3 ms·

Not the OP but I think Google search has started losing its organic nature in the sense that the top results are slowly and steadily consolidating into a handfu

by pyeri 2y ago

Not the OP but I think Google search has started losing its organic nature in the sense that the top results are slowly and steadily consolidating into a handful of social network domains (other big techs mostly). A related point is also that the web itself is losing its diversity. Whatever happened to the small dude's wordpress blog, why are they no longer turning up in the search results as much as reddit, quora, etc? What happened to the IRC, news letters, bulletin boards and forums (phpBB), etc? No doubt some of these sites are also thriving on the backend somewhere but Google's step-motherly treatment towards them in the results is surely hurting the web's diversity.

zo1 2y ago
I think the sheer volume of "recent" content happens on those platforms absolutely dwarfs anything that anyone creates on their own time and private platform. For every 1 person writing their thoughts or findings on a blog, you have maybe 10 Thousand people making low-effort FB, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok postings. These people might as well be low-IQ "bots" and the platforms love them because they drive engagement, eyeballs, clickbait, rage and controversy. We will never get that Web back. That innocence, naivety, hope and shared and private space is long lost.
- eitland 2y ago
  Try search.marginalia.nu (free) or kagi.com (paid). Both prove that it is very much possible to come up with better rankings than Google do. Googles problem very much seems to be that quote by Upton Sinclair that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” search.marginalia.nu and kagi.com have nothing to gain by sending people to websites that result in ad impressions for Google so for them it is a whole lot easier to rank fairly. Also without this incentive it turns out that the feature everyone asked Google for - personalized blocklists - wasn't as impossible as googlers have told us over the years.
  - ericjmorey 2y ago
    I didn't know about Marginalia, thanks! I've been trying out https://www.mojeek.com/ https://www.mojeek.com/ recently. I mostly like it, but haven't made it my primary habit to use it first before duckduckgo. I'm avoiding kagi for various reasons.
  - account42 2y ago
    https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/ is also a good search engine for (re-)discovering the alternate (or rather original) web.
account42 2y ago
> why are they no longer turning up in the search results as much as reddit, quora, etc? Because they might contain "fake news" and are thus too problematic to show to you. And of course, they don't make any profit for Google since those kinds of sites are largely ad-free. The sites are of course still out there, Google et al. just don't want to show them to you.

by pyeri 2y ago

zo1 2y ago

I think the sheer volume of "recent" content happens on those platforms absolutely dwarfs anything that anyone creates on their own time and private platform. For every 1 person writing their thoughts or findings on a blog, you have maybe 10 Thousand people making low-effort FB, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok postings. These people might as well be low-IQ "bots" and the platforms love them because they drive engagement, eyeballs, clickbait, rage and controversy. We will never get that Web back. That innocence, naivety, hope and shared and private space is long lost.

eitland 2y ago
Try search.marginalia.nu (free) or kagi.com (paid). Both prove that it is very much possible to come up with better rankings than Google do. Googles problem very much seems to be that quote by Upton Sinclair that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” search.marginalia.nu and kagi.com have nothing to gain by sending people to websites that result in ad impressions for Google so for them it is a whole lot easier to rank fairly. Also without this incentive it turns out that the feature everyone asked Google for - personalized blocklists - wasn't as impossible as googlers have told us over the years.
- ericjmorey 2y ago
  I didn't know about Marginalia, thanks! I've been trying out https://www.mojeek.com/ https://www.mojeek.com/ recently. I mostly like it, but haven't made it my primary habit to use it first before duckduckgo. I'm avoiding kagi for various reasons.
- account42 2y ago
  https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/ is also a good search engine for (re-)discovering the alternate (or rather original) web.

account42 2y ago

> why are they no longer turning up in the search results as much as reddit, quora, etc? Because they might contain "fake news" and are thus too problematic to show to you. And of course, they don't make any profit for Google since those kinds of sites are largely ad-free. The sites are of course still out there, Google et al. just don't want to show them to you.