8 ms·

At some point it seems like Google switch to ML-based search instead of index based search. You can search for very specific combinations of lyrics and scenes:

by umvi 2y ago

At some point it seems like Google switch to ML-based search instead of index based search. You can search for very specific combinations of lyrics and scenes: "eyes on me pineapple bucket of water house of cards chess time loop" and you won't surface a link to the music video featuring all of those things (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlzgDVLtU6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlzgDVLtU6g), you'll just get really generic results of the average of your query.

janalsncm 2y ago
I think this is a separate issue although it also exists. What the parent is referring to is favoring annoying ad-filled garbage over an equally relevant but straightforward result. The hidden variable is that ad-riddled spam sites also invest in SEO, which is why they rank higher. I am not aware of any evidence that Google is using number of Google ads as a ranking factor directly. But I would push back and say that “SEO” is something Google should be doing, not websites, and a properly optimized search engine would be penalizing obvious garbage.
greenavocado 2y ago
Has google completely stopped working for anyone else? I can still search things, i get results but, they're an ordered list of popular places the engine is directing me to. Some kind of filtering is occurring on nearly every search i make that's making the results feel entirely useless. Image search stopped working sometime ago and now it just runs an AI filter on whatever image you search for, tells you there's a man in the picture and gives up. Youtube recommendations is always hundreds of videos i've watched already, with maybe 1-2 recommendations to new channels when i know there's millions of content creators out there struggling who it will never introduce me to. What happened to the rabbit holes of crazy youtube stuff you could go down? This product is a shell of its old self, why did it stop working?
- seanthemon 2y ago
  They do evil now
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Despite all the comments it still works pretty well for me. I feel like they've improved it a bit in the last year or so so you don't get way too much Quora and GitHub/Stackoverflow clones. The level of sponsored results for some queries is way OTT, and obviously any kind of search like "best laptop 2024" is never going to give you good results (probably because they don't exist), but other than that I'm still pretty happy with Google Search.
  - palata 2y ago
    > it still works pretty well for me Genuinely interested: have you tried to spend a few weeks on an alternative? I decided to try DuckDuckGo a few years ago. Not because it was obviously better, but to see if I could get used to it. After a few weeks, I had completely stopped falling back to Google when not finding what I wanted. I stayed on DDG for a couple years. Then same thing with Kagi: I just decided to try. It's been 1.5-2 years now and I'm disappointed when I can't use Kagi (which has my customizations, like some websites I ignore and some that I pin). I guess my point is that it's not necessarily that you have to try something else when Google is unbearable. Maybe you can try something else and then realize (or not) that Google was not better.
    - lstamour 2y ago
      That's not where I thought this was going. I tried using DDG and Kagi and went back to Google. Google had more relevant, fresher results than DDG, and Kagi didn't have the same integration with Google Maps and often a smaller set of results for very niche queries. Google is still basically the internet - the entire internet - though in many ways they do still fall short. But breadth of content indexing and information about local places, Google is still king.
      - palata 2y ago
        > information about local places, Google is still king. I try to use OpenStreetMap as much as I can (I have a deGoogled smartphone and OpenStreetMap works well enough) but it is true that Google Maps is better (at the cost of privacy of course). But in terms of search... I can't remember of a time where I tried Google because I couldn't find with Kagi and ended up finding something with Google. On the contrary with the Kagi lenses it's often a lot easier to get specific results.
- reddalo 2y ago
  I agree with everything you said. Google is completely useless for searching; now I just use it as a glorified website URL finder. YouTube search is also completely useless now.
  - okdood64 2y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=door+bolt+not+closing https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=door+bolt+not+c... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=path+of+exile+2+gameplay https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=path+of+exile+2... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ramen+restaurant+chef https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ramen+restauran... When I search these three things the first 5 results are exactly what I want. What exactly are you searching of the time that it's "completely useless"? Genuine question.
    - zarzavat 2y ago
      There's a difference between searching for a topic and searching for an item. All of those are topic searches. Try searching for a particular video, one that is not super popular. What I want is a complete list of results that match my query. What I get is YouTube trying to recommend videos to me.
      - okdood64 2y ago
        I don't understand your use case. If I know the exact title of the video, it finds it. Everytime. If you try to describe a non-popular video it just becomes a crapshoot on what to give you if there's no word/tag watching. You'd need some hint of the channel name or something. The volume of low viewership videos is incredibly high. Can you give me a real example of something you've tried to do?
        sph 2y ago
        Just try any search. A few results, and then google tries to recommend you completely unrelated, popular videos within your search results.
- ponector 2y ago
  Google is extremely good if you search for a product they can advertise to you. I've recently wanted to buy lost sunglasses. Just selected them from the photo and google found exactly brand and model, with a link to the store. If there are no sponsored links - the result is crap. Google is good at searching, they just have no incentive to show you results.
  - herval 2y ago
    > Google is good at searching, they just have no incentive to show you results. “ to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” was a nice mission while it lasted
- nbaksalyar 2y ago
  > Has google completely stopped working for anyone else? Yes. However, I found that https://scholar.google.com https://scholar.google.com still works perfectly well. It feels just as the old Google without all the crap they've been adding in the last years.
  - j_bum 2y ago
    God please don’t let them touch Google Scholar. I can’t imagine the cost this would have on scientific producivity in the West.
    - fhdsgbbcaA 2y ago
      Very small team, only still exists because they are a rounding error to the CFO on the balance sheet, but otherwise they could go at any time. Oddly their biggest strength is being irrelevant to the decision makers, if the bean counters noticed the few million they are losing on running Scholar there will be ads + Gemini all over it.
      - asadalt 2y ago
        on other hand i would love a Gemini finetuned on all papers or ability to refer to papers in my prompt when researching an idea. right now, I download pdf and upload it to chatgpt to bounce ideas.
        GrzegorzWidla 2y ago
        Are you familiar with NotebookLLM?
        greenavocado 2y ago
        What is that about
        andrepd 2y ago
        That sounds like a terrible idea to me not gonna lie
- herval 2y ago
  Today I tried finding a rather popular product I used recently, which I had forgotten the name. I had to search THREE TIMES before finding it: First search (“products that do X”) got me a bunch of those comparisons sites, none of them containing the one I was trying to find Second search (“ycombinator startup that does X”) got me a page of spam, but at least I found the product name Third search (company name) got me an ENTIRE PAGE of ads and SEO optimized pages before the actual link to the actual product
  - greenavocado 2y ago
    Yep, this aligns with my experience!
- jim-jim-jim 2y ago
  Much like Google itself, Youtube has been trending towards ushering users to a minute collection of blessed official/popular sources, often news channels. Maybe it's in response to kvetching over ``disinformation?" Idunno, but it's absolutely infuriating for some of my interests. If I search "Mullica Hill tornado" on yt itself, I get nothing but useless 1 min local news clips. If I search the same term on Reddit, I get first person footage of the tornado passing over people's houses—hosted on Youtube! Tornado enthusiasts still occasionally dredge up "lost media" of events like the 2011 Alabama outbreak that have been on the site this entire time, but are effectively impossible to view via the algorithm, even with the precise date and location specified.
- mightybyte 2y ago
  Google search is completely broken IMO. I stopped using Google search years ago and every time I go back on the off chance that it's bigger index has something that DuckDuckGo couldn't find for me. Image search isn't great either but it still often gives me something close and that usually satisfies my image searching needs. I still find YouTube recommendations quite good for me, but there are occasional ones I've watched already. I still go down its fun (and educational!) rabbit holes all the time.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    Exact same experience, YouTube recommendations (in incognito without being logged in!) usually give me stuff related to the video in watching. However when they don't, it's invariably to push some alt-right slop down my throat. Video is about a comedian? Suggestion "feminist woke takedown compilation". Video about news? Suggestion "$european_far_right_party's channel says gypsies are subhuman". Video about economics? Suggestion is Jordan Peterson ranting about something. And so on and so on. It's pretty tiring.
- veesahni 2y ago
  it seems google switched to some kind of semantic search instead of word based search. It doesn't search for what your words are, but instead what your words kindof sortof mean. Which means you always get 'average' results instead of precise results. This may make it better for the non-tech folks who search for things in unclear language, and likely make it worse for those who search with precision (i.e. much of the HN crowd). Most importantly, they make their money off ads, and it probably makes sense to optimize for the non-tech folks. The ones that don't run ad blockers and accidentally click the barely differentiable ads. In short - I suspect they're just using new tech to make more money.
  - karmonhardan 2y ago
    People have been throwing up the, "You're just too technical," canard for years, and it's just not true. Google search does not find what anyone is looking for; it finds what it wants to sell, in a way that makes it more likely that a purchase will be made. Full stop.
    - krainboltgreene 2y ago
      This comment is just laughably wrong. I use google a hundred times a day, from programming stuff to news stuff. I have never felt like it wasn't finding what I was looking for.
      - karmonhardan 2y ago
        n=1, very scientific methodology. How do you "feel" about homeopathy?
        krainboltgreene 2y ago
        This is a 3 day old post. Are you just replying because you looked at my post history?
        karmonhardan 2y ago
- wodenokoto 2y ago
  I think calling it "completely stopped working" is a bit over the top. It doesn't feel magical, and it particularly doesn't feel like a gateway to new and interesting places on the internet, like it used to. But I still make hundreds of searches on google every day, so obviously it is working.
  - space_oddity 2y ago
    Back in the day, Google searches could lead you down unplanned paths, into niche forums or fascinating rabbit holes that felt organic and less commercial.
  - wruza 2y ago
    It works in the same sense that you try asking a stranger for directions and he wraps you into a fishing net and drags you to the nearest mall whose name resembles your question if shouted into a bucket.
    - igravious 2y ago
      Brilliant. You ought to write for a living if you don't already.
- vishnugupta 2y ago
  I switched to DDG couple of years ago without knowing what to expect. Once I got used to their UI there was no turning back. And on rare occasions now when I do search on Google I feel so happy I switched to DDG. To an extent that it does feel to me that Google has indeed stopped working completely for me. And yes I’ve stopped their search history, recommendations etc on YouTube.
- SergeyHack 2y ago
  For me it feels like Google is adding "buy" keyword to every search. Part of the answer is here - https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
- mda 2y ago
  I see this argument in HN a lot, so I checked my search history (googled "search history") it seems I use it ~10-20 times a day, looked at individual searches e.g. last week, and except a few queries, I have found what I was looking at. Yes it is hard to find some stuff in internet because it is filled with generated affiliate spam and walled gardens, Has Google stopped working for me? Nope It seems still alive and kicking.
- silexia 2y ago
  Any specific search no longer yields relevant results.
Nashooo 2y ago
Funnily enough that search now finds your comment
zeven7 2y ago
Searching for a song by typing in lyrics is specifically a feature I’ve noticed Google can’t do any more. And it used to be able to.
- space_oddity 2y ago
  It works only if they're well-known lyrics or a popular track
- Pikamander2 2y ago
  Same here. I've generally found complaints about Google's recent decline to be overblown, but lyrics are one area where it's truly gone off the deep end. Even if I type in 2-3 lines worth of nearly-exact lyrics that show up on multiple lyrics websites, it'll give me completely unrelated songs that match several words at most. On that note, if anyone needs a good browser-based song finder, the "Aha Music Identifier" extension is pretty good. It's a life saver when watching Twitch streams that don't list the currently-playing song.
- alephxyz 2y ago
  Not just lyrics. Searching for quotations or text excerpts is much harder and double quotes to only get exact matches also returns unrelated results. On the other hand, chatgpt 4o-mini and 3.5 will just make up source material which is amusing but not very helpful.
ki85squared 2y ago
FWIW, ChatGPT Search didn't surface the video either with that query > Based on the elements you’ve described—eyes, a pineapple, a bucket of water, a house of cards, chess, and a time loop—it’s challenging to identify a single music video that encompasses all these features.
eviks 2y ago
> very specific combinations of lyrics and scenes Has google ever indexed all the lyrics and scenes in a video to allow for such a weird search to be successful?
mr_toad 2y ago
> Google switch to ML-based search The very earliest form of page rank used a form of ML.
arromatic 2y ago
How do ml based search and index based differ ? Can you elaborate more on this ?
mvkel 2y ago
The question of how to improve the google experience for users has been clear for years, possibly a decade. The question that remains unanswered is how google can do so without compromising customer revenue.

by umvi 2y ago

janalsncm 2y ago

I think this is a separate issue although it also exists. What the parent is referring to is favoring annoying ad-filled garbage over an equally relevant but straightforward result. The hidden variable is that ad-riddled spam sites also invest in SEO, which is why they rank higher. I am not aware of any evidence that Google is using number of Google ads as a ranking factor directly. But I would push back and say that “SEO” is something Google should be doing, not websites, and a properly optimized search engine would be penalizing obvious garbage.

greenavocado 2y ago

Has google completely stopped working for anyone else? I can still search things, i get results but, they're an ordered list of popular places the engine is directing me to. Some kind of filtering is occurring on nearly every search i make that's making the results feel entirely useless. Image search stopped working sometime ago and now it just runs an AI filter on whatever image you search for, tells you there's a man in the picture and gives up. Youtube recommendations is always hundreds of videos i've watched already, with maybe 1-2 recommendations to new channels when i know there's millions of content creators out there struggling who it will never introduce me to. What happened to the rabbit holes of crazy youtube stuff you could go down? This product is a shell of its old self, why did it stop working?

seanthemon 2y ago
They do evil now
IshKebab 2y ago
Despite all the comments it still works pretty well for me. I feel like they've improved it a bit in the last year or so so you don't get way too much Quora and GitHub/Stackoverflow clones. The level of sponsored results for some queries is way OTT, and obviously any kind of search like "best laptop 2024" is never going to give you good results (probably because they don't exist), but other than that I'm still pretty happy with Google Search.
- palata 2y ago
  > it still works pretty well for me Genuinely interested: have you tried to spend a few weeks on an alternative? I decided to try DuckDuckGo a few years ago. Not because it was obviously better, but to see if I could get used to it. After a few weeks, I had completely stopped falling back to Google when not finding what I wanted. I stayed on DDG for a couple years. Then same thing with Kagi: I just decided to try. It's been 1.5-2 years now and I'm disappointed when I can't use Kagi (which has my customizations, like some websites I ignore and some that I pin). I guess my point is that it's not necessarily that you have to try something else when Google is unbearable. Maybe you can try something else and then realize (or not) that Google was not better.
  - lstamour 2y ago
    That's not where I thought this was going. I tried using DDG and Kagi and went back to Google. Google had more relevant, fresher results than DDG, and Kagi didn't have the same integration with Google Maps and often a smaller set of results for very niche queries. Google is still basically the internet - the entire internet - though in many ways they do still fall short. But breadth of content indexing and information about local places, Google is still king.
    - palata 2y ago
      > information about local places, Google is still king. I try to use OpenStreetMap as much as I can (I have a deGoogled smartphone and OpenStreetMap works well enough) but it is true that Google Maps is better (at the cost of privacy of course). But in terms of search... I can't remember of a time where I tried Google because I couldn't find with Kagi and ended up finding something with Google. On the contrary with the Kagi lenses it's often a lot easier to get specific results.
reddalo 2y ago
I agree with everything you said. Google is completely useless for searching; now I just use it as a glorified website URL finder. YouTube search is also completely useless now.
- okdood64 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=door+bolt+not+closing https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=door+bolt+not+c... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=path+of+exile+2+gameplay https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=path+of+exile+2... https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ramen+restaurant+chef https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ramen+restauran... When I search these three things the first 5 results are exactly what I want. What exactly are you searching of the time that it's "completely useless"? Genuine question.
  - zarzavat 2y ago
    There's a difference between searching for a topic and searching for an item. All of those are topic searches. Try searching for a particular video, one that is not super popular. What I want is a complete list of results that match my query. What I get is YouTube trying to recommend videos to me.
    - okdood64 2y ago
      I don't understand your use case. If I know the exact title of the video, it finds it. Everytime. If you try to describe a non-popular video it just becomes a crapshoot on what to give you if there's no word/tag watching. You'd need some hint of the channel name or something. The volume of low viewership videos is incredibly high. Can you give me a real example of something you've tried to do?
      - sph 2y ago
        Just try any search. A few results, and then google tries to recommend you completely unrelated, popular videos within your search results.
ponector 2y ago
Google is extremely good if you search for a product they can advertise to you. I've recently wanted to buy lost sunglasses. Just selected them from the photo and google found exactly brand and model, with a link to the store. If there are no sponsored links - the result is crap. Google is good at searching, they just have no incentive to show you results.
- herval 2y ago
  > Google is good at searching, they just have no incentive to show you results. “ to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful” was a nice mission while it lasted
nbaksalyar 2y ago
> Has google completely stopped working for anyone else? Yes. However, I found that https://scholar.google.com https://scholar.google.com still works perfectly well. It feels just as the old Google without all the crap they've been adding in the last years.
- j_bum 2y ago
  God please don’t let them touch Google Scholar. I can’t imagine the cost this would have on scientific producivity in the West.
  - fhdsgbbcaA 2y ago
    Very small team, only still exists because they are a rounding error to the CFO on the balance sheet, but otherwise they could go at any time. Oddly their biggest strength is being irrelevant to the decision makers, if the bean counters noticed the few million they are losing on running Scholar there will be ads + Gemini all over it.
    - asadalt 2y ago
      on other hand i would love a Gemini finetuned on all papers or ability to refer to papers in my prompt when researching an idea. right now, I download pdf and upload it to chatgpt to bounce ideas.
      - GrzegorzWidla 2y ago
        Are you familiar with NotebookLLM?
        greenavocado 2y ago
        What is that about
      - andrepd 2y ago
        That sounds like a terrible idea to me not gonna lie
herval 2y ago
Today I tried finding a rather popular product I used recently, which I had forgotten the name. I had to search THREE TIMES before finding it: First search (“products that do X”) got me a bunch of those comparisons sites, none of them containing the one I was trying to find Second search (“ycombinator startup that does X”) got me a page of spam, but at least I found the product name Third search (company name) got me an ENTIRE PAGE of ads and SEO optimized pages before the actual link to the actual product
- greenavocado 2y ago
  Yep, this aligns with my experience!
jim-jim-jim 2y ago
Much like Google itself, Youtube has been trending towards ushering users to a minute collection of blessed official/popular sources, often news channels. Maybe it's in response to kvetching over ``disinformation?" Idunno, but it's absolutely infuriating for some of my interests. If I search "Mullica Hill tornado" on yt itself, I get nothing but useless 1 min local news clips. If I search the same term on Reddit, I get first person footage of the tornado passing over people's houses—hosted on Youtube! Tornado enthusiasts still occasionally dredge up "lost media" of events like the 2011 Alabama outbreak that have been on the site this entire time, but are effectively impossible to view via the algorithm, even with the precise date and location specified.
mightybyte 2y ago
Google search is completely broken IMO. I stopped using Google search years ago and every time I go back on the off chance that it's bigger index has something that DuckDuckGo couldn't find for me. Image search isn't great either but it still often gives me something close and that usually satisfies my image searching needs. I still find YouTube recommendations quite good for me, but there are occasional ones I've watched already. I still go down its fun (and educational!) rabbit holes all the time.
- andrepd 2y ago
  Exact same experience, YouTube recommendations (in incognito without being logged in!) usually give me stuff related to the video in watching. However when they don't, it's invariably to push some alt-right slop down my throat. Video is about a comedian? Suggestion "feminist woke takedown compilation". Video about news? Suggestion "$european_far_right_party's channel says gypsies are subhuman". Video about economics? Suggestion is Jordan Peterson ranting about something. And so on and so on. It's pretty tiring.
veesahni 2y ago
it seems google switched to some kind of semantic search instead of word based search. It doesn't search for what your words are, but instead what your words kindof sortof mean. Which means you always get 'average' results instead of precise results. This may make it better for the non-tech folks who search for things in unclear language, and likely make it worse for those who search with precision (i.e. much of the HN crowd). Most importantly, they make their money off ads, and it probably makes sense to optimize for the non-tech folks. The ones that don't run ad blockers and accidentally click the barely differentiable ads. In short - I suspect they're just using new tech to make more money.
- karmonhardan 2y ago
  People have been throwing up the, "You're just too technical," canard for years, and it's just not true. Google search does not find what anyone is looking for; it finds what it wants to sell, in a way that makes it more likely that a purchase will be made. Full stop.
  - krainboltgreene 2y ago
    This comment is just laughably wrong. I use google a hundred times a day, from programming stuff to news stuff. I have never felt like it wasn't finding what I was looking for.
    - karmonhardan 2y ago
      n=1, very scientific methodology. How do you "feel" about homeopathy?
      - krainboltgreene 2y ago
        This is a 3 day old post. Are you just replying because you looked at my post history?
        karmonhardan 2y ago
wodenokoto 2y ago
I think calling it "completely stopped working" is a bit over the top. It doesn't feel magical, and it particularly doesn't feel like a gateway to new and interesting places on the internet, like it used to. But I still make hundreds of searches on google every day, so obviously it is working.
- space_oddity 2y ago
  Back in the day, Google searches could lead you down unplanned paths, into niche forums or fascinating rabbit holes that felt organic and less commercial.
- wruza 2y ago
  It works in the same sense that you try asking a stranger for directions and he wraps you into a fishing net and drags you to the nearest mall whose name resembles your question if shouted into a bucket.
  - igravious 2y ago
    Brilliant. You ought to write for a living if you don't already.
vishnugupta 2y ago
I switched to DDG couple of years ago without knowing what to expect. Once I got used to their UI there was no turning back. And on rare occasions now when I do search on Google I feel so happy I switched to DDG. To an extent that it does feel to me that Google has indeed stopped working completely for me. And yes I’ve stopped their search history, recommendations etc on YouTube.
SergeyHack 2y ago
For me it feels like Google is adding "buy" keyword to every search. Part of the answer is here - https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
mda 2y ago
I see this argument in HN a lot, so I checked my search history (googled "search history") it seems I use it ~10-20 times a day, looked at individual searches e.g. last week, and except a few queries, I have found what I was looking at. Yes it is hard to find some stuff in internet because it is filled with generated affiliate spam and walled gardens, Has Google stopped working for me? Nope It seems still alive and kicking.
silexia 2y ago
Any specific search no longer yields relevant results.

Nashooo 2y ago

Funnily enough that search now finds your comment

zeven7 2y ago

Searching for a song by typing in lyrics is specifically a feature I’ve noticed Google can’t do any more. And it used to be able to.

space_oddity 2y ago
It works only if they're well-known lyrics or a popular track
Pikamander2 2y ago
Same here. I've generally found complaints about Google's recent decline to be overblown, but lyrics are one area where it's truly gone off the deep end. Even if I type in 2-3 lines worth of nearly-exact lyrics that show up on multiple lyrics websites, it'll give me completely unrelated songs that match several words at most. On that note, if anyone needs a good browser-based song finder, the "Aha Music Identifier" extension is pretty good. It's a life saver when watching Twitch streams that don't list the currently-playing song.
alephxyz 2y ago
Not just lyrics. Searching for quotations or text excerpts is much harder and double quotes to only get exact matches also returns unrelated results. On the other hand, chatgpt 4o-mini and 3.5 will just make up source material which is amusing but not very helpful.

ki85squared 2y ago

FWIW, ChatGPT Search didn't surface the video either with that query > Based on the elements you’ve described—eyes, a pineapple, a bucket of water, a house of cards, chess, and a time loop—it’s challenging to identify a single music video that encompasses all these features.

eviks 2y ago

> very specific combinations of lyrics and scenes Has google ever indexed all the lyrics and scenes in a video to allow for such a weird search to be successful?

mr_toad 2y ago

> Google switch to ML-based search The very earliest form of page rank used a form of ML.

arromatic 2y ago

How do ml based search and index based differ ? Can you elaborate more on this ?

mvkel 2y ago

The question of how to improve the google experience for users has been clear for years, possibly a decade. The question that remains unanswered is how google can do so without compromising customer revenue.