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Google, the search engine that's forgotten how to search

80 points by semking 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
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gnabgib 2y ago
Article title: Google Search Quality in Decline: Users Noticed
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- semking 2y ago
  I've edited and purged all cache. The title should be: "Google, the search engine that's forgotten how to search" Thank you for taking the time to notify me! :)
NoPicklez 2y ago
I have to admit I hate the AI results that are now generated at the top of a search query. Google has always been renowned for its speed and the AI responses take a "short" while to generate, by which time I've already scrolled past the result to find an actual website. It also seems wrong to produce your own search results above the content you have scraped in order to generate your own response. You negate the need to engage with the websites that generated that information for you.
- semking 2y ago
  Thank you for sharing your feedback with me, NoPicklez! There are many problems at multiple levels. There's the layout of course because we all have limited real-estate space and AI answers/responses push down everything else in most cases. This forces users to scroll down, which adds cognitive load (some extensions block AI overviews, but this simply confirms how fed up people are). I'd say the biggest problem is ethical: how can content produced by humans be scrapped without prior authorization be monetized by data giants at the expense of content creators and publishers? This is copyright infringement, pure and simple! And there's another issue with RAG: the nature of content fundamentally changes. I spoke about this very slowly in a hiking video (English isn't my native language). I have no idea if I'm allowed to share a link to this video here (this is my first post)...
- seiferteric 2y ago
  I have felt the quality of google search declining for years, but I'm going to buck the trend and say that the AI results have been getting better for me lately. At first I was ignoring it, but now it seems to mostly have the info I was searching for without having to go to satckoverflow or whatever.
  - semking 2y ago
    Your feeling is confirmed by real-world results. Google has consistently improved the quality of its models, and we've seen BIG jumps in the output of AI results. That's positive, but the tradeoff is that Google is now focusing mainly on AI search (RAG) instead of traditional search results. One of the main problems of RAG, in my opinion? The system focuses on a few trusted sources and generates content based on the retrieved data. Where are the small publishers? Almost inexistant. But going back to your Stackoverflow example, there are other issues, such as giving too much weight to old/outdated answers. I don't know if that's also something you noticed?
    - ImaCake 2y ago
      Difficulty in finding good niche resources is not a new problem. Search enables it, but of course it still requires significant effort to actually surface deeper information.
      - semking 2y ago
        Correct, but don't you agree that by lowering the quality of organic results, surfacing deeper information has become more complex than ever... while getting superficial (and at times inaccurate) content has never been easier?
      - liontwist 2y ago
        And thats why Google searched used to be valuable.
        semking 2y ago
- JadeNB 2y ago
  > It also seems wrong to produce your own search results above the content you have scraped in order to generate your own response. You negate the need to engage with the websites that generated that information for you. True enough, but Google's been doing that (to website owners' dismay) since long before the AI summaries.
  - fallingknife 2y ago
    Websites are, and always have been, allowed to decline being crawled and indexed by google at any time.
    - JadeNB 2y ago
      > Websites are, and always have been, allowed to decline being crawled and indexed by google at any time. One can argue about the appropriateness of it. I am taking no position here, just saying it's not new to AI summaries.
      - semking 2y ago
        Google performed one of the biggest web scrapping experiences in the history of the internet! And there's something completely new with AI summaries. Google went beyond crawling and indexing. Google decided to generate content, based on what was crawled/indexed. Instead of listing traditional search results that lead to websites, Google now steals content and engagement. The only way to get out of AI summaries? Blocking Googlebot. Which means disappearing from Google Search. Google leaves you no choice.
    - tivert 2y ago
      > Websites are, and always have been, allowed to decline being crawled and indexed by google at any time. That may be so, but they never had a real choice. Google has also lost an antitrust case that found its search engine was a monopoly, which proves it. https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia-opening-7a19f525287f782609a5316b1fdb08f0 https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia...
  - 2y ago
- tiznow 2y ago
  "I have to admit" Call me a nitpicker, but nobody likes those results lol.
  - typeofhuman 2y ago
    Have you tried Brave Search? I actually find its AI summary valuable at times.
    - semking 2y ago
      Thanks for the feedback! I just had a chat with a European journalist hours ago... She had questions about the Brave BROWSER... Maybe I should write on Brave Search. They use their own web index. Fully independent!
  - danpalmer 2y ago
    I've found it pretty useful. I switched from DDG to Google a few years ago because the knowledge graph results were noticeably better. We only just got AI results here in Australia about a month ago, and so far I've just found even more answers have a correct top result where I don't need to go digging. Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on anything related to search. I use plenty of non-Google stuff in my personal life so while I am biased, I have every chance to not use their search.
    - semking 2y ago
      Dan, thank you for the comment. Allow me a remark: there's a difference between knowledge GRAPHS that are used internally at Google and knowledge PANELS that are displayed publicly in search results. → Knowledge graphs: sophisticated, internal data structures. → Knowledge panels: visual representations of SOME of the data from knowledge graphs. You were thinking of knowledge PANELS: curated and user-friendly subsets of the internal data! :)
      - danpalmer 2y ago
        ..as I said, the "knowledge graph results" or put another way, "the results based on the knowledge graph".
- jsheard 2y ago
  > I have to admit I hate the AI results that are now generated at the top of a search query. Google Opinion Rewards keeps asking me to rate those AI summaries and I always tell it they suck, and get a dollar for my trouble. I'm doing my part!
  - semking 2y ago
    Thank you for making the internet a better place :D Jokes aside, are the AI summaries always bad in your experience?
- alecco 2y ago
  You can change your browser search engine to have the udm=14 parameter. https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14 https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you-kill-ai-search-for-good/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14...
- drewbitt 2y ago
  I feel the same way, but I just had a conversation with my dad, and he absolutely loves them. I also see people online referencing the responses as if they’re a primary source. So, I’m starting to think we’re not in the majority on this one even though a few comments say "everyone hates them" - I don't think so.
  - semking 2y ago
    Interesting feedback, thank you. Without sharing too much, how old is your dad, where does he live, and what can you tell us about his search habits? I'd like to know more about how he searches. What topics? Is he using keywords or conversational search queries? Does he search once or have long "conversations" with the AI model, which include follow-up? Do you know what he loves in AI answers? Thank you!
29athrowaway 2y ago
Google is in decline because now the Internet is AI eating itself.
- semking 2y ago
  Thank you for your comment, but I can't entirely agree. Of course, the flood of AI-generated content pushed search engines to reconsider their crawling/indexing approach, but that mostly means treating low-value programmatic SEO strategies differently. In other words, those who used APIs to inject artificial content at scale are now systematically penalized following one of the past Core Algorithm Updates. And that's a good thing. But what we are witnessing is more than AI autophagy. There's a serious lack of strategic vision and leadership from Alphabet/Google executives...
- A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
  This problem is overstated. Google's in decline because they no longer care very much about the search user experience, while, simultaneously, their entire empire is propped up by search ads. (Search ads, Youtube ads, and their "Network" ads, accounted for nearly 80% of revenue in 2023, with search ads far in the lead at ~56%.) They may simply be optimizing for advertising. After all, the better your free search results, the less likely you are to click on or consider an ad.
  - semking 2y ago
    I thought I covered this in the article. You are right: their search empire is based on ads. To be precise, of 237.9 billion Alphabet generated in ad revenue in 2023, $175.0 billion, or 73.6%, came from Google Search (!). It may appear counterintuitive, but the entire Alphabet/Google business model is based on the quality of organic results. Why would companies buy ads to outrank terrible organic/free results? It does not make sense! I understand what you mean: it seems logical to "push" users to click on ads, but this type of business model wouldn't last long. I'm ready to change my mind if you can give me logical reasons.
ggm 2y ago
I've had Gemini offer me words which presumed the search question expected an answer YES, when in fact it's the form of question which expects the answer NO. A fictitious case might be "Is it possible to fly by inserting two gherkins in your nostrils" and the response from Gemini has been in the spirit of "by choosing gherkins with appropriate thrust, it is indeed possible to fly by nasal insertion" It's great at the syntactic parse. It's really not great at the semantic intent sometimes. Don't eat tide pod kids.
- semking 2y ago
  Interesting example, did this happen directly within Google Search or were you using the gemini[.]google[.]com subdomain? My understanding is that Gemini, like most LLMs, uses probabilistic models to predict/guess the most likely words in a given semantical context. But this logic relies not only on the algorithms but also on the datasets. In other words, the datasets would have to contain multiple occurrences of the various very unlikely words you wrote for the model to be decent natural language understanding (NLU). Unsure I'm expressing myself clearly...
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    > In other words, the datasets would have to contain multiple occurrences of the various very unlikely words you wrote for the model to be decent natural language understanding That is a common misunderstanding. LLMs are not Markov chains, and don't need their training dataset to contain multiple (or any!) occurrences of any particular words to be able to understand what is being said in a sentence. Using the example sentence from the GP, this is what o1-mini replied: > No, inserting two gherkins into your nostrils will not enable you to fly. [...] Flying requires overcoming the force of gravity, which cannot be achieved through such means. I tried a few times and got broadly similar negative answers. This ability to generalize beyond the exact contents of their training datasets is what allows other AIs to e.g. produce images of astronauts on the moon riding horses -- they know what astronauts look like, they know what horses and people riding them look like, and they combine the two to make impossible images like that.
    - 2y ago
dismalaf 2y ago
Articles like this miss the point. You need to talk to normies. Like actual normies. Ones that aren't on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, who don't comment on anything online. You know, the majority of actual people. If you search for a physical business, Google is amazing. If you search for anything physically around you, again, amazing. Maps? Find an online vendor for a certain product in your country? Google wins. This is what normal people use Google for. To find things in the real world. Also, asking people who do SEO as a career about Google is pointless. They're literally the enemy of good, organic search results. Asking random internet users is equally pointless, everyone hates everything on the internet. Go on the street and ask some random person walking by which search engine is the best... People don't use Google because they're entrapped, but because it's the most useful for the normal things that normal people do.
- typeofhuman 2y ago
  Maps search needs improvement. Try searching "popcorn". I'm looking for a popcorn store, not every grocery and convenience store selling popcorn. There's like a sphere of specificity that would be cool to zoom in and out of. Not sure how that would look...
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    You searched popcorn and got listings for stores that sell popcorn and somehow that's an issue with Google Maps?
  - dismalaf 2y ago
    I've literally never seen a popcorn store in my life. I definitely can't test this because I'm 100% certain there's no popcorn store in my town. Even if they do exist somewhere it seems like something very faddish that won't exist for long. For me, convenience or grocery store would definitely be the right answer lol.
    - add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
      There are novelty gift shops that sell many varieties of a specific kind of food. It's niche, but perennial. A grocery store would not suffice if you were looking for a fancy popcorn gift. I'd say this is one of those things that a human would understand while an AI would be confidently wrong, but
zemo 2y ago
> Linkedin is by far the most respectable social platform. huh, that is … definitely not my experience of LinkedIn. My experience of LinkedIn is that it is a wasteland of hustle grindcore fake-it-till-you-make-it dipshittery.
- semking 2y ago
  I used the expression "toxic positivity" in my article because LI is, by default, a wasteland of FAKE content. But, and that's a BIG BUT, your feed completely changes if you train the algorithms for a while! I tested with multiple accounts, and while the default feed looks like a parody, the main account rarely displays those pathetic posts.
- Grimblewald 2y ago
  I'll trust pintrest before linkedin. I've read some of the most mind-numbingly stupid and pointless takes on linkedin of all platforms to date. It's great for some professions, like finance or marketing where image management is your entire job but for everyone else it is a particularly offensive time sink since it doesn't offer the recreational value traditional time sinks offer.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  But that's not what LinkedIn is for. I never see those posts because the only thing I use LinkedIn for is to source inbound recruiters when I'm in the job market. Anyone who uses LinkedIn outside of the job hunt process (on either end) is kinda sus.
  - semking 2y ago
    In that case I'm fishy because I'm mostly published on Linkedin —until they banned me for no reason whatsoever! You cannot imagine the drama at the time :D You'll be shocked but there are real people on Linkedin. Some are incredibly smart! Some great entrepreneurs! Statistically, you cannot have 1+ billion registered users and not have a few geniuses :)
  - liontwist 2y ago
blt 2y ago
Google's new "AI overview" takes up about half of the screen on a phone and cannot be disabled. This is one of the most user-hostile choices they've ever made.
- lazycouchpotato 2y ago
  You can add `&udm=14` to the URL to disable AI and get regular text results, or use https://udm14.com/ https://udm14.com/ to keep things easy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40450267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40450267
  - blt 2y ago
    Thank you! I used to use DuckDuckGo, but I had to switch to Google as DDG became overrun with LLM-generated results in the past 2 years. Google has some ability to reject them.
  - jesuslop 2y ago
    This! you can default to it in Chrome: settings->engine->search engines, edit default one and insert udm=14 magic fragment in the query template.
- jsheard 2y ago
  Not letting you disable it may be user-hostile, but it also helps Google product managers to inflate their KPIs, so it's impossible to say if it's bad or not.
- 1980phipsi 2y ago
  The annoying thing is that 95% of the time it’s not at all what I want, but 5% of the time it’s pretty good. But if I had the option to expand it or something, I’d probably never do that and miss out on the 5% of the time that it’s good.
  - liontwist 2y ago
    What if it was a separate Google tool so it didn’t interrupt search?
DarkmSparks 2y ago
I'm mostly using yandex.com now. It's pretty much what google used to be.
- semking 2y ago
  Where do you live and what languages do you use when you search?
  - DarkmSparks 2y ago
    almost exclusively english unless I'm searching specifically for very country specific results. yandex rankings aiui are based on what results have had the most clicks, so results are very generally the most to least popular globally.
    - semking 2y ago
      Unexpected because, in my mind, Yandex = Russia (leading search engine in the region) + a few Russian-speaking populations such as Belarus and Kazakhstan. I knew they also had a Turkish audience... but now I'm learning real English-speaking people are actively using it! If you read this, please let me know why you find Yandex rankings more satisfying!
      - DarkmSparks 2y ago
        ->If you read this, please let me know why you find Yandex rankings more satisfying! Example today where I googled first before switching to yandex was simply pytorch I was expecting its git repo, google didnt, yandex was like the 3rd or 4th result. Plus google results are very clearly being massively manipulated towards what corporate sponsors want me to read rather than what I want to read, don't need that in my life, I pretty much gave up on google after multiple times scrolling for minutes finding nothing but low quality results, trying yandex and finding all the top results interesting and informative. Pretty much what the article is pointing out. Yandex reminds me more of what google results were like in the early days, before they broke it. I had tried bing a few times but if anything the results were worse than google
Springtime 2y ago
The section near the start about the alleged shadow ban on the author's Youtube video poking fun at Google I wasn't really convinced about and imo detracts from the rest of the article which focuses on user criticisms. The author started a new channel exclusively for a single video after prompting from some users on LinkedIn but paints the plateauing of views as a shadow ban rather than just perhaps only the moderate follow-through from LinkedIn, lack of existing subscriber numbers to bolster spread, own promotion, etc. This is isn't something unique to that video, it occurs for any number of benign videos.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- semking 2y ago
  I'm the author and I can tell you what happened. You are right: I did start the YT channel exclusively for this video and here's why. I was on Linkedin, I posted my parody/trolling video with my small audience. Virtual friends told me they wanted to share the video on other platforms but they were unable to do see because LI didn't allow external video thumbnail —or something like this. The video almost instantly reached 200 views on YouTube (and you are right, I had no followers)... and then it was suddenly shadow-banned. I know how to detect when growth (or lack of growth) isn't organic.
  - majewsky 2y ago
    If the traffic was coming in from people clicking a link on LinkedIn, how can it be shadowbanned by YouTube? If anything, if you shared the link on LI and people don't see it, that would be shadowbanning by LI. When you look at your YT video analytics, what is the distribution of click sources over time? In my experience having grown a small YT channel this year, I could see the first few 100 views coming in from external sources where I posted the link (Reddit, Discord, etc.), and then the source "Browse features" came in and rapidly took over the main source. That's the YT algorithm itself. If you never saw "Browse features" appearing at all, you are not shadowbanned in the narrow sense of the word. You were just not interesting enough to get picked up by the algorithm at all (which, granted, could be "shadowbanning" in a wider sense).
danpalmer 2y ago
I find this article pretty confusing. It ends with "dear Google, I know you will but please don’t steal my stuff", but the author/blog is literally called "SEM (Search Engine Marketing) King". Surely the point of SEM is to have search engines scrape, summarise, and link to your content? Additionally, it covers ChatGPT Search as an alternative, but is criticising Google search as "the search engine that's forgotten how to search". Like, do you want traditional search or do you want AI search, pick one? I get the frustration with web search. So much of the web is copy-pasted/generated rubbish that no search engine is giving the results we used to get 10 years ago. But personally (and I am biased), I'm still getting better results from Google than from DDG, and since getting access to AI overviews in Australia a month ago or so I'm getting fairly consistent good answers with that.
- semking 2y ago
  My official Linkedin title is 'senior SEO n00b' (and do yourself a favor: check my profile picture anywhere). So yeah, I'm also the SEM King... that's just me trolling everywhere :D AI search does not have to come at the expense of qualitative organic results. It does not have to be one or the other. I refuse to pick one! Do you remember when Google Ads were on the RIGHT SIDEBAR and at the very top of organic results? Do you remember when Google Ads did not pollute organic results? Same logic applies to AI overviews: Google could have found a balanced approach in terms of quality and layout.
  - danpalmer 2y ago
    AI overviews have improved Google Search for me as a user. What has definitely not improved any web search is SEO marketing of junk content.
    - semking 2y ago
      Interesting. I also hate artificial content. Actually, "SEO content" should not exist! There's no such thing. Just spam.
deleted 2y ago
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millipede 2y ago
This is exactly right. I've stopped publishing to my blog because I know my words will be slurped up and sausaged out into ChatGPT or Gemini. And, without people writing about technical subjects, or talking about current events, or other thoughtful discourse, Google has no future in Search nor ads. In the future, maybe OpenAI or Google or Perplexity will pay for people to write about interesting subjects because doing it for free online is no longer rewarding.
- semking 2y ago
  So, how do you see the future of content for creators? How would you become visible without the data giants? Those are serious questions. I have something big in mind.
wisty 2y ago
Part of the argument seems to be the lack of deep, interesting content. But is that content still being made? Dead Internet theory is a meme (or maybe even seriously believed?) for a reason - everything seems to be on a handful of increasingly algorithmically driven walled gardens. I could start a blog, or scrawl on the "bathroom wall" of a comment box. Which will get me more views and interactions for the least amount of effort? Yes, there's a few more people on the internet, but not a lot more educated people. The internet started as shady dive bar, and how now turned into a Vegas Casino. It's more family friendly, but you're also far less likely to have an argument about philosophy with a slightly crazy person because they're now just playing the slot machines. Who has time to write a blog post about how they do unit tests anymore?
- toldyouso2022 2y ago
  Blogs don't get indexed, also users are pavlovianly trained into associating visiting a website with cookie consent molestation
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - semking 2y ago
    I hate the cookie consent but blogs get indexed. No pun.
- semking 2y ago
  Part of the argument of the users I screenshotted or part of my argument? My argument is simple: who in their right mind would spend their time, energy, and money creating content that various LLMs will quickly steal and repurpose? I'm a contrarian and I understand many have vested interests in the AI bubble but the current approach we've all tolerated is a real danger for the future of content. Content isn't just text, it includes videos, music, pictures, art in many shapes and forms and it cannot simply become a commodity or creators will be demotivated.
- p3rls 2y ago
  There's still lots of deep content, it's just google prefers to surface wordpress recipes from the Hindustani times for some reason instead. Keep up the great work Danny Sullivan!
MrMcCall 2y ago
No, they found what they were really looking for, and it was enough for them, so they have simply chosen to adapt by seeking ever more lucrative pursuits. At some point, search simply became more of a cost than a benefit, looks to me, or at least less prioritized. Economic pursuits dictate why, which, how, and when more idealistic goals are prioritized.
- semking 2y ago
  Why has Google been at the center of numerous legal actions regarding its dominance in various markets and mainly in search? Show me one company that prioritized shareholder returns while disrespecting users without facing issues at some point...
renegat0x0 2y ago
- Google is dead, chatbots are on the rise - Google will not invest more in "domain" search - Google will not make any revolutions, because search is their bread and butter. They will not do anything that could "destroy" it - "awesome lists" replaced organic search engines in github, and curated lists are very well done [0] - for reddit there are megathreads, which also are curated lists - To find popular sites I use my own simple bookmark search [0] - To find new contents I use my own RSS client. I use around 500 sources [1] - Currently I do not use Google search. I use chat gpt, RSS client. Google search is at third position, and even it I sometimes replace with kagi, or yandex [2]. Google is already dead for me - Whenever I have to go to Google search I am disgusted with the amount of content farms it spews at me, at the yahooziation of the result page - Because there are only a little amount of walled gardens, a simple bookmark search, like in [0] is enough to guide me through the Internet [0] https://rumca-js.github.io/quickstart/public/static_lists/viewerzip.html?file=top&page=1&search=awesome+list https://rumca-js.github.io/quickstart/public/static_lists/vi... [1] https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive [2] https://rumca-js.github.io/quickstart/public/static_lists/viewerzip.html?file=top&page=1&search=search+engine https://rumca-js.github.io/quickstart/public/static_lists/vi... [3] https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database
tim333 2y ago
>search engine that's forgotten how to search In all the 500 articles of how Google no longer remembers how to search there's never a reasonable example of something it can't search for that a reasonable search would work for. I mean "what time is the ferry" never did work - you'd have to specify the ferry company etc. It's all oh no it has ads - oh no it shows content I think is uncool - oh no duck duck go is cooler for cool people like me - oh no it has AI and it isn't prefect! It reminds me of the 500 bitcoin is dead articles. Google works ok for me and still has the vast bulk of searches.
- semking 2y ago
  You have one example/testimonial/user feedback after the other in the article detailing the problems... Serious question, Tim: what would you consider a reasonable example? I'm sure I could provide many myself...
  - tim333 2y ago
    Something real you searched for that was hard to find with Google but easy with some other search engine. By the way I just used Google to look up the Scandinavian Kitchen restaurant in London it occured to me that Google has a bunch of features the others struggle with - as well as finding it fine, it linked to maps with streetview photos, opening times, decent reviews and the like. I'm not sure the others have much of that. Also disclosure of interests - I'm a "level 4 Google Guide" which means I've got some imaginary internet points for correcting opening times and the like. I'm also not sure any the other searchers have much community stuff. Well I guess open street map but not so much the others.
    - semking 2y ago
      I cannot share my recent discoveries because they are too sensitive but here's a tweet that should illustrate what users are complaining of. "it's insane how bad Google has gotten, i was searching for an obscure japanese flash game, i used a vague descriptor and it came up blank zero relevant results. plugged the same into Bing. Boom instantly there at the top, first link for a download" URL: https://x.com/AlpinePeaches/status/1868662033526525969 https://x.com/AlpinePeaches/status/1868662033526525969
clearleaf 2y ago
If you work in the SEO industry, how can you be confused by this? The majority of your "industry" only produces spam which targets search engines. Google was already getting cooked long before ChatGPT ever went live. This is one situation where AI disruption could be a good thing because if Google continues to be ruined maybe you'll get real jobs in the meantime.
- semking 2y ago
  I'm not what you imagine when you think of "SEO". Global brands need strategists who help them understand and anticipate algorithmic trends. They need consultants to manage their multilingual organic growth strategies in each local market. They have complex technical SEO questions regarding crawling, rendering, and indexing. Your definition of SEO is understandable because a lot of the "industry" has indeed behaved poorly. But I'm in the Search industry. For now, at least.

80 points by semking 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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gnabgib 2y ago

Article title: Google Search Quality in Decline: Users Noticed

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
semking 2y ago
I've edited and purged all cache. The title should be: "Google, the search engine that's forgotten how to search" Thank you for taking the time to notify me! :)

NoPicklez 2y ago

I have to admit I hate the AI results that are now generated at the top of a search query. Google has always been renowned for its speed and the AI responses take a "short" while to generate, by which time I've already scrolled past the result to find an actual website. It also seems wrong to produce your own search results above the content you have scraped in order to generate your own response. You negate the need to engage with the websites that generated that information for you.

semking 2y ago
Thank you for sharing your feedback with me, NoPicklez! There are many problems at multiple levels. There's the layout of course because we all have limited real-estate space and AI answers/responses push down everything else in most cases. This forces users to scroll down, which adds cognitive load (some extensions block AI overviews, but this simply confirms how fed up people are). I'd say the biggest problem is ethical: how can content produced by humans be scrapped without prior authorization be monetized by data giants at the expense of content creators and publishers? This is copyright infringement, pure and simple! And there's another issue with RAG: the nature of content fundamentally changes. I spoke about this very slowly in a hiking video (English isn't my native language). I have no idea if I'm allowed to share a link to this video here (this is my first post)...
seiferteric 2y ago
I have felt the quality of google search declining for years, but I'm going to buck the trend and say that the AI results have been getting better for me lately. At first I was ignoring it, but now it seems to mostly have the info I was searching for without having to go to satckoverflow or whatever.
- semking 2y ago
  Your feeling is confirmed by real-world results. Google has consistently improved the quality of its models, and we've seen BIG jumps in the output of AI results. That's positive, but the tradeoff is that Google is now focusing mainly on AI search (RAG) instead of traditional search results. One of the main problems of RAG, in my opinion? The system focuses on a few trusted sources and generates content based on the retrieved data. Where are the small publishers? Almost inexistant. But going back to your Stackoverflow example, there are other issues, such as giving too much weight to old/outdated answers. I don't know if that's also something you noticed?
  - ImaCake 2y ago
    Difficulty in finding good niche resources is not a new problem. Search enables it, but of course it still requires significant effort to actually surface deeper information.
    - semking 2y ago
      Correct, but don't you agree that by lowering the quality of organic results, surfacing deeper information has become more complex than ever... while getting superficial (and at times inaccurate) content has never been easier?
    - liontwist 2y ago
      And thats why Google searched used to be valuable.
      - semking 2y ago
JadeNB 2y ago
> It also seems wrong to produce your own search results above the content you have scraped in order to generate your own response. You negate the need to engage with the websites that generated that information for you. True enough, but Google's been doing that (to website owners' dismay) since long before the AI summaries.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  Websites are, and always have been, allowed to decline being crawled and indexed by google at any time.
  - JadeNB 2y ago
    > Websites are, and always have been, allowed to decline being crawled and indexed by google at any time. One can argue about the appropriateness of it. I am taking no position here, just saying it's not new to AI summaries.
    - semking 2y ago
      Google performed one of the biggest web scrapping experiences in the history of the internet! And there's something completely new with AI summaries. Google went beyond crawling and indexing. Google decided to generate content, based on what was crawled/indexed. Instead of listing traditional search results that lead to websites, Google now steals content and engagement. The only way to get out of AI summaries? Blocking Googlebot. Which means disappearing from Google Search. Google leaves you no choice.
  - tivert 2y ago
    > Websites are, and always have been, allowed to decline being crawled and indexed by google at any time. That may be so, but they never had a real choice. Google has also lost an antitrust case that found its search engine was a monopoly, which proves it. https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia-opening-7a19f525287f782609a5316b1fdb08f0 https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia...
- 2y ago
tiznow 2y ago
"I have to admit" Call me a nitpicker, but nobody likes those results lol.
- typeofhuman 2y ago
  Have you tried Brave Search? I actually find its AI summary valuable at times.
  - semking 2y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! I just had a chat with a European journalist hours ago... She had questions about the Brave BROWSER... Maybe I should write on Brave Search. They use their own web index. Fully independent!
- danpalmer 2y ago
  I've found it pretty useful. I switched from DDG to Google a few years ago because the knowledge graph results were noticeably better. We only just got AI results here in Australia about a month ago, and so far I've just found even more answers have a correct top result where I don't need to go digging. Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on anything related to search. I use plenty of non-Google stuff in my personal life so while I am biased, I have every chance to not use their search.
  - semking 2y ago
    Dan, thank you for the comment. Allow me a remark: there's a difference between knowledge GRAPHS that are used internally at Google and knowledge PANELS that are displayed publicly in search results. → Knowledge graphs: sophisticated, internal data structures. → Knowledge panels: visual representations of SOME of the data from knowledge graphs. You were thinking of knowledge PANELS: curated and user-friendly subsets of the internal data! :)
    - danpalmer 2y ago
      ..as I said, the "knowledge graph results" or put another way, "the results based on the knowledge graph".
jsheard 2y ago
> I have to admit I hate the AI results that are now generated at the top of a search query. Google Opinion Rewards keeps asking me to rate those AI summaries and I always tell it they suck, and get a dollar for my trouble. I'm doing my part!
- semking 2y ago
  Thank you for making the internet a better place :D Jokes aside, are the AI summaries always bad in your experience?
alecco 2y ago
You can change your browser search engine to have the udm=14 parameter. https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14 https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you-kill-ai-search-for-good/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14...
drewbitt 2y ago
I feel the same way, but I just had a conversation with my dad, and he absolutely loves them. I also see people online referencing the responses as if they’re a primary source. So, I’m starting to think we’re not in the majority on this one even though a few comments say "everyone hates them" - I don't think so.
- semking 2y ago
  Interesting feedback, thank you. Without sharing too much, how old is your dad, where does he live, and what can you tell us about his search habits? I'd like to know more about how he searches. What topics? Is he using keywords or conversational search queries? Does he search once or have long "conversations" with the AI model, which include follow-up? Do you know what he loves in AI answers? Thank you!

29athrowaway 2y ago

Google is in decline because now the Internet is AI eating itself.

semking 2y ago
Thank you for your comment, but I can't entirely agree. Of course, the flood of AI-generated content pushed search engines to reconsider their crawling/indexing approach, but that mostly means treating low-value programmatic SEO strategies differently. In other words, those who used APIs to inject artificial content at scale are now systematically penalized following one of the past Core Algorithm Updates. And that's a good thing. But what we are witnessing is more than AI autophagy. There's a serious lack of strategic vision and leadership from Alphabet/Google executives...
A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
This problem is overstated. Google's in decline because they no longer care very much about the search user experience, while, simultaneously, their entire empire is propped up by search ads. (Search ads, Youtube ads, and their "Network" ads, accounted for nearly 80% of revenue in 2023, with search ads far in the lead at ~56%.) They may simply be optimizing for advertising. After all, the better your free search results, the less likely you are to click on or consider an ad.
- semking 2y ago
  I thought I covered this in the article. You are right: their search empire is based on ads. To be precise, of 237.9 billion Alphabet generated in ad revenue in 2023, $175.0 billion, or 73.6%, came from Google Search (!). It may appear counterintuitive, but the entire Alphabet/Google business model is based on the quality of organic results. Why would companies buy ads to outrank terrible organic/free results? It does not make sense! I understand what you mean: it seems logical to "push" users to click on ads, but this type of business model wouldn't last long. I'm ready to change my mind if you can give me logical reasons.

ggm 2y ago

I've had Gemini offer me words which presumed the search question expected an answer YES, when in fact it's the form of question which expects the answer NO. A fictitious case might be "Is it possible to fly by inserting two gherkins in your nostrils" and the response from Gemini has been in the spirit of "by choosing gherkins with appropriate thrust, it is indeed possible to fly by nasal insertion" It's great at the syntactic parse. It's really not great at the semantic intent sometimes. Don't eat tide pod kids.

semking 2y ago
Interesting example, did this happen directly within Google Search or were you using the gemini[.]google[.]com subdomain? My understanding is that Gemini, like most LLMs, uses probabilistic models to predict/guess the most likely words in a given semantical context. But this logic relies not only on the algorithms but also on the datasets. In other words, the datasets would have to contain multiple occurrences of the various very unlikely words you wrote for the model to be decent natural language understanding (NLU). Unsure I'm expressing myself clearly...
- david-gpu 2y ago
  > In other words, the datasets would have to contain multiple occurrences of the various very unlikely words you wrote for the model to be decent natural language understanding That is a common misunderstanding. LLMs are not Markov chains, and don't need their training dataset to contain multiple (or any!) occurrences of any particular words to be able to understand what is being said in a sentence. Using the example sentence from the GP, this is what o1-mini replied: > No, inserting two gherkins into your nostrils will not enable you to fly. [...] Flying requires overcoming the force of gravity, which cannot be achieved through such means. I tried a few times and got broadly similar negative answers. This ability to generalize beyond the exact contents of their training datasets is what allows other AIs to e.g. produce images of astronauts on the moon riding horses -- they know what astronauts look like, they know what horses and people riding them look like, and they combine the two to make impossible images like that.
  - 2y ago

dismalaf 2y ago

Articles like this miss the point. You need to talk to normies. Like actual normies. Ones that aren't on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, who don't comment on anything online. You know, the majority of actual people. If you search for a physical business, Google is amazing. If you search for anything physically around you, again, amazing. Maps? Find an online vendor for a certain product in your country? Google wins. This is what normal people use Google for. To find things in the real world. Also, asking people who do SEO as a career about Google is pointless. They're literally the enemy of good, organic search results. Asking random internet users is equally pointless, everyone hates everything on the internet. Go on the street and ask some random person walking by which search engine is the best... People don't use Google because they're entrapped, but because it's the most useful for the normal things that normal people do.

typeofhuman 2y ago
Maps search needs improvement. Try searching "popcorn". I'm looking for a popcorn store, not every grocery and convenience store selling popcorn. There's like a sphere of specificity that would be cool to zoom in and out of. Not sure how that would look...
- Gigachad 2y ago
  You searched popcorn and got listings for stores that sell popcorn and somehow that's an issue with Google Maps?
- dismalaf 2y ago
  I've literally never seen a popcorn store in my life. I definitely can't test this because I'm 100% certain there's no popcorn store in my town. Even if they do exist somewhere it seems like something very faddish that won't exist for long. For me, convenience or grocery store would definitely be the right answer lol.
  - add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
    There are novelty gift shops that sell many varieties of a specific kind of food. It's niche, but perennial. A grocery store would not suffice if you were looking for a fancy popcorn gift. I'd say this is one of those things that a human would understand while an AI would be confidently wrong, but

zemo 2y ago

> Linkedin is by far the most respectable social platform. huh, that is … definitely not my experience of LinkedIn. My experience of LinkedIn is that it is a wasteland of hustle grindcore fake-it-till-you-make-it dipshittery.

semking 2y ago
I used the expression "toxic positivity" in my article because LI is, by default, a wasteland of FAKE content. But, and that's a BIG BUT, your feed completely changes if you train the algorithms for a while! I tested with multiple accounts, and while the default feed looks like a parody, the main account rarely displays those pathetic posts.
Grimblewald 2y ago
I'll trust pintrest before linkedin. I've read some of the most mind-numbingly stupid and pointless takes on linkedin of all platforms to date. It's great for some professions, like finance or marketing where image management is your entire job but for everyone else it is a particularly offensive time sink since it doesn't offer the recreational value traditional time sinks offer.
fallingknife 2y ago
But that's not what LinkedIn is for. I never see those posts because the only thing I use LinkedIn for is to source inbound recruiters when I'm in the job market. Anyone who uses LinkedIn outside of the job hunt process (on either end) is kinda sus.
- semking 2y ago
  In that case I'm fishy because I'm mostly published on Linkedin —until they banned me for no reason whatsoever! You cannot imagine the drama at the time :D You'll be shocked but there are real people on Linkedin. Some are incredibly smart! Some great entrepreneurs! Statistically, you cannot have 1+ billion registered users and not have a few geniuses :)
- liontwist 2y ago

blt 2y ago

Google's new "AI overview" takes up about half of the screen on a phone and cannot be disabled. This is one of the most user-hostile choices they've ever made.

lazycouchpotato 2y ago
You can add `&udm=14` to the URL to disable AI and get regular text results, or use https://udm14.com/ https://udm14.com/ to keep things easy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40450267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40450267
- blt 2y ago
  Thank you! I used to use DuckDuckGo, but I had to switch to Google as DDG became overrun with LLM-generated results in the past 2 years. Google has some ability to reject them.
- jesuslop 2y ago
  This! you can default to it in Chrome: settings->engine->search engines, edit default one and insert udm=14 magic fragment in the query template.
jsheard 2y ago
Not letting you disable it may be user-hostile, but it also helps Google product managers to inflate their KPIs, so it's impossible to say if it's bad or not.
1980phipsi 2y ago
The annoying thing is that 95% of the time it’s not at all what I want, but 5% of the time it’s pretty good. But if I had the option to expand it or something, I’d probably never do that and miss out on the 5% of the time that it’s good.
- liontwist 2y ago
  What if it was a separate Google tool so it didn’t interrupt search?

DarkmSparks 2y ago

I'm mostly using yandex.com now. It's pretty much what google used to be.

semking 2y ago
Where do you live and what languages do you use when you search?
- DarkmSparks 2y ago
  almost exclusively english unless I'm searching specifically for very country specific results. yandex rankings aiui are based on what results have had the most clicks, so results are very generally the most to least popular globally.
  - semking 2y ago
    Unexpected because, in my mind, Yandex = Russia (leading search engine in the region) + a few Russian-speaking populations such as Belarus and Kazakhstan. I knew they also had a Turkish audience... but now I'm learning real English-speaking people are actively using it! If you read this, please let me know why you find Yandex rankings more satisfying!
    - DarkmSparks 2y ago
      ->If you read this, please let me know why you find Yandex rankings more satisfying! Example today where I googled first before switching to yandex was simply pytorch I was expecting its git repo, google didnt, yandex was like the 3rd or 4th result. Plus google results are very clearly being massively manipulated towards what corporate sponsors want me to read rather than what I want to read, don't need that in my life, I pretty much gave up on google after multiple times scrolling for minutes finding nothing but low quality results, trying yandex and finding all the top results interesting and informative. Pretty much what the article is pointing out. Yandex reminds me more of what google results were like in the early days, before they broke it. I had tried bing a few times but if anything the results were worse than google

Springtime 2y ago

The section near the start about the alleged shadow ban on the author's Youtube video poking fun at Google I wasn't really convinced about and imo detracts from the rest of the article which focuses on user criticisms. The author started a new channel exclusively for a single video after prompting from some users on LinkedIn but paints the plateauing of views as a shadow ban rather than just perhaps only the moderate follow-through from LinkedIn, lack of existing subscriber numbers to bolster spread, own promotion, etc. This is isn't something unique to that video, it occurs for any number of benign videos.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
semking 2y ago
I'm the author and I can tell you what happened. You are right: I did start the YT channel exclusively for this video and here's why. I was on Linkedin, I posted my parody/trolling video with my small audience. Virtual friends told me they wanted to share the video on other platforms but they were unable to do see because LI didn't allow external video thumbnail —or something like this. The video almost instantly reached 200 views on YouTube (and you are right, I had no followers)... and then it was suddenly shadow-banned. I know how to detect when growth (or lack of growth) isn't organic.
- majewsky 2y ago
  If the traffic was coming in from people clicking a link on LinkedIn, how can it be shadowbanned by YouTube? If anything, if you shared the link on LI and people don't see it, that would be shadowbanning by LI. When you look at your YT video analytics, what is the distribution of click sources over time? In my experience having grown a small YT channel this year, I could see the first few 100 views coming in from external sources where I posted the link (Reddit, Discord, etc.), and then the source "Browse features" came in and rapidly took over the main source. That's the YT algorithm itself. If you never saw "Browse features" appearing at all, you are not shadowbanned in the narrow sense of the word. You were just not interesting enough to get picked up by the algorithm at all (which, granted, could be "shadowbanning" in a wider sense).

danpalmer 2y ago

I find this article pretty confusing. It ends with "dear Google, I know you will but please don’t steal my stuff", but the author/blog is literally called "SEM (Search Engine Marketing) King". Surely the point of SEM is to have search engines scrape, summarise, and link to your content? Additionally, it covers ChatGPT Search as an alternative, but is criticising Google search as "the search engine that's forgotten how to search". Like, do you want traditional search or do you want AI search, pick one? I get the frustration with web search. So much of the web is copy-pasted/generated rubbish that no search engine is giving the results we used to get 10 years ago. But personally (and I am biased), I'm still getting better results from Google than from DDG, and since getting access to AI overviews in Australia a month ago or so I'm getting fairly consistent good answers with that.

semking 2y ago
My official Linkedin title is 'senior SEO n00b' (and do yourself a favor: check my profile picture anywhere). So yeah, I'm also the SEM King... that's just me trolling everywhere :D AI search does not have to come at the expense of qualitative organic results. It does not have to be one or the other. I refuse to pick one! Do you remember when Google Ads were on the RIGHT SIDEBAR and at the very top of organic results? Do you remember when Google Ads did not pollute organic results? Same logic applies to AI overviews: Google could have found a balanced approach in terms of quality and layout.
- danpalmer 2y ago
  AI overviews have improved Google Search for me as a user. What has definitely not improved any web search is SEO marketing of junk content.
  - semking 2y ago
    Interesting. I also hate artificial content. Actually, "SEO content" should not exist! There's no such thing. Just spam.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

millipede 2y ago

This is exactly right. I've stopped publishing to my blog because I know my words will be slurped up and sausaged out into ChatGPT or Gemini. And, without people writing about technical subjects, or talking about current events, or other thoughtful discourse, Google has no future in Search nor ads. In the future, maybe OpenAI or Google or Perplexity will pay for people to write about interesting subjects because doing it for free online is no longer rewarding.

semking 2y ago
So, how do you see the future of content for creators? How would you become visible without the data giants? Those are serious questions. I have something big in mind.

wisty 2y ago

Part of the argument seems to be the lack of deep, interesting content. But is that content still being made? Dead Internet theory is a meme (or maybe even seriously believed?) for a reason - everything seems to be on a handful of increasingly algorithmically driven walled gardens. I could start a blog, or scrawl on the "bathroom wall" of a comment box. Which will get me more views and interactions for the least amount of effort? Yes, there's a few more people on the internet, but not a lot more educated people. The internet started as shady dive bar, and how now turned into a Vegas Casino. It's more family friendly, but you're also far less likely to have an argument about philosophy with a slightly crazy person because they're now just playing the slot machines. Who has time to write a blog post about how they do unit tests anymore?

toldyouso2022 2y ago
Blogs don't get indexed, also users are pavlovianly trained into associating visiting a website with cookie consent molestation
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- semking 2y ago
  I hate the cookie consent but blogs get indexed. No pun.
semking 2y ago
Part of the argument of the users I screenshotted or part of my argument? My argument is simple: who in their right mind would spend their time, energy, and money creating content that various LLMs will quickly steal and repurpose? I'm a contrarian and I understand many have vested interests in the AI bubble but the current approach we've all tolerated is a real danger for the future of content. Content isn't just text, it includes videos, music, pictures, art in many shapes and forms and it cannot simply become a commodity or creators will be demotivated.
p3rls 2y ago
There's still lots of deep content, it's just google prefers to surface wordpress recipes from the Hindustani times for some reason instead. Keep up the great work Danny Sullivan!

MrMcCall 2y ago

No, they found what they were really looking for, and it was enough for them, so they have simply chosen to adapt by seeking ever more lucrative pursuits. At some point, search simply became more of a cost than a benefit, looks to me, or at least less prioritized. Economic pursuits dictate why, which, how, and when more idealistic goals are prioritized.

semking 2y ago
Why has Google been at the center of numerous legal actions regarding its dominance in various markets and mainly in search? Show me one company that prioritized shareholder returns while disrespecting users without facing issues at some point...

renegat0x0 2y ago

- Google is dead, chatbots are on the rise - Google will not invest more in "domain" search - Google will not make any revolutions, because search is their bread and butter. They will not do anything that could "destroy" it - "awesome lists" replaced organic search engines in github, and curated lists are very well done [0] - for reddit there are megathreads, which also are curated lists - To find popular sites I use my own simple bookmark search [0] - To find new contents I use my own RSS client. I use around 500 sources [1] - Currently I do not use Google search. I use chat gpt, RSS client. Google search is at third position, and even it I sometimes replace with kagi, or yandex [2]. Google is already dead for me - Whenever I have to go to Google search I am disgusted with the amount of content farms it spews at me, at the yahooziation of the result page - Because there are only a little amount of walled gardens, a simple bookmark search, like in [0] is enough to guide me through the Internet [0] https://rumca-js.github.io/quickstart/public/static_lists/viewerzip.html?file=top&page=1&search=awesome+list https://rumca-js.github.io/quickstart/public/static_lists/vi... [1] https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive [2] https://rumca-js.github.io/quickstart/public/static_lists/viewerzip.html?file=top&page=1&search=search+engine https://rumca-js.github.io/quickstart/public/static_lists/vi... [3] https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database

tim333 2y ago

>search engine that's forgotten how to search In all the 500 articles of how Google no longer remembers how to search there's never a reasonable example of something it can't search for that a reasonable search would work for. I mean "what time is the ferry" never did work - you'd have to specify the ferry company etc. It's all oh no it has ads - oh no it shows content I think is uncool - oh no duck duck go is cooler for cool people like me - oh no it has AI and it isn't prefect! It reminds me of the 500 bitcoin is dead articles. Google works ok for me and still has the vast bulk of searches.

semking 2y ago
You have one example/testimonial/user feedback after the other in the article detailing the problems... Serious question, Tim: what would you consider a reasonable example? I'm sure I could provide many myself...
- tim333 2y ago
  Something real you searched for that was hard to find with Google but easy with some other search engine. By the way I just used Google to look up the Scandinavian Kitchen restaurant in London it occured to me that Google has a bunch of features the others struggle with - as well as finding it fine, it linked to maps with streetview photos, opening times, decent reviews and the like. I'm not sure the others have much of that. Also disclosure of interests - I'm a "level 4 Google Guide" which means I've got some imaginary internet points for correcting opening times and the like. I'm also not sure any the other searchers have much community stuff. Well I guess open street map but not so much the others.
  - semking 2y ago
    I cannot share my recent discoveries because they are too sensitive but here's a tweet that should illustrate what users are complaining of. "it's insane how bad Google has gotten, i was searching for an obscure japanese flash game, i used a vague descriptor and it came up blank zero relevant results. plugged the same into Bing. Boom instantly there at the top, first link for a download" URL: https://x.com/AlpinePeaches/status/1868662033526525969 https://x.com/AlpinePeaches/status/1868662033526525969

clearleaf 2y ago

If you work in the SEO industry, how can you be confused by this? The majority of your "industry" only produces spam which targets search engines. Google was already getting cooked long before ChatGPT ever went live. This is one situation where AI disruption could be a good thing because if Google continues to be ruined maybe you'll get real jobs in the meantime.

semking 2y ago
I'm not what you imagine when you think of "SEO". Global brands need strategists who help them understand and anticipate algorithmic trends. They need consultants to manage their multilingual organic growth strategies in each local market. They have complex technical SEO questions regarding crawling, rendering, and indexing. Your definition of SEO is understandable because a lot of the "industry" has indeed behaved poorly. But I'm in the Search industry. For now, at least.