For the past few years, a growing number of users, analysts, and experts raised alarms about a truth that feels obvious to a lot of people who surf around in web browsers: the quality of Google results is in serious decline. Google disagrees.
The dangers of a monopoly. No matter how bad Google gets people will still use it because, in many people’s minds, there is no other search engine.
eh, ddg is equally bad with it insisting it knows better than me what my query is and “fixing” it, leaving me to have to either fix it or click a link telling it “yes I really did want to search for that and not what you assumed”
Honestly I don’t think it’s just Google, DDG has been getting worse as well, not quite as bad as Google but still similar issues where the thing I’m looking for is buried under spam sites built to a generic standard with shitty content but spectacular search engine optimization.
And pumping out sites and pages like that is optimal in the current market as it is the best way to get clicks, as supposed to investing in skilled writing, investigation and research.
The problem is that the major search engines have all kind of sat on their behinds about this and actively sold these bad websites assistance in gaming their search engine. The search engines would have to rebuild their search functions to find signs of bad sites and deprioritize them in the list, not just show things that seem relevant. They’ll probably never do this because then they’d hurt the part of their business that is helping shitty sites game the engine.
It’s AI-generated content. Someone is just telling the AI to generate content that will capture X search term. Like free google ads, except instead of configuring target keywords in a system designed to do that, they’re bridging the gap with content designed to capture search traffic.
Because of AI, this is flattened again to a simple config. You could have an adwords-like interface where you’re configuring target keywords and phrases, and then you just click “run” and you have a pile of content designed to connect the dots you configured. Here’s a keyword, here’s a URl. When people search this keyword I want them to end up at this URL. Write me an article that will meet both those criteria.
Maybe this AI shit is like the warp drive in the three-body problem: it feeds off a space filled with well-organized information, but when it’s used, it pollutes that environment with bullshit, rendering future use of that information ecosystem less valuable.
as supposed to
Not to be that guy, but it’s “as opposed to”. Hope this helps in the future!
I say supposed here in place of opposed as “ supposed” implies “a correct course of action”, rather than “an alternative but opposite course of action.”
But the way it fits into the sentence doesn’t match that use case. It does perfectly match the use case for the phrase “as opposed to”.
As an FYI, opposed does not necessarily mean opposite, it can and often means in contrast to or in conflict with. Shades of gray, but either word works fine here.
In the mid aughts every time Google updated their ranking, and results shuffled it was called the “Google dance”. We sorely need a major Google dance.
It’s kind of terrible now. Since late 2023, when I go to search technical specs of hardware, I am presented with a view that looks like browsing an online shopping catalog. It’s weird and unwanted. For personal use, I went back to DDG.
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Google has not been interested in providing value to end-users for a while now. They are at the point in the enshittification process where because of their monopoly in search, they are able to stop providing value to their paying customers as well (sites that use AdWords, etc.) and just line their own pockets.
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For the past few years, a growing number of users, analysts, and experts raised alarms about a truth that feels obvious to a lot of people who surf around in web browsers: the quality of Google results is in serious decline.
That’s according to a new study by a team of researchers from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, first reported by 404 Media Tuesday.
According to the study, those efforts aren’t working, but “search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam.” These changes often lead to a “temporary positive effect,” but the spammers just find new loopholes.
Just last week, Gizmodo covered a bizarre situation that saw Google turning up what looked like a child’s homework assignment for a search about former president John F. Kennedy’s stance on the death penalty.
It’s gotten so hard to find authentic, useful results that people have started adding the word “Reddit” to search terms to turn up content written by someone who actually cares, instead of someone just trying to make money.
In 2023, a Gizmodo investigation found the tech news outlet CNET deleted thousands of articles because its team felt that would aid in the site’s performance on Google Search.
Saved 83% of original text.
googles some Terraform syntax
gets a blog post from 2023
the code in the blog post is Perl, not Terraform
You don’t say.
Just use Ecosia people! Plant some trees.
how is it with piracy search ?
I haven’t tried that part.
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