Google Search terminal decline?
John Rickman (71) 645 posts |
Prompted by talk of ChatGPT on another thread I have been exploring AI assistants for internet search. Google and other engines have become increasingly less useful for some time for anyone who is seeking information and factual data. The first four items of any GS are adverts then you get a block of images, and then a list of YouTube videos. If you go any deeper you get repetition and song and movie links that have some of your search words in their titles. Add to this a massive bias towards recent entries and Google is no longer “fit for purpose”. Bing and DuckDuckGo are marginally better but have their own problems. I really miss DogPile which used to give you a page of links culled from various search engines and all different! Google also goes to the other extreme. Search for Keats and you can scroll through page after page with ALL links related to John Keats poet, when actually I wanted Keats Shimmering Dark Chocolate Truffles. |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Google search has been less than useful for a while, given the adverts, the irrelevant videos (if I wanted videos I’d be in the video search part), the keyword spamming by various SEO outfits, and the progressively broken booleans. However… Of course searching for “Keats” will have lots to do with the poet. |
John Rickman (71) 645 posts |
Of course searching for “Keats” will have lots to do with the poet. Lots – yes – but 100% no. It would be nice to have a bit of variety in the responses. Looking for “Keats Shimmering Dark Chocolate Truffles” gets exactly what you’re looking for. I prefer that the search engine do a bit of work. DogPile used to do just that. It ordered its results into hits that were not related to each other. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
Bing? Dear god save the misguided soul… On a Win10 machine one of the first things I do is remove that from the search engine list.
Not seen those quite a while, might turn off the ghostery filter to see if any pop up. Edit: They do, so Ghostery is doing its job. |
John Rickman (71) 645 posts |
I asked Open AI and Google the same question. I use Spanish for searching because it does not attract so many adverts. Google produced messy page but with a preferred answer at the top. Open AI returned one line. The Question: ¿Cuál es el tanque de batalla más rapido? Playground Open AI:-
Google:-
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Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Because they’re Americans and they’re biased. Like trying to find anywhere called Palestine on Google Map (or Apple’s one, for that matter). “¿cual es la velocidad de la t 14 armata?” gets a link to the expected response. But, a useful lesson to learn about the biases of the service you’re using. |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Steve – written looking for data sheets of obscure components, you’ll oven come across useful looking snippets that’s actually from a junk domain that tries to redirect you to hotbabes.xxx or somesuch rubbish. |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
That’s like looking for “dead” and complaining that “Deadpool” isn’t on the first page. 1 1 But The Grateful Dead are, so Google got something right. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
Hmmm, was it Sprow or Steve R decided to search for nice racks and lost a few hours on a different subject? |
John Rickman (71) 645 posts |
The world is big, there are many things Agreed, and I would like my search engine to reflect this variety in its response. Google uses AS to rank its results (Artificial Stupidity). |
Grahame Parish (436) 480 posts |
AM – artificial marketing, with added data slurping thrown in for free |
David J. Ruck (33) 1629 posts |
Its google not godgle |
Stuart Swales (8827) 1349 posts |
I must search for the wrong things ’cos google is still working fine here! pihole takes care of the ads. |
John Rickman (71) 645 posts |
pihole takes care of the ads. Pihole does not stop Google serving up its first four links on behalf of the highest bidder. The highest links are always paid for ads. PiHole in fact is a nuisance in this context. Google serves the ad link and PiHole prevents you accessing it. Click on any link with Ad before the URL usually gives: Google sucks because it does not disambiguate. |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Sounds like PiHole is working as intended.
You’re not going to the link, you’re going to Google who will track that, and then forward you to the link you thought you were getting. It’s actually rather amusing looking for some datasheets using Chrome. Google sometimes sets it up so all search links point to Google, and Google then tries to redirect you to the destination. But if it’s an http only link, Chrome won’t auto-download unless you force it (open link in new tab). If it is it’s own popup, it’ll either silently vanish or simply be an empty white screen. An empty white screen with a gibberish Google URL.
If you’re really interested – open a new Google search and look for the company that placed the advert. You ought to find a regular non-spammy link.
What country are you in? What browser? Here, using my phone in desktop mode, the top of the search says “Ads” and “Shop outdoor flood light” with various options. Using Netsurf, there are no ads at the top, and various little yellow triangles. I’m guessing these are the ratings, but Netsurf isn’t advanced enough to do it properly. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
Or, in Firefox on Windows – use the Google search link fix add-on and never see an ad-saturated “I came via Google who say I need this set of ads” link ? |
Rob Andrews (112) 164 posts |
Have tried the google test yet? |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
Hmmm? Page 25 of about 1,400,000,000 First page has wikipedia link as the top item, later pages start with various ice cream vendor sites, somewhere in the 20s it shifts to news links with ice cream content. If I turn off the browser add-on elements the adverts get top billing and are discretely marked as adverts, with the add-on enabled those links disappear from the front page, maybe totally for every page. |
Rob Andrews (112) 164 posts |
What number is at the top of the page? Page 1 About 1,470,000,000 results (0.52 seconds) Page 26 of about 253 results (1.53 seconds) |
Paul Sprangers (346) 523 posts |
Interesting. Doing a similar search in Dutch (roomijs) yields about 3,530,000 results, but at page 17 it suddenly stops: just 169 results. |
Rob Andrews (112) 164 posts |
So are they BS us on how good there product is or are they just showing what they can make money out of and dumping the rest in the dustbin |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Google.fr, ice cream. Page 1: About 1,460,000,000 results (0.56 seconds) And… Page 15 of about 271 results (1.15 seconds) I believe there probably are a billion results for something like ice cream, but if what you’re looking for isn’t in the first 15-20 pages, they simply can’t be bothered listing any more. As for BS, I’ll point you in the direction of Theranos. Any bollocks to entice clueless investors to part with their cash… |
John Rickman (71) 645 posts |
This post is an apology for complaining about Google not working the way it used to. |
Rick Murray (539) 13806 posts |
Given how much PII is pilfered and sold, I’d contend that most of us do pay, we just don’t know that we pay… After all, it takes a huge amount of money to maintain the infrastructure. They don’t do it out of altruism. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8155 posts |
They don’t? That’s very nearly destroyed my faith in my fellow humans, but for one small detail. |