMP, shuttering Reader, etc. That sold a lot of ads at the time and people said it was needed to counter Facebook but it’s left them more vulnerable now.

reaperducer 4y ago

Show of hands - people who feel google search has improved in the last 5/10 years vs people who feel it's gotten demonstrably worse? Google's unwillingness to show any results older than Taylor Swift' last breakup song made me switch to DuckDuckGo. It was a bit rough at first, but in time Duck turned out to be just as good as Google, and sometimes better for the sorts of thing I search for. Then, about four or five months ago, something happened to Duck, and it's gotten significantly worse. Short lists of results. More results that are off-topic than on. In the last couple of weeks, for me it's as bad as Google was before. I'll stick with Duck because it's not trying to harvest every morsel of my life to make a quick buck. But I wonder if anyone else has noticed a very quick and very significant change in quality with their DuckDuckGo results?

onetokeoverthe 4y ago
[dead]
discard11110 4y ago
Yes, have noticed duck duck go result quality get worse. Anecdotally it seems they do more fuzzy match and adhere less to exact matches even when keywords or phrases are quoted. It's been frustrating to see specificity of results decline.
elcritch 4y ago
Brave search has been surprisingly good for me. I actually had it find me something Google was failing to find for the first time yesterday. Normally I have to occasionally try a Google search for nuanced topics, but this time it was the opposite.