You noticed how google search became unusably shit a few years ago

[heptasean@social.tchncs.de]

@Paradox @ocean Same! I *can* somehow tell it getting less good over the years – some paid results to ignore here, some only seldomly helpful AI result there, … – but all in all it is still useful enough for me to this day. Do I include enough keywords in my searches? Do I only research topics that are not *that* prone to bad results? Don't know. ‍️

(It's not always on the first page, though. I tend to ignore quite a lot of results based on the preview.)

[mikal@sfba.social]

@ocean
Ha! Knew it!
Not long ago I pointed out to someone that in a way, worse search results meant more time scrolling and ergo more ad impressions, so it wouldn't at all surprise me if they quit bothering to improve.

Fuckers. I'd assumed a sort of passive acceptance and laziness had led to degraded quality, but the fact that it was actually designed that way means there should be a "recall" of their product and they need to compensate me for all the wasted time before I finally gave up and went to DDG (which, IMO, has dropped significantly in quality since I started using it ).

Thing is, look at ANY online business that makes money off of ad impressions and there is an immediately obvious incentive to find ways to increase your scrolling time on the site. Not all are scummy grifters, of course, but when the incentive is there, someone is going to take advantage of it.

[cowman@nfld.me]

@ocean this is the core problem with metrics that target 'engagement', and things like A/B testing that enable it.

[alkaris@meow.social]

@ocean I knew Google Search was so bad long before this document proves it, because I could no longer search for certain things on the Internet anymore, you'd have to use special tags just to find things, its also the reason I stopped using Google for searches because it's just so unusable

[tvaughan@mastodon.social]

@ocean Capitalism does not allocate resources efficiently.

[xepia_@social.bau-ha.us]

@morgunkorn
Yup.
https://archive.is/HoB1U

@realhackhistory @ocean @hjoest @christianschwaegerl

[paradox@raru.re]

@lispi314
Llm is always the first thing tried. You can ignore it.

[darwinwoodka@mastodon.social]

@ocean

duckduckgo ftw

[darwinwoodka@mastodon.social]

@svenjacobs @ocean

duckduckgo

[galamadryade@piaille.fr]

@ocean That's why I now use duckduckgo. SO MUCH BETTER.

[delve@deadinsi.de]

@ocean Least surprising revelation of the year to be honest.

I think the exact same thing is true of YouTube, which is so dominant that they can make it shittier every day and people will still use it.

[alpha1beta@libretweet.com]

@ocean is there a source on this?

[heptasean@social.tchncs.de]

@Paradox By the way: Never heard of “Harold and the Purple Crayon” before, but https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Harold+and+the+Purple+Crayon%22+PDF results in a PDF with a Hindi translation (including the English original, but black and white without purple) and a PDF with a version with additional graphic explanations for people with disabilities on the first search result page. … which probably is as good as it gets for a work still under copyright.

[heptasean@social.tchncs.de]

@lispi314 You are not only talking about the snippet from *Google's* LLM at the top of the search results, but also about the other results? Haven't had *that* many obviously LLM-generated, but perhaps my interests are just niche enough. @Paradox

[paradox@raru.re]

@HeptaSean
It's an old kid's book about a boy that explores the world while drawing it all with his crayon.

Thanks. ^_^

[dorothywillson@mastodon.social]

@ocean right

[cassolotl@toot.wales]

@ocean Source: https://journalrecord.com/2025/02/20/is-google-making-search-worse-to-sell-more-ads/

[mdione@en.osm.town]

@ocean where is this coming from? What's the source?

[anne_delong@musician.social]

@Mikal @ocean

Well, as with other companies, competition and product reviews are needed to link good service to profits. So maybe consumers should change up their search engines.

Here's an article from PC Magazine that compares them:

Just a moment...

(www.pcmag.com)

#searchengines

[cosmocatalano@mastodon.social]

@ocean this big issue here is that everyone else's search is still worse