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  • I find google works fine if I'm just looking for general information on a simple topic, because it will dependably return a link to the wikipedia entry and a few of the most popular sites.

    And I find that it's pretty much useless for specific information about narrow topics, because it's still just going to return the same general shit.

    I'm not sure exactly how the change worked, but some time back (it's been a year or two now, and maybe more - it's just something that I sort of slowly realized had happened), they shifted to a system that made Google Fu essentially useless.

    It used to be the case that you could define the importance of search terms by the order in which you listed them and make some effectively required by putting quotation marks around them.

    But starting a couple of years back, it's been generally ignoring search term order and quotation marks, and instead giving priority to specific common (and certainly not coincidentally common marketing) terms.

    To anthropomorphize, it's as if it's developed a cripplingly narrow focus. So if, for instance, you're looking for the title of some specific movie, it doesn't matter how many other search terms you include or what order you list the terms in - if you include the term "movie," that's what it's going to focus on. So if you're lucky, you might get the actual movie you're looking for, but it's absolutely guaranteed that you're going to get streaming services and "18 movies with real blood" style clickbait.

    • It's complete shit right now. 5 or more years ago I could quickly find an answer to a very technical question with no problem. Now it is useless for anything. Just today I was looking for a shop near me that can perform a front end alignment on my RV, I searched for "Tractor Trailer front end alignment near me". The entire first page is either tire shops that do not offer front end alignments, car tire shops that don't even sell the correct size tires I would need for a tractor trailer, or shops 2000 miles away in various directions. It's horrible and I think it would be faster to look in the yellow pages for what I need in this case. I never found a shop using google.

      Also today I was searching for the tires I need in the shopping tab there were ads for tires that google had labeled as wal-mart but when I would click the link it would take me to a Chinese scam site.

      • And God forbid you look for anything involving troubleshooting your home network. Good luck sorting through pages and pages of the same copy and pasted article telling you how to restart your router.

    • I've noticed this even when trying to find the name of a song. I used to be able to search:

      lyrics "a specific part of the song I remember" whatever random words I can remember out of order

      and it would very reliably find songs, even obscure ones. Now the only way it works is if I happen to remember part of the name of the song, usually it's full of entries for the same popular song that has one word in the title that I included that is definitely not what I'm looking for.

      It sounds stupid, but I really miss that working.

  • My Google results change like the weather. Sometimes I can't take it anymore and use Bing but quickly switch back as it's worse. There's no replacement yet, but you need more google Fu than ever before.

  • What’s your opinion? Does google really “not work” anymore?

    Depends what you're searching for. For some searches I've given up on using it. For example I just purchased a new TV and one of the features wasn't working. It took me several hours of Googling to figure out how to fix it — almost every result offered by Google didn't contain an answer to my question.

    Are there any better search engines?

    ChatGPT works well for some searches. Especially if you pay for GPT-4.

    It's pretty impressive how ChatGPT is better than Google despite never being designed as a replacement for Google. I think when someone applies the same technology to a proper search product, the result will be really awesome. Time will tell who manages to pull that off - it might even be Google.

    Why did the quality of search results go down?

    The main issue, I think, is all the websites these days that exist exclusively to show banner ads. Many of them are packed with information that Google's algorithm determines might be relevant to the user, but the algorithm is wrong.

    The websites want you to click on an Ad, and you're a lot more likely to click an Ad if you give up, don't find what you're looking for, and decide to buy a new weight loss gadget instead.

    I'm sure part of the problem is Google itself is an ad company. A lot of the things they could do to fix this issue would harm their own revenue.

  • Nothing to add to this discussion except that savannahxyz is a treasure

  • I have been using AI chat exclusively for searching for at least the past 3 days.

    It is so much better in every possible way for simple factual questions, especially ChatGPT and Google Bard. Great for shopping. Microsoft Bing is okay, but you have to choose the right personality.

    Sidenote: I KNOW using Google, and the other companies I will mention, is the antithesis of freedom and privacy. Yet, they are incredibly powerful tools that are getting implemented everywhere, so my curiousity has led me down an honestly fun rabbit hole.

    The other AI that really surpised me is Opera Aria. Like Bing, it is using ChatGPT-4 and integrating real-time information. It just feels smarter, or perhaps more professional?

    The caveat with all these except maybe Bard which, uses its own system, are very good at shutting down questions it does not want to answer. It feels weird and wrong when it happens, like it just saved you from asking something immoral, or at least too many questions about the tech.

    Strange experience overall.


    TL;DR AI chatbots are great at parsing the internet to get you answers with reasonable accuracy and relevancy when old-fashioned search can be tedious or fruitless.

    • Bing and Google Bard keep disappointing me. Bing for some reason only picks up on half of what I ask. Which is extremely odd as it is supposedly is ChatGPT based and ChatGPT gives pretty good answers on the same queries. The only problem with the latter is that a lot of it is of course outdated.

      Bard might just be broken for me. I keep getting I'm a text-based AI, and that is outside of my capabilities. or similar responses.

      • I get that too drom Bard sometimes, but it is for specific queries. I think the key is working on the prompt until it gets it. Sometimes you need to start over with a new chat.

        Bing does not work like ChatGPT despite having the same base, even in creative mode. No idea why. However I like creative mode when I don't just dont want to see links embedded. I also love taking advantage of free Dall-E.

        Bard is great for anything that can be put into a list or chart, like comparisons. Literally put in a chart.

        I am dissapointed in that I have not been able to get a single mathematic equation produced (like famous ones), but I know they can?

        If you get the chance and willing to download a full ass browser, Opera has Aria, which is like the cleanest version of ChatGPT I have seen. Just the formatted answers with hyperlinks are worth it. It is good. It is hard to explain, but Aria mostly just works. It is closer to Bard in responses, and does what you want out of Bing without messing with convo styles.

        Whatever prompts that Bing put for the convo style may be messing with the results.

        All things said, I switch between them often, depending on my needs. It takes some time but I have built my intuition of which one will give the best response for the prompt, but I often just search the prompt in all of them.

        Anyways, I hope you find more success using them!

      • For tech stuff try phind.com

  • Has anyone created a firefox plugin that allows you to filter out search results based on snippet and URL rules? That would solve the problem on most search engines as the unwanted results are usually repetitive and obvious.

    • Not exactly what you're asking for but uBlacklist is a plugin that lets you blacklist websites from showing in your search results. I've only been playing with it for a few days but it seems to work great for Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing. Qwant is a little wonky.

  • Google works and it doesn't. I use Duckduckgo, and in general it works decent. Both suck and so does brave search so I don't really have many options that I know of. I always end up searching with reddit to get any real result, as its always the same clickbaity shifty sites.

    The sad part is, Google ends up being the best of all the shittyness, because whenever I search some local none of the other engines know what to do. The number of times I have to switch to Google for a address is sad.

    • DuckDuckGo has a button to switch to my country yet it does nothing at all...

163 comments