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There’s so much low effort, low hanging fruit that Google could do to improve results, that I just assume they've realized those things are unprofitable for the

There’s so much low effort, low hanging fruit that Google could do to improve results, that I just assume they've realized those things are unprofitable for them. I mean just de-ranking any article with an affiliate link alone would skyrocket the relevance of what content you surface on search. The problem for Google is, they’re incentivized to make the results worse than the SERP ads. If the organic results are too good, nobody would ever click the ads. And they basically gutted the 3rd party Adsense ecosystem, so they no longer monetize off third party sites. That to me, was the dumbest decision in company history — basically leading to the dilemma they’re in now. They squeezed all the profit in the short term while killing the open web in the long term. You can’t have a product that purports to help people search the open web…while simultaneously trying to sabotage people from organically clicking on the open web. It’s pure idiocy. The answer is staring them right in the face with Youtube, who faces zero threat to their dominance. Turns out if you just surface the best stuff and rev-share the ad money with the content creators (like they used to do with blogs via Adsense) then 1) the creators keep producing good stuff 2) the product stays useful and 3) importantly the monopoly profits continue minting!

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
It's more IMO the logical conclusion when you have a company that was built by engineers to solve problems than then changed out all their leadership over time to business executives who don't do anything besides line-go-up.
paradox460 2y ago
It's intentional. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Traditional search still works. Ask anyone who uses kagi. Google makes more money (for now) with garbage search, so they're optimizing for garbage. Thing is, garbage in, garage out, and it will eventually catch up with them (might already have given the disparity between Gemini and Claude/cgpt)
- sersi 2y ago
  As an aside, I tried to love ddg before using kagi but I'd always revert to google with !g and end up not finding anything because google has sucked for the past 5 years I've been using kagi and I've noticed that the only time I ever switch to google is for things that are truly local to where I am at the moment (restaurants, etc..). Kagi is really great. I've also been testing perplexity and I'm not that convinced yet. The only thing it's been decent at is finding relevant studies.
  - paradox460 2y ago
    This is very similar to my experiments, and something I was mulling over enough when I wrote the original comment, that I wrote a rant about it: https://pdx.su/blog/2024-12-29-using-kagi-for-a-bit-over-a-year-now-heres-what-i-think/ https://pdx.su/blog/2024-12-29-using-kagi-for-a-bit-over-a-y...
  - bradgessler 2y ago
    The thing I don’t like about Kagi is how you have to be logged in with an email to search. I wish they’d setup something like Mullvad where you get an account number, pay for said account, and that’s it.
    - mystified5016 2y ago
      What's the difference? It's still a permanent ID tied to your account and linked to your payment. Just generate a random email address if that matters. Kagi and mullvad make the same claims to privacy and non-tracking of accounts. What's the difference between a random numeric and a random alphanumeric account identifier? Edit: actually I just remembered that my android devices are linked to my Kagi account with a token. Kagi gives you an alphanumeric token you can use in your query URL to authenticate searches. That's how my homescreen search widgets are set up, no email required.
    - fulafel 2y ago
      Last I looked, it's not a verified email, you can use it as a random id, and they even documented that. (Maybe it changed?)
droidist2 2y ago
I cringe whenever I hear the "it's SEO that ruined the search results" excuse for Google's incompetence/negligence.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

It's more IMO the logical conclusion when you have a company that was built by engineers to solve problems than then changed out all their leadership over time to business executives who don't do anything besides line-go-up.

paradox460 2y ago

It's intentional. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/ Traditional search still works. Ask anyone who uses kagi. Google makes more money (for now) with garbage search, so they're optimizing for garbage. Thing is, garbage in, garage out, and it will eventually catch up with them (might already have given the disparity between Gemini and Claude/cgpt)

sersi 2y ago
As an aside, I tried to love ddg before using kagi but I'd always revert to google with !g and end up not finding anything because google has sucked for the past 5 years I've been using kagi and I've noticed that the only time I ever switch to google is for things that are truly local to where I am at the moment (restaurants, etc..). Kagi is really great. I've also been testing perplexity and I'm not that convinced yet. The only thing it's been decent at is finding relevant studies.
- paradox460 2y ago
  This is very similar to my experiments, and something I was mulling over enough when I wrote the original comment, that I wrote a rant about it: https://pdx.su/blog/2024-12-29-using-kagi-for-a-bit-over-a-year-now-heres-what-i-think/ https://pdx.su/blog/2024-12-29-using-kagi-for-a-bit-over-a-y...
- bradgessler 2y ago
  The thing I don’t like about Kagi is how you have to be logged in with an email to search. I wish they’d setup something like Mullvad where you get an account number, pay for said account, and that’s it.
  - mystified5016 2y ago
    What's the difference? It's still a permanent ID tied to your account and linked to your payment. Just generate a random email address if that matters. Kagi and mullvad make the same claims to privacy and non-tracking of accounts. What's the difference between a random numeric and a random alphanumeric account identifier? Edit: actually I just remembered that my android devices are linked to my Kagi account with a token. Kagi gives you an alphanumeric token you can use in your query URL to authenticate searches. That's how my homescreen search widgets are set up, no email required.
  - fulafel 2y ago
    Last I looked, it's not a verified email, you can use it as a random id, and they even documented that. (Maybe it changed?)

droidist2 2y ago

I cringe whenever I hear the "it's SEO that ruined the search results" excuse for Google's incompetence/negligence.