Even the basic - operator so rarely works as intended in any search bar anymore. I used to be able to ferret out anything from mountains of results that way. Now it just ignores the operator.
Quote marks to search for a specific phrase in order doesn't work either. I remember in high school in the very early aughts being taught these operators. Fucking shameful.
“they had spent all day waiting outside the double doors”
Google, Yandex, and Bing all pull it off. DuckDuckGo fails.
Ah, maybe you’re referring to this: on mobile, you have to ignore Google results below the DMCA removal notice. On desktop - none of those spammy “tiles” with video content and the like. On mobile - yes, after the 100% exact results, you get their attempts at hooking you into staying on the site.
There was this sweet spot where you could both ask it a question in almost natural language, but also use very simple operators to fine tune your results massively.
Then SEO became an offshoot of marketing, and it started to get worse and worse, until 90% of it was sponsored content of some sort
Now, I have no idea what's going on. It's like search engines have collectively decided "hey, remember that thing when we helped people find information they were looking for? What if we just didn't do that anymore?"
My guess is that it's trying to be helpful -- that if you (for example) type in a search for lucy and wardrobe and cordial it doesn't limit it to all of those things, but shows you everything.
Which is fine if you are new to the web, but if you do know what you want and are looking for the exact thing, then ten thousand results.....
I can see what they were doing ignoring the operators, but yeah -- it blows.
The top search results from Google always being reddit links is a fairly recent phenomenon(I would say in the last year or so?), in no small part due to Google's targeted advertisements and SEO ruining the Internet, and LLMs has made blogspam much easier than ever before.
Despite its multiple flaws(the biggest one would have to be the inability to search for comments), reddit is one of the only places on the English speaking Internet where you can find genuine, relatively high quality dialogue between real people, good or bad, without any paywalls, which is also why I think reddit has always had an disproportionate influence on Internet discourse relative to its size.
I would say if reddit was competent, they would be trying to foster this aspect of its community that would take the function from Google and make it the best place to search for answer to everything, because in the end, all search on the Internet boils down to finding real people to willingly help other people in public, and there is no better marketing than genuine word-of-mouth. But, reddit seemed to be keen on rereading the steps to what ruined Google in the first place, the priority of targeted advertisment over people.
I'm honestly surprised Discord hasn't stepped up to do something like this. So many forums and communities have moved to discord that, if it had a powerful search, it could probably eat some of Big G's lunch
Google started doing the reddit thing because there google search is such shit that people started typing out in search "reddit what oil should I use for a 2009 Ford focus?" Because Google results give convoluted and shit results, but commentary in reddit already likely have a post about your exact question in their mechanicadvice sub that says you should use X oil in that vehicle.
God it is so annoying how bloated Google feels these days - it's becoming more and more frequent for me just to use Bing because it actually gives me what I'm asking for rather than burying it in everything "similar" to it
Yeah. I use Bing now. And edge. Because when I setup my new PC I couldn't be arsed to change it. Bing sucks, it's just that Google now sucks just as much.
I've changed over to DuckDuckGo completely now. Rarely use Google, only if it's something DDG can't find for whatever reason (usually local Irish stuff).
It's also because they search for something different than your query in order to combat seo in certain cases, and to help people who don't know how to use Google: https://moz.com/blog/google-modifying-searches
But it seems like this behavior tends to break down when the user knows what they're doing and Google does something different because it thinks it knows better search terms...
This article illustrates that google understands the intent of a search well enough to consistently show relevant results to the end user. For as long as I've used google, I think I've "fought" the engine to find a specific result like three times ever. Just today, I used it to figure out what I mistyped on my keyboard when taking notes by putting it into google and letting it autocorrect. This article does not demonstrate a problem with google that has degraded the quality of search results. It shows the opposite, actually.
The thing is that the internet changed, most people are creating content or new information as video and behind apps like TikTok or Instagram. Just until recently google didn't show on their result content from TikTok until TikTok itself allowed them to.
I switched to Kagi. Sure I've to pay acouple of bucks, but I realized my time is worth more than trying to find stuff while trying not to fall into the seo rabbit hole or Pinterest hellscape.
You can try it for 100 searches for free. I think it is worth it. Included is a fastGPT thingy to help you with searches and development is transparent.
You used to be able to use google to skim free music from peoples unprotected online storage. But thats not a thing anymore both because google is worthless as a search engine, and because companies and scam artists figured out how to appear as these directories in the lists.
I find duckduckgo works pretty well. Use to I'd have to swap between it and Google depending on what I was looking for, but now I haven't had to swap in so long, that when I am forced to use Google at work, I actually get irritated with it because all the answers are buried under a mountain of ads.
In the new era where every search engine is garbage because of all the search term bait websites with no real content, at least DuckDuckGo still respects you as a person
Between Duck Duck Go and Brave's search, I never really need Google. At work I was able to switch to those also. I'm still stuck using Chrome or Edge at work (they won't let us use Firefox for whatever reason, which is weird for what should be a high security industry).
Firefox makes it difficult for IT to manage it through Active Directory and Group rules. Where I work, if it weren't for the fact that we produce a web app as our primary product, we'd be locked down to only Edge.
I use duckduckgo by default but still need to switch back to Google to search for local stuff. Even if I share my location and search in my native language, duckduckgo's results are still US-centered.
I'm sure there's a lot of others. Basically, you shove that at the end of your query and you make a query to the other thing instead. I found it made my transition to DDG easier.
Every time people say that google search results "just don't work anymore" I can almost never get anyone to share a specific example of a search not working on their end. The few times people did give a specific example, google gave me exactly the result they claimed it wouldn't give, and on the first try. I genuinely don't experience this grand breakdown of google everyone else claims to be struggling against.
There are genuine issues (like ai images overtaking specific search results), but overwhelmingly google finds me what I'm looking for even when I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for. The few times it falls short, I try duckduckgo like everyone recommends, but the results are always worse.
I can't possibly be the only one whose search results still work great.
Trying to find anything related to fixing a computer issue based on an error message is nearly impossible without massaging the query by adding a domain name in the query like spiceworks.com, reddit.com, or microsoft.com (though the initial reply from the Microsoft person is always a the same install updates, sfc /scannow, etc) . There are so many worthless sites that all have the same or very similar content that are followed up with a sales pitch for registry cleaners and other worthless software to automatically fix your problem.
I never once saw a thread on Microsoft forums marked answered by an official Microsoft account. It is always an angry user with some obscure fix in regedit. Most of the time the solutions Microsoft offers don't even seem relevant to the question being asked. I don't know why they bother.
It's a low key fun time for me trying to fix a problem via Microsoft forums because I get excited in reading people's responses to their generic solutions.
Well I mean, I'm not gonna keep a list of all the examples, but I do know that I struggle a lot more with finding stuff than I used to, because I remember the feeling and frustration of not being able to find the thing I know exists (or has to exist) that I want to find.
Also the front page is often full of garbage, sponsored shit, or straight up ads or scams.
I can give you an example. I was looking to run FFXIV on Linux WITHOUT Steam. Because I never bought the Steam version and have been on it for 8 years. When I changed distros (from Unbuntu to Cinnamon Lime) I had to find it again.
Luckily I know where to go with previous experience. But that is one example. Also I was recently searching for any medical findings from Norway or Sweden regarding schizophrenia and the findings from 10 years ago. They just give modern equivalents and need to refine your search.
I find something weekly that I need to go find using Firefox. Because of the Reddit and shopping spam. Granted most of the time I am looking for something to buy and the shopping is convenient, I wish exclusion was easier.
There's a million different posts on Reddit if people giving specific examples of results being irrelevant, and search operators not working, especially the negative operator. Google has stripped their search of all the tools that used to make it useful, all so you have to search more, see more ads, and still end up only seeing whatever is profitable to them.
I usually find what I'm looking for, but after 5 pages of AI generated filler content filled with adds. Quite often I'll need to search 3 of those pages to actually find one that goes into enough detail to provide the help I need. ea when im stuck on a quest in a game.
Results are often filled with low-effort, low-value content designed primarily for advertising. Listicles, recipes that would be 20 pages if printed and each page containing ads, content that's just copied from some other site with more ads added, etc. I think Google could fix or alleviate these issues, but they choose not to because a lot of the ads are probably being served by Google's own ad network. Kagi, for instance, alleviates some of these issues with an obviously much smaller budget than Google.
It's definitely noticeably WORSE but yeah not unworkable. The thing you were looking for used to always be the first result but it's still on the first page for me now 95% of the time. So worse? Yes. Broken? Not YET
I have a fairly unique use case. There used to be a site that tracked the prices of a chocolate bar vs their weighted scoring system.
If you try to find that, you get pages of listicles. Same thing for looking for a specific feature I'm looking for in a wireless earbud or mouse for example
If I want a product review, I add Reddit to the end
Absolutely! I'm not the person you asked, but that's my answer. I've been using it for about 5 months now, and my sanity is greatly preserved. Google, Bing, and all the others were driving me crazy with how worthless the results were, and how every search somehow pushed a product or news site.
It won't be worth it for everyone tho, I am a heavy search user, I search many times a day for work and just cause I like reading about everything. Someone who searches once or twice a day might not find value.
Yes. For me Kagi is like Jackett (a selfhosted website to search torrents). I can tell it which websites I like to see results from. Or I can block websites entirely.
If Google also adds ability to block specific websites I will go back to it. Many people say Google's results are bad, for me it's bad because I keep seeing websites I hate in their search results.
I had been using Duckduckgo but I've been dissatisfied with tweaking the results. For instance, turning off the localization in the settings did not remove (commercial) results in my native language even when searching keywords in english.
I switched to SearxNG; I found a local instance. Very satisfied for the moment, I recommend testing it!
this is a great search engine, thanks for sharing the info on it! I found a Firefox extension to replace the built in browser search with SearxNG, the only downside is I'm not sure how to add different instances using the extension.
I use Duckduckgo for the vast majority of my searches but when I need to find something too specific I've lately been using Bing Chat. Aside from any privacy concerns I find it works surprisingly well.
"Will quotes work this time?" is the question I have since it seems hit or miss now. When they removed the ability to minus keywords it insisted you intended that were unrelated, everything went to shit.
"Now listen to my story, yes listen while I sing
Of days of old in England, when Arthur was the king,
Of Merlin the magician, and Guinevere the queen,
And Lancelot, the bravest knight the world has ever seen.
In days of old, when knights were bold, this story’s told
Of Lancelot.
He rode the wilds of England, adventures for to seek,
To rescue maidens in distress and help the poor and weak.
If anyone oppressed you, he'd be your champion.
He fought a million battles, though he never lost a one.
In days of old, when knights were bold,
This story’s told of Lancelot.
In days of old, when knights were bold, this story’s told
Of Lancelot."
Doubtful that it's the original, but my mom taught me:
In the days of old when knights were bold and toilet paper wasn't invented, they'd wipe their ass with a piece of grass and walk away contented.
It never occurred to me until this post that there might be another version, but I would indeed be interested in seeing it.
Just use DuckDuckGo, it DOESN'T censor your search results, yes Google does that.... If it's not "in line with the current thing", "make corporations look bad", or "may promote piracy". Google will cut it from your search results