It's not just you, Google Search really has gotten worse
mashable.com
A new study by German researchers found that Google Search is plagued with SEO spam.

A year long study shows what you’ve suspected: Google Search is getting worse.::undefined

  • CobblerScholar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    10 months ago

    It’s the life cycle of tech. New innovative technology gets invented, takes the market by storm, generates millions in value, investors get their hands on it, generates tens of millions, becomes publically traded, corpos inflate its value, bills come due, technology sabotaged to squeeze out any remaining profit, tech become withered husk of its formal self in a space it occupys alone and we get to eat shit salad every time we have to use it

  • trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    242·
    10 months ago

    I stopped using google search around 2018. The reason? Their ads were serving literal virus-infected links of scams that pretend to be real companies.

    Nothing has changed since.

    Duckduckgo for life I guess

    • ayaya@lemdro.idEnglish
      7·
      10 months ago

      I recommend reading the actual paper. DDG is actually by far the worst by their measures. Even though Google has gotten worse, it’s results are still massively superior to the competition. 9% spam compared to 31% for DDG and 23% for Bing. That’s a huge difference.

      I would recommend trying a SearXNG instance if you haven’t before. You can combine results from multiple sources. I use Google as my main source while also having access to the DDG-style !bangs.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      I also use DDG

      But whenever I need to search more in-depth, I use perplexity.ai

      It makes the comparison for you and summarises, also gives links to where that info is found. Makes it way easier to find the more obscure information. But it is too slow to use for everything.

  • just_change_it@lemmy.worldEnglish
    171·
    10 months ago

    SEO, the methodology of ruining Google’s algorithm and enshittifying everything for marketing gains.

    • fidodo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Google’s algorithm has gotten worse, and it honestly wasn’t great to begin with (gave too much weight to the biggest sites not the best). Now they over generalize your query and flat out ignore half your keywords because it costs more money to serve a non cached result.

  • i_promise_nothing@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    10 months ago

    I’m interested in self hosted web search engines to run at home instead of using Google is SearXNG a good replacement or are there other better suggestions?

    Other than self hosting a search engine what are some good web search providers? Most of my device browsers list the following default options:

    • Google
    • Yahoo
    • Bing
    • DuckDuckGo
    • Ecosia
    • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
      9·
      10 months ago

      There is also Kagi, a paid search engine. They recently gained some controversy due to “partnering” with Brave, but quickly backtrack on the “partner” announcement.

      • 18107@aussie.zoneEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        I have used Kagi for several weeks and can’t go back. I can finally find things on the internet again and I don’t want to lose that again.

  • XTornado@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Tbh… The fact that we depend 99% of the time of a company or companies which usually if not always are for profit to be able to find stuff on Internet, sucks.