5 ms·

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 t

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 But going back to your Stackoverflow example, there are other issues, such as giving too much weight to old/outdated answers.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
        Exactly. Used to. RIP.
- rockskon 2y ago
  How often has it confidently told you the wrong answer?
  - seiferteric 2y ago
    It definitely has, but I usually have enough context to know when this has happened.
    - rockskon 2y ago
      Can you give an example? It is pretty common for me to be told to use API calls that don't exist.
- ImaCake 2y ago
  I switched back to google from DDG because I like the AI summaries for a lot of my searches. If your queries relate to physics and programming I find the AI summaries are quite useful.
  - semking 2y ago
    Interesting feedback, thank you!
- 1980phipsi 2y ago
  And then the stack overflows of the world see traffic fall. I’m sure they aren’t happy with this.
  - semking 2y ago
    Go check the extrapolated traffic loss graphs...
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!

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
      Exactly. Used to. RIP.
rockskon 2y ago
How often has it confidently told you the wrong answer?
- seiferteric 2y ago
  It definitely has, but I usually have enough context to know when this has happened.
  - rockskon 2y ago
    Can you give an example? It is pretty common for me to be told to use API calls that don't exist.
ImaCake 2y ago
I switched back to google from DDG because I like the AI summaries for a lot of my searches. If your queries relate to physics and programming I find the AI summaries are quite useful.
- semking 2y ago
  Interesting feedback, thank you!
1980phipsi 2y ago
And then the stack overflows of the world see traffic fall. I’m sure they aren’t happy with this.
- semking 2y ago
  Go check the extrapolated traffic loss graphs...

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!