I tried Google again after a few weeks of DDG and gave up on the first search. DDG has some troubles with German but I can work around that
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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i've been manually curating your search results the past few weeks. Sorry boss, i'll do better.
If you can't do better, then at least add some cute cat pictures in it. At least then I'll feel a crumb of joy with every wasted effort!
As a basic bitch that hasn't gone to page 2 of a google search in years I don't really notice a difference.
The ai answers, related questions, and ad results are not especially helpful but at the end of the day I will find what I'm looking for.
Yes. Its AI generated slop. I use SearxNG, and I have it tuned to go to Startpage first, Google second.
Ill add something I've never really seen anyone mention: it used to be a lot better at staying on topic without ME keeping it that way
For example: this weekend I was playing Blops 3 and googled shit like "Winslow accord bo3" and after 1-3 searches I could just type shit related to bo3 and even if it had relevant pages related to other shit, it'd remember my recent searches and keep them rather relevant even if it was on my phone or a new window rather than the same search bar
At least, it used to work that way. Now every 4-5 searches it suddenly forgets what tangent I was on and I have to start adding qualifiers again to get relevant searches
all of them. the conspiracy side of me says they all want to drive traffic to the ai.
It took me. 12 minutes of clicking through websites yesterday to get the heat and time settings for making potato chips in the air fryer. I used to be able to just ask the Google Assistant.
I'm glad I saw this post cuz I was going to gaslighting myself over the whole thing. It really is getting way worse, isn't it....
What search engine alternatives do y'all use?
Duck duck go
They hired the guy the ruined Yahoo to run it
It is. It also is the best thing to find something on Reddit. And as much as I hate what it has become, it still is the best source of information. But this changes rapidly, sadly. I give it until 2027, then the information on Reddit is garbage too.
I use Ecosia instead of Google, but I know that Google recently added a "forums" category to the top of their search. Have you tried that? Hopefully it will help bring back to life independent forums.
They all suck anymore. Google fell the furthest though.
And it seems like it completely disregards search modifiers like quotes or the minus sign at this point. The modifiers are overridden by the algorithms pushing preferred sites, or Google just gives few or no returns as if there are no sites featuring your search criteria, which is completely false because it’s perfectly happy to return paid sites with the same but incorrect search term.