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

[paradox@raru.re]

@ocean I need to understand what people are searching for and why the first page doesn't help them.
Cuz the only time I can't find something is because I don't really expect to find anything. Either cuz it's a very niche question or earlier when I tried to get a pdf/ebook of Harold and the Purple Crayon (still copyrighted I think, no straightforward download).

Like I believe people are having a hard time. I just can't tell from my experience.

[kkarhan@infosec.space]

@ocean TF2 Heavy Voice "Not big surprise!"

[christianschwaegerl@mastodon.social]

@ocean @hjoest Would be great if you could add the link to the source, thanks

[realhackhistory@chaos.social]

@ocean @hjoest @christianschwaegerl came here to say this

[em_and_future_cats@mastodon.social]

@ocean
I learned about this strategy back in the early 2010’s which has made me more deliberate when I put in any searches. At the time I was shocked (I was a teenager then)but I quickly learned how to work around the system. I remember when searching had to be only a couple words at most to work, but now you can use whole phrases, this helps a lot with being more specific about what I want. But yes, it’s sad it’s a marketing strategy to keep people searching instead of “finding what you want”

[postie@possum.city]

@ocean@raru.re
if anyone else wanted to read the rest of the artaicle, the screenshot is from the following article:
https://journalrecord.com/2025/02/20/is-google-making-search-worse-to-sell-more-ads/

[aperture@snug.moe]

@christianschwaegerl @ocean @hjoest www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20recent%20court%20documents%20showed%20that%20Google%27s%20internal%20testing%20demonstrated%20that%20significantly%20worse%20search%20results%20would%20not%20harm%20their%20business%20operations.%20This%20apparent%20immunity%20to%20quality%20concerns%20stems%20from%20the%20company%27s%20dominant%20market%20position%2C%20which%20the%20recent%20federal%20court%20ruling%20addressed.%22

- carrie

[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.