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Two big reasons people add Reddit to search phrases is because Reddit's search isn't functional and to deprioritise Ad Junk from search. It's to fix broken sea

Two big reasons people add Reddit to search phrases is because Reddit's search isn't functional and to deprioritise Ad Junk from search. It's to fix broken search, which gets more broken - more unwanted Ad Junk. But Google's an advertising company with it's ad search device in everyone's pocket. At least it's reached sufficient post-don't-be-evil to be honestly shameless, even if it does employ people in PR with broken ethics prostituting their names for their mortgages. Getting reflective's hard when you're celebrating yourself.

jayski 2y ago
Reddit is the only social network I use. They're really dropping the ball by not having a fantastic search tool. I know search is a difficult problem, but with the kind of budget and engineering power they have it has to be solvable.
- throwaway211 2y ago
  Before: They were small. It was hard. Defer to Google. Now: By having bad search, Google rewards them.
- yreg 2y ago
  For me, search is the least of reddit's problems since it is easily worked around by using a search engine. The changes to the API pricing were the final nail in the coffin for me, but the content has been going downhill for a decade anyway.
  - zarathustreal 2y ago
    Reddit is a cesspool, at least the standard subreddits. It’s worse than Twitter. It also has a moderation culture that kind of promotes toxic traits and petty power trips. Used to be pretty good for finding niche info, but most of it for my uses was deleted back when everyone left. Can’t imagine still using Reddit nowadays
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      I find decent info in plenty of subs, you just have to stay away from the front page/popular subs, Especially the comments in those items. Total garbage full of people ranting. I give it a go a couple times a year but nothing ever changes. Just people raging at each other.
      - yreg 2y ago
        Sure, there's a lot of valuable information and I often append my web searches with “reddit”. But I no longer go to reddit to spend time there, without looking for specific information.
- tmccrary55 2y ago
  I've been switching to Lemmy. It's like Reddit but not owned by a public corp. Reddit still has more users but Lemmy is more like old school distributed web, not just an ad product pushed by coked out MBA accountants.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    It's reddit-like BUT it doesn't have the same mass adoption and that's why I go to reddit. I don't have time to be a saint and help their numbers, so I just go to reddit and read what I want. Really HN is the only SM platform that I actually participate both ways with. I just read thing on other SM sites to catch up with friends or topics (like reddit). Comments there are mostly a trash heap but on something you want to know about you can find a gold nugget every now and then.
- rjh29 2y ago
  There's no money in it. It's expensive in both compute and storage to provide the tool, and they want most users to just be mindlessly consuming the front page or popular subreddits.
  - balder1991 2y ago
    That’s my issue with Reddit nowadays. Most subreddits content is just the same question thrown over and over, and Reddit nowadays changes the home page to be just random algorithm selected stuff. And now I don’t have a choice to use Apollo anymore.
    - pokerface_86 2y ago
      you could always side load apollo
- mlrtime 2y ago
  Why would they, google does it for free. Spend money making google crawlers more efficient, not copying google.
- orev 2y ago
  Reddit benefits from having bad search because it increases engagement with the site. If you can’t find it by searching, people start a new post, even if it’s just rehashing something that’s been discussed 100s of times before. The new post brings new comments, and more page views. There’s also a user benefit as the information has less chance to become outdated (a new discussion might bring new information, avoiding the Stack Overflow problem).
- pants2 2y ago
  Reddit had a great search engine called PushShift which was maintained and run by one guy. That service doesn't work since their API changes, unfortunately.
dmje 2y ago
Back again to say Kagi - where you can promote Reddit results. I have this, and it means the first result I normally get back for search is a Reddit answer.
jb3689 2y ago
It's odd. How did search engines trick us into thinking that our home page should be a search engine? The only reason I add "reddit" to searches is because a search engine is my entrypoint on my browser. Even then though, I find that Google tends to pin a particular threads. The most humorous ones are when it pins to a thread with "this has been asked already a zillion times" with no actual meaningful content in the particular thread. Google search was never really good at finding meaningful opinions in the first place. Facts? Reference? Pretty good. Meaningful tradeoff analysis of non-academic subjects? Product rankings and reviews? Opinions? Really poor. It's odd that Google decided to cannibalize the things it was good at. Finding recipes, for example, is terrible through Google because of the emphasis on SEO at the expense of user experience. AI search results are simply Google opting to make itself less relevant.
- asadotzler 2y ago
  >How did search engines trick us into thinking that our home page should be a search engine? The browser makers started in the mid-90s with web search and news called "portals", either their own or licensed from a third party. By the early 2000s the portals had all gone to shit but we still needed them for web search because we still cared about the web and not just a couple of social media apps. As a result, Google's pristine search and search results pages became popular. When we were deciding on a Firefox start page in mid-2004, Google search eventually won because it was simple and effective, like the rest of Firefox. (My proposal to our tiny team at the time was to make Firefox Start a page of instructions on how to easily change the start page to what ever you wanted, but that was reasonably shot down as asking the user to do extra work.)
rldjbpin 2y ago
on the contrary, i have stopped using reddit due to how most communities work there since past few years. i wish every subreddit was full of nuanced, balanced discussions but it is rarely the case from my experience. ironically the recent ai overviews results are partially referencing sarcastic reddit posts, like cheeze and glue.

jayski 2y ago

Reddit is the only social network I use. They're really dropping the ball by not having a fantastic search tool. I know search is a difficult problem, but with the kind of budget and engineering power they have it has to be solvable.

throwaway211 2y ago
Before: They were small. It was hard. Defer to Google. Now: By having bad search, Google rewards them.
yreg 2y ago
For me, search is the least of reddit's problems since it is easily worked around by using a search engine. The changes to the API pricing were the final nail in the coffin for me, but the content has been going downhill for a decade anyway.
- zarathustreal 2y ago
  Reddit is a cesspool, at least the standard subreddits. It’s worse than Twitter. It also has a moderation culture that kind of promotes toxic traits and petty power trips. Used to be pretty good for finding niche info, but most of it for my uses was deleted back when everyone left. Can’t imagine still using Reddit nowadays
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    I find decent info in plenty of subs, you just have to stay away from the front page/popular subs, Especially the comments in those items. Total garbage full of people ranting. I give it a go a couple times a year but nothing ever changes. Just people raging at each other.
    - yreg 2y ago
      Sure, there's a lot of valuable information and I often append my web searches with “reddit”. But I no longer go to reddit to spend time there, without looking for specific information.
tmccrary55 2y ago
I've been switching to Lemmy. It's like Reddit but not owned by a public corp. Reddit still has more users but Lemmy is more like old school distributed web, not just an ad product pushed by coked out MBA accountants.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  It's reddit-like BUT it doesn't have the same mass adoption and that's why I go to reddit. I don't have time to be a saint and help their numbers, so I just go to reddit and read what I want. Really HN is the only SM platform that I actually participate both ways with. I just read thing on other SM sites to catch up with friends or topics (like reddit). Comments there are mostly a trash heap but on something you want to know about you can find a gold nugget every now and then.
rjh29 2y ago
There's no money in it. It's expensive in both compute and storage to provide the tool, and they want most users to just be mindlessly consuming the front page or popular subreddits.
- balder1991 2y ago
  That’s my issue with Reddit nowadays. Most subreddits content is just the same question thrown over and over, and Reddit nowadays changes the home page to be just random algorithm selected stuff. And now I don’t have a choice to use Apollo anymore.
  - pokerface_86 2y ago
    you could always side load apollo
mlrtime 2y ago
Why would they, google does it for free. Spend money making google crawlers more efficient, not copying google.
orev 2y ago
Reddit benefits from having bad search because it increases engagement with the site. If you can’t find it by searching, people start a new post, even if it’s just rehashing something that’s been discussed 100s of times before. The new post brings new comments, and more page views. There’s also a user benefit as the information has less chance to become outdated (a new discussion might bring new information, avoiding the Stack Overflow problem).
pants2 2y ago
Reddit had a great search engine called PushShift which was maintained and run by one guy. That service doesn't work since their API changes, unfortunately.

dmje 2y ago

Back again to say Kagi - where you can promote Reddit results. I have this, and it means the first result I normally get back for search is a Reddit answer.

jb3689 2y ago

It's odd. How did search engines trick us into thinking that our home page should be a search engine? The only reason I add "reddit" to searches is because a search engine is my entrypoint on my browser. Even then though, I find that Google tends to pin a particular threads. The most humorous ones are when it pins to a thread with "this has been asked already a zillion times" with no actual meaningful content in the particular thread. Google search was never really good at finding meaningful opinions in the first place. Facts? Reference? Pretty good. Meaningful tradeoff analysis of non-academic subjects? Product rankings and reviews? Opinions? Really poor. It's odd that Google decided to cannibalize the things it was good at. Finding recipes, for example, is terrible through Google because of the emphasis on SEO at the expense of user experience. AI search results are simply Google opting to make itself less relevant.

asadotzler 2y ago
>How did search engines trick us into thinking that our home page should be a search engine? The browser makers started in the mid-90s with web search and news called "portals", either their own or licensed from a third party. By the early 2000s the portals had all gone to shit but we still needed them for web search because we still cared about the web and not just a couple of social media apps. As a result, Google's pristine search and search results pages became popular. When we were deciding on a Firefox start page in mid-2004, Google search eventually won because it was simple and effective, like the rest of Firefox. (My proposal to our tiny team at the time was to make Firefox Start a page of instructions on how to easily change the start page to what ever you wanted, but that was reasonably shot down as asking the user to do extra work.)

rldjbpin 2y ago

on the contrary, i have stopped using reddit due to how most communities work there since past few years. i wish every subreddit was full of nuanced, balanced discussions but it is rarely the case from my experience. ironically the recent ai overviews results are partially referencing sarcastic reddit posts, like cheeze and glue.