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The real threat to Google is from within. Their search results are crap and a lot of people are noticing. I see people talking about using big chat or even duc

by cptaj 3y ago

The real threat to Google is from within. Their search results are crap and a lot of people are noticing. I see people talking about using big chat or even duckduckgo instead everyday

spaceman_2020 3y ago
It’s infuriating when Google will completely ignore my keywords and feed me generic stuff tailored for my audience cohort. I get it that Google probably wants to simplify results so that they’re more digestible for the masses, but at least give me a pro mode that doesn’t dumb everything down
- falcrist 3y ago
  Youtube is the worst with this behavior. Have you done a search on that website recently? There will be around 2-3 actual results, followed by shorts, followed by 2 more real results, then a "People also watched" sections, then a couple more results, then another section, then a couple of results, then a "For you" section, then a couple results, then a "the latest from X" section, then a "From related searches" section. I'm sorry, did I ASK for all of this nonsense? I was looking for a specific video.
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    My biggest gripe with Google is how the ranking algorithm has essentially killed any innovation on the content and user experience part of the web. I was searching for some poems by Pablo Neruda. The first few results all had awfully designed pages filled with ads, pop ups, bad fonts - things you don’t want to see when reading a poem. Yet, these awful sites continue to dominate the SERPs for queries like these because they are all ancient, have tons of backlinks from ages ago, and thus in the eyes of Google, are “authoritative”. No one wants to put in the effort to create a website that collects, say, poems with a better user experience because they know that most traffic will come from search and they can’t really rank against these ugly old dinosaurs.
n_ary 3y ago
> I see people talking about using big chat or even duckduckgo instead everyday off-topic rant begin —> We have to come out of our nerd bubble and look at ordinary people(yes they are the majority) who are muscle trained to use a handful of fixed things. Both old and new generation will subconsciously open a google search page, or look into FB/TikTok/Instagram. Back in days when I had my first internet, Yahoo! was the default, now the whole internet to majority is just Google/TikTok/FB/Instagram. If your wife/mother/brother/uncle is a non-tech-savvy person, try changing their default search engine, I will bet a big one that they’ll panic and come back complaining about it. Google being default won a decades of subconscious training for ordinary folks about their interface and slowly boiled the frog by increasing ad density. People are used to it and expect it. Off-topic rant end. -x-

by cptaj 3y ago

The real threat to Google is from within. Their search results are crap and a lot of people are noticing. I see people talking about using big chat or even duckduckgo instead everyday

spaceman_2020 3y ago

It’s infuriating when Google will completely ignore my keywords and feed me generic stuff tailored for my audience cohort. I get it that Google probably wants to simplify results so that they’re more digestible for the masses, but at least give me a pro mode that doesn’t dumb everything down

falcrist 3y ago
Youtube is the worst with this behavior. Have you done a search on that website recently? There will be around 2-3 actual results, followed by shorts, followed by 2 more real results, then a "People also watched" sections, then a couple more results, then another section, then a couple of results, then a "For you" section, then a couple results, then a "the latest from X" section, then a "From related searches" section. I'm sorry, did I ASK for all of this nonsense? I was looking for a specific video.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  My biggest gripe with Google is how the ranking algorithm has essentially killed any innovation on the content and user experience part of the web. I was searching for some poems by Pablo Neruda. The first few results all had awfully designed pages filled with ads, pop ups, bad fonts - things you don’t want to see when reading a poem. Yet, these awful sites continue to dominate the SERPs for queries like these because they are all ancient, have tons of backlinks from ages ago, and thus in the eyes of Google, are “authoritative”. No one wants to put in the effort to create a website that collects, say, poems with a better user experience because they know that most traffic will come from search and they can’t really rank against these ugly old dinosaurs.

n_ary 3y ago

> I see people talking about using big chat or even duckduckgo instead everyday off-topic rant begin —> We have to come out of our nerd bubble and look at ordinary people(yes they are the majority) who are muscle trained to use a handful of fixed things. Both old and new generation will subconsciously open a google search page, or look into FB/TikTok/Instagram. Back in days when I had my first internet, Yahoo! was the default, now the whole internet to majority is just Google/TikTok/FB/Instagram. If your wife/mother/brother/uncle is a non-tech-savvy person, try changing their default search engine, I will bet a big one that they’ll panic and come back complaining about it. Google being default won a decades of subconscious training for ordinary folks about their interface and slowly boiled the frog by increasing ad density. People are used to it and expect it. Off-topic rant end. -x-