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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
by 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 agoYour 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 But going back to your Stackoverflow example, there are other issues, such as giving too much weight to old/outdated answers.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 agoDifficulty 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 agoCorrect, 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 agoAnd thats why Google searched used to be valuable.
- semking 2y agoExactly. Used to. RIP.
- rockskon 2y agoHow often has it confidently told you the wrong answer?
- seiferteric 2y agoIt definitely has, but I usually have enough context to know when this has happened.
- rockskon 2y agoCan you give an example? It is pretty common for me to be told to use API calls that don't exist.
- ImaCake 2y agoI 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 agoInteresting feedback, thank you!
- 1980phipsi 2y agoAnd then the stack overflows of the world see traffic fall. I’m sure they aren’t happy with this.
- semking 2y agoGo check the extrapolated traffic loss graphs...