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I searched for how to use a massage ball (my back hurts) last week and got a giant page full of ads and ad-like sections for buying one with barely any articles

I searched for how to use a massage ball (my back hurts) last week and got a giant page full of ads and ad-like sections for buying one with barely any articles at all. That is not a search engine; it's an ads engine.

datavirtue 2y ago
Get The Back Mechanic book.
- gms7777 2y ago
  I appreciate the parent commenter complaining about how they were looking for something just to get ads instead, and getting a response telling them to buy something. That said, I'll also second the back mechanic book for anyone with back pain.
Varloom 2y ago
I reduced my google search engine usage by 90% Just Option+Space and get the answer with ChatGPT for MacOS. No ads, no nonsense, just the answer.
- threeseed 2y ago
  > No ads, no nonsense, just the answer. 5 - 10% of the time that answer will be complete rubbish. We need something better than Google and LLMs e.g. Golden before it was acquired: https://golden.com https://golden.com
  - user3939382 2y ago
    Kagi works great.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      Great is a loaded term. They promote "best headphones" on their home page. 3rd organic link is a 404. And the rest of the links are either not timely e.g. from 2016 or niche e.g. for Telehealth. Also it is not location aware so mention of Bestbuy even when not from US.
- whstl 2y ago
  ChatGPT is also becoming a victim of SEO. Not purely at the crawling level, but also at the answer level. But as a default, it gives mostly "SEO-optimized" answers in a SEO-optimized format. Even simple question are answered with bullet points. Some descriptions look like advertisements and it's all very authoritative, even when it's just bullshitting/guessing and doesn't really know the answer for sure. This is what I was escaping from. EDIT: For example the last thing I asked was how Brendan O'Brien did sample replacement in drums in Blood Sugar Sex Magic. It answered something that was 90% plausible but most of the content was walls and walls of text about the equipment it assumed it was used (plus info on more equipment unrelated to sample replacement), rather than actually answering the question itself.
- dmje 2y ago
  I don’t know why this is getting downvoted. It might be unpopular to use or like ChatGPT among the users of HN but - it’s true, this is one of the quickest ways to get answers for something
  - pmlnr 2y ago
    Answers, sure. Bit you'll never know if those are answers, bullshit, trolling, or straight up hallucinations. So no, it's not an option at all.
    - adolph 2y ago
      You write this as if that is substantially different from common epistemology of the first page of links. I’m not an llm advocate but responses like this bring to mind the “no wireless. Less storage than a nomad. Lame” reaction to the iPod.
      - dmje 2y ago
        No idea what this means
    - VancouverMan 2y ago
      > you'll never know if those are answers, bullshit, trolling, or straight up hallucinations That's how it has always been for purely human-generated content, too.
      - dmje 2y ago
        Exactly. This seems to be one of the skills we need to learn. In the same way we have to use our own intelligence and skills when searching google (Is this source website reputable? What’s the context I’m searching in? Do I know this person / company? Does that result sound likely? Can I compare to other answers to see if it makes sense?) - it seems to me that using ChatGPT to do anything requires a similar set of (slightly cynical / take what you read with a pinch of salt / check your facts - but nonetheless understand that this is a useful tool) type response to it.
A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
That's by design. I'm reminded of this from a month ago: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Discussed with nearly 900 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976
kriops 2y ago
Kagi costs Spotify money, has zero ads, and lets you customise the results.
- mkroman 2y ago
  It also can't fetch more than 2 pages of results for either web or image search. Reverse image search just straight up doesn't work. I don't know why they have it. With searxng, searching at least works. It also has plugins that I think can do some of what Kagi is useful for (but it depends on the instance)
  - ajdude 2y ago
    > It also can't fetch more than 2 pages of results for either web or image search I can't speak for image searching, but I found when I get limited results from Kagi, The other search engines that produce More results just pad those results with noise. Sometimes I'll do a specific search and have no results on Kagi, so I switched to another engine justified I have thousands of unrelated results
    - mkroman 2y ago
      > The other search engines that produce More results just pad those results with noise. Yeah, that's been an increasing problem.. Google has been especially bad with this for a while now. When I tried to search for something where I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for, I could only change my query so many times until it stopped being what I wanted.
  - dmje 2y ago
    I came here to suggest Kagi. I bloody love it. No ads, ability to remove or downgrade or promote particular sites, lenses, I love it all. Your comment - honestly, hand on heart, I can’t remember the last time I paged through beyond the first page of any search engine. I didn’t even know Kagi had this “problem” and so I guess I just don’t see it as a problem. But then I realised I’m absolutely in that bit of “must be on first page” internet lore, too…
booleandilemma 2y ago
I just did the same search and the first result was how to use a massage ball. I scrolled down a bit and saw a reddit thread titled "using a massage ball for back pain". The declining quality of Google's search results is greatly over exaggerated.
- jascha_eng 2y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree with this. I also am using an ad blocker, but aside from that the pages that are returned work perfectly fine for me for the most part. Yes sometimes there is some useless blogs taking up top spots but then I tried the so hyped alternatives like kagi and they don't filter these out either so eh...
  - abenga 2y ago
    It works perfectly fine even on the Google android app that is unaffected by uBlock. I always hear people complain about search results but I can't remember the last time I even had to scroll down when searching. I do usually mostly search for ultra-specific programming stuff though.
mike_hearn 2y ago
It depends partly on where in the world you are and what language you use. I just tried that query in English and an answer callout was the first result, specifically highlighted. Then there is a "people ask" refiner widget, some videos in which the first is titled "How to use a massage ball (tutorial)" and then a WikiHow page. No ads. I tried again in the local language and now I see some product ad results for buying a massage ball, but then it's back to the video results and sports blogs showing how to use them. That seems OK. Probably most people searching for massage balls do want to buy one or are very likely to do so soon. I dunno, seems like they're both pretty good pages of results.
drivebycomment 2y ago
I just tried "how to use a massage ball" and I don't see any ads, and links seem to be all legit articles, with YouTube video tutorials at the top.
- shzhdbi09gv8ioi 2y ago
  Google results are tailored on a number of factors such as location, your past searches and whatnot. The same deal with the ads. Advertiser wouldn't pay for advertising of their product in a region or to a demograph they don't care for. I'd be more surprised if you did get the same result as parent.
  - drivebycomment 2y ago
    The results are not that different across locations within each country, especially location agnostic queries like the particular example. It would be rather surprising if there's huge difference between locations within US for this particular query.
    - shzhdbi09gv8ioi 2y ago
      What can I say... Anyway, this is how google explains it: > Search uses personalization to improve results > Personalization is when you get Search results tailored to you based on your activity. https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/12412910?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/12412910?hl=en
      - drivebycomment 2y ago
        If you actually compare results across different people across many queries, you will notice that they differ relatively little. The fact that search uses personalization doesn't mean it is always personalized or it affects all results always. It affects relatively small number of queries and relatively small number of results, very dependent on the types of queries and types of results. Location affects a lot more results than personalization, but that is also very query dependent, so certain queries are affected by the location a lot more than others. And the particular example query is one that you can expect very little location variation.
aragonite 2y ago
At the very least Google (or any search engine for that matter) should consider implementing a feature that allows users to explicitly signal query intent. For instance, a 'noshop:' prefix could be used to signal that the user is not looking to buy anything. There are two distinct groups of users searching for terms like "massage ball" or (in my own case) "managed switch": those looking to buy the product and those who looking to learn about the technology. Serving ads to the latter group is not just irritating but also ineffective since those queries were never going to lead to purchases in the first place.
- varelse 2y ago
  [dead]
- rasz 2y ago
  Which Google user would want to pay for ads about things you cant buy ('noshop')? Oh wait, you meant Google _product_. You want Google to cater to its product needs by sacrificing own money making potential and limiting its actual users.
  - aragonite 2y ago
    Google already tries to infer whether a user is shopping or seeking information and serve results accordingly. If I search for "managed vs unmanaged switch" or "massage ball usage", I do not see any ads. All I'm saying is that Google should consider allowing users to explicitly state their intent, since some queries ("massage ball" and "managed switch") are ambiguous and so the intent cannot always be reliably inferred. Analogy: while type inference works well in many cases, there are situations where explicit typing is required because the type is ambiguous based on usage alone.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

datavirtue 2y ago

Get The Back Mechanic book.

gms7777 2y ago
I appreciate the parent commenter complaining about how they were looking for something just to get ads instead, and getting a response telling them to buy something. That said, I'll also second the back mechanic book for anyone with back pain.

Varloom 2y ago

I reduced my google search engine usage by 90% Just Option+Space and get the answer with ChatGPT for MacOS. No ads, no nonsense, just the answer.

threeseed 2y ago
> No ads, no nonsense, just the answer. 5 - 10% of the time that answer will be complete rubbish. We need something better than Google and LLMs e.g. Golden before it was acquired: https://golden.com https://golden.com
- user3939382 2y ago
  Kagi works great.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Great is a loaded term. They promote "best headphones" on their home page. 3rd organic link is a 404. And the rest of the links are either not timely e.g. from 2016 or niche e.g. for Telehealth. Also it is not location aware so mention of Bestbuy even when not from US.
whstl 2y ago
ChatGPT is also becoming a victim of SEO. Not purely at the crawling level, but also at the answer level. But as a default, it gives mostly "SEO-optimized" answers in a SEO-optimized format. Even simple question are answered with bullet points. Some descriptions look like advertisements and it's all very authoritative, even when it's just bullshitting/guessing and doesn't really know the answer for sure. This is what I was escaping from. EDIT: For example the last thing I asked was how Brendan O'Brien did sample replacement in drums in Blood Sugar Sex Magic. It answered something that was 90% plausible but most of the content was walls and walls of text about the equipment it assumed it was used (plus info on more equipment unrelated to sample replacement), rather than actually answering the question itself.
dmje 2y ago
I don’t know why this is getting downvoted. It might be unpopular to use or like ChatGPT among the users of HN but - it’s true, this is one of the quickest ways to get answers for something
- pmlnr 2y ago
  Answers, sure. Bit you'll never know if those are answers, bullshit, trolling, or straight up hallucinations. So no, it's not an option at all.
  - adolph 2y ago
    You write this as if that is substantially different from common epistemology of the first page of links. I’m not an llm advocate but responses like this bring to mind the “no wireless. Less storage than a nomad. Lame” reaction to the iPod.
    - dmje 2y ago
      No idea what this means
  - VancouverMan 2y ago
    > you'll never know if those are answers, bullshit, trolling, or straight up hallucinations That's how it has always been for purely human-generated content, too.
    - dmje 2y ago
      Exactly. This seems to be one of the skills we need to learn. In the same way we have to use our own intelligence and skills when searching google (Is this source website reputable? What’s the context I’m searching in? Do I know this person / company? Does that result sound likely? Can I compare to other answers to see if it makes sense?) - it seems to me that using ChatGPT to do anything requires a similar set of (slightly cynical / take what you read with a pinch of salt / check your facts - but nonetheless understand that this is a useful tool) type response to it.

A_D_E_P_T 2y ago

That's by design. I'm reminded of this from a month ago: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Discussed with nearly 900 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976

kriops 2y ago

Kagi costs Spotify money, has zero ads, and lets you customise the results.

mkroman 2y ago
It also can't fetch more than 2 pages of results for either web or image search. Reverse image search just straight up doesn't work. I don't know why they have it. With searxng, searching at least works. It also has plugins that I think can do some of what Kagi is useful for (but it depends on the instance)
- ajdude 2y ago
  > It also can't fetch more than 2 pages of results for either web or image search I can't speak for image searching, but I found when I get limited results from Kagi, The other search engines that produce More results just pad those results with noise. Sometimes I'll do a specific search and have no results on Kagi, so I switched to another engine justified I have thousands of unrelated results
  - mkroman 2y ago
    > The other search engines that produce More results just pad those results with noise. Yeah, that's been an increasing problem.. Google has been especially bad with this for a while now. When I tried to search for something where I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for, I could only change my query so many times until it stopped being what I wanted.
- dmje 2y ago
  I came here to suggest Kagi. I bloody love it. No ads, ability to remove or downgrade or promote particular sites, lenses, I love it all. Your comment - honestly, hand on heart, I can’t remember the last time I paged through beyond the first page of any search engine. I didn’t even know Kagi had this “problem” and so I guess I just don’t see it as a problem. But then I realised I’m absolutely in that bit of “must be on first page” internet lore, too…

booleandilemma 2y ago

I just did the same search and the first result was how to use a massage ball. I scrolled down a bit and saw a reddit thread titled "using a massage ball for back pain". The declining quality of Google's search results is greatly over exaggerated.

jascha_eng 2y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with this. I also am using an ad blocker, but aside from that the pages that are returned work perfectly fine for me for the most part. Yes sometimes there is some useless blogs taking up top spots but then I tried the so hyped alternatives like kagi and they don't filter these out either so eh...
- abenga 2y ago
  It works perfectly fine even on the Google android app that is unaffected by uBlock. I always hear people complain about search results but I can't remember the last time I even had to scroll down when searching. I do usually mostly search for ultra-specific programming stuff though.

mike_hearn 2y ago

It depends partly on where in the world you are and what language you use. I just tried that query in English and an answer callout was the first result, specifically highlighted. Then there is a "people ask" refiner widget, some videos in which the first is titled "How to use a massage ball (tutorial)" and then a WikiHow page. No ads. I tried again in the local language and now I see some product ad results for buying a massage ball, but then it's back to the video results and sports blogs showing how to use them. That seems OK. Probably most people searching for massage balls do want to buy one or are very likely to do so soon. I dunno, seems like they're both pretty good pages of results.

drivebycomment 2y ago

I just tried "how to use a massage ball" and I don't see any ads, and links seem to be all legit articles, with YouTube video tutorials at the top.

shzhdbi09gv8ioi 2y ago
Google results are tailored on a number of factors such as location, your past searches and whatnot. The same deal with the ads. Advertiser wouldn't pay for advertising of their product in a region or to a demograph they don't care for. I'd be more surprised if you did get the same result as parent.
- drivebycomment 2y ago
  The results are not that different across locations within each country, especially location agnostic queries like the particular example. It would be rather surprising if there's huge difference between locations within US for this particular query.
  - shzhdbi09gv8ioi 2y ago
    What can I say... Anyway, this is how google explains it: > Search uses personalization to improve results > Personalization is when you get Search results tailored to you based on your activity. https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/12412910?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/12412910?hl=en
    - drivebycomment 2y ago
      If you actually compare results across different people across many queries, you will notice that they differ relatively little. The fact that search uses personalization doesn't mean it is always personalized or it affects all results always. It affects relatively small number of queries and relatively small number of results, very dependent on the types of queries and types of results. Location affects a lot more results than personalization, but that is also very query dependent, so certain queries are affected by the location a lot more than others. And the particular example query is one that you can expect very little location variation.

aragonite 2y ago

At the very least Google (or any search engine for that matter) should consider implementing a feature that allows users to explicitly signal query intent. For instance, a 'noshop:' prefix could be used to signal that the user is not looking to buy anything. There are two distinct groups of users searching for terms like "massage ball" or (in my own case) "managed switch": those looking to buy the product and those who looking to learn about the technology. Serving ads to the latter group is not just irritating but also ineffective since those queries were never going to lead to purchases in the first place.

varelse 2y ago
[dead]
rasz 2y ago
Which Google user would want to pay for ads about things you cant buy ('noshop')? Oh wait, you meant Google _product_. You want Google to cater to its product needs by sacrificing own money making potential and limiting its actual users.
- aragonite 2y ago
  Google already tries to infer whether a user is shopping or seeking information and serve results accordingly. If I search for "managed vs unmanaged switch" or "massage ball usage", I do not see any ads. All I'm saying is that Google should consider allowing users to explicitly state their intent, since some queries ("massage ball" and "managed switch") are ambiguous and so the intent cannot always be reliably inferred. Analogy: while type inference works well in many cases, there are situations where explicit typing is required because the type is ambiguous based on usage alone.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]