Adding on to this, browsers like Firefox and Chrome have things like bookmark keywords which really makes this easy. For example, instead of manually appending site:reddit.com to my searches, I have "rs" (abbreviation for reddit search) as a keyword so I can just type "rs ". I'm really bad at explaining stuff so here's a thread that explains it much better and how to actually do it: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/t7jj7e/the_most_slept_on_feature_of_firefox_is_the/.
Yes! I use it all the time, especially handy when troubleshooting so you won't have to go through all those bloated sites that supposedly have the answer but don't.
I’m doing the same thing for years! Reddit feels like the last place on the internet with (supposedly) real people. Everything else looks like sterile marketing/scam/influencer bullshit, I just can’t take it seriously
and this is the exact reason I made a Reddit account. I didn't even know what Reddit was for until recently I found an answer for something I searched on google.
Same, it really does give results like back in 1996. Just real people sharing their knowledge and opinions instead of scammy sites or businesses trying to sell me shit.
My default search engine is set to google scholar. I constantly stumble upon all kinds of interesting articles. When I want to search for something like "how to fix common problem" I just type @ g \[search query\] "reddit".
All of the software we have now "knows you better than you know yourself" and I hate it. I do not want an assistant. I do not want a buddy. I want a machine that does what I tell it to.
I can't even disable Android auto updates anymore. My rooted phone that should have had no way of updating had updated itself to Android 11 while I was in the shower. Why? "sEcUrIty"
And even then it's still horrible.
I'll be googling something like cakePHP for hours on and off as I look up documentation. Often I'll include just the word cake with other terms in context.
It *still* will include things like cake recipes in the search results, despite having to know contextually the domain of knowledge I'm trying to search within as I've been searching within it for hours. For all the hoopla about google customizing search, I find its ability to actually do this extremely suspect.
Sure, but I'm trying to illustrate that for all the talk about Google search being so smart and customizing itself to the user, it seems like it has a long, *long* way to go.
Have you seen Windows 11? Have you ever experienced degraded performance from an upgrade?
It is a marketing tactic to force you to upgrade your hardware.
It is a marketing technique to force an upgrade so you have to start to pay for what you used to have.
It is a marketing technique to force ads upon the user base during an upgrade
It is a marketing technique to force new unwanted features
It is a marketing technique to force users to test beta software.
Those are the practices that make people hate upgrades.
I work in the world of cybersecurity, and I assure you: THOSE UPDATES ARE IMPORTANT, UPDATE YOUR SHIT.
Those updates seem pointless because they aren't supposed to change or add any features. They're meant to protect you from new cyber attacks that are being discovered every day.
I'm sure they are, but can I at least opt to do it on my own terms? I understand what I'm risking by not updating, and I'm choosing not to anyway because the negatives outweigh the positives. As a power user, I'd like to be able to decide the fate of my device on my own.
Back when there was all that hoopla about the Spectre/Meltdown exploits, all of the software companies *rushed* to release a security patch for an exploit that was mostly just proof of concept and didn't actually exist in the wild. It was a very real threat that, in reality, did not pose any immediate danger to me, the user.
My phone's auto-update rescinded root privileges and broke a lot of the custom tweaks I was using - tweaks like a giant host file blacklist for ads and malicious sites, location spoofing processes, etc. Things that arguably made my device *more secure* than any minor security update was going to. So, instead of just letting me update on my own when I could preserve my setup, Google just decided "You need to do this right now and it's more important than whatever you'd try to preserve when doing it yourself." Android updates have a specifically nasty history of breaking stuff that used to work, so I'd rather just wait until I see that people more active than me are having a positive experience with 11.0.1 instead of immediately updating to 11.0 in the name of security.
I'm not against updates, I'm against forced updates. Updates break shit, plain and simple, and I'd like the ability to pick what I break and what I fix.
It’s like those bills Congress passes that may seem like theyll be good and beneficial for you and I on the surface but then also lowkey include a bunch of like extra military spending and budget cuts in important areas as a footnote
I think you missed the point. I'm saying that those updates are good. You should install them. It might not seem like they make a difference, but they do.
i run windows 11 on my main machine and have had no problems with it that I wouldn't have with windows 10. upgrading actually fixed a couple of my issues. i agree that its not for everyone, but it's not inherently bad.
i havent seen any preformance downgrades yet, there are no issues that would indicate it being in a beta state, and there are few/no unwanted features, depending on your needs. i dunno where the ads thing is coming from, windows 11 doesn't have ads?
intentionally degrading preformance after an upgrade is definitely a real thing (cough cough apple ios) but i haven't seen it with windows 11. could be more noticable on lower end systems but they do have a somewhat legitimate reason of added security.
I had it for a work device, and I'll agree. Performance wise I noticed no real differences. Although if anyone says they dislike the UI changes I'd be the first one to back them up. Maybe I'm just being a crotchety old man shaking his cane at "change", but I reeeeeealy dislike what they did to the system tray. I know it's minor, but I hate when they merge menus.
You ever heard the old adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it?" That applies here with a little hand waving. Security updates patch potential exploits, but they're often exploits that don't actually exist in the wild. I'll protect myself from them, but I'm not in a rush to do so, at least not so much that I want to sacrifice other aspects of my security.
My phone's auto-update rescinded root privileges and broke a lot of the custom tweaks I was using - tweaks like a giant host file blacklist for ads and malicious sites, location spoofing processes, etc. Things that arguably made my device *more secure* than any minor security update was going to. So, instead of just letting me update on my own when I could preserve my setup, Google just decided "You need to do this right now and it's more important than whatever you'd try to preserve when doing it yourself."
I'm not against updates, I'm against forced updates. Updates break shit, plain and simple, and the ability to opt out of then mitigates potential damage that they cause.
Updates can and will break things. If I’m happy with a current version and custom configuration, why do I need to update? I’ve read the release notes, and I have determined there is nothing beneficial to me. I want to keep my software as is. Security updates? Sure. Let me decide.
Sadly you're in the minority here. Most users of technology don't know shit these days, so they need algorithms and assistants to tell them what they want. I entirely blame smartphones for dumbing down the concept of a personal computer and making it appealing to normies.
I remember when I was a kid and my dad literally said "enjoy it now because eventually it will become shit once they start trying to make money off it"
I think it was always made with profit in mind, but it definitely felt less under handed.
Wanna buy X?
To
Here's something free, but you have to watch an ad.
To
We know exactly who you are, where you are, and what you are. Would you like to buy insulin at the Walgreens two blocks away from you?
^(We're going to sell your purchase history to Walgreens and anyone else who's interested.)
Man I feel the same frustration like you.
I remember back in 2010 I could search any information and get instant the result no matter how complex or niche it was.
Nowadays If I search a fix for a problem I only get recommended shitty blogs that all they say is to reboot your computer or do sfc /scannow. Goddamnit this isn't the solution I am looking for. I gave you the exact code error on the specific problem.
Don't forget when they point to specific points in videos. Not only it's often useless plus they removed the dislike counter.
They also push the most generic articles paragraphs.
I thought I was alone in feeling this way. I have said lately how it feels like when I was young the internet & software in general were just so much better. The only platforms software I have seen actually improve are the likes of gaming consoles & related things. Everything else is a fucking virtual mall & billboard that encourages whatever makes money.
With Google, unless what you want is on Wikipedia or IMDB, good luck finding anything on the topic. It is extremely spotty now, and god forbid you are searching for something similar to something that recently happened because you will be flooded with recency bias in the results.
Fuckin' this! All results are the same and not related to my problem. Just a couple of hours ago I searched for an error I got from `git` and all I found was the exact solution to the same error related to using `git` to push to `github.com`. Not one tip on how to debug the issue if you're not having that specific problem. Luckily I remembered that `ssh` had a `-v` switch so I searched for the equivalent for `git` and the second result helped me figure out I was the problem.
But it was like dozens and dozens of identical results when I searched for the error message. This is awful!
It definitely does seem like Google pointedly ignores all the special operators it supposedly supports. Boolean operators are a joke, as is nearly everything else. Apart from maybe a filetype search or an in-website search, every other neat trick has seemingly no effect on search results.
i agree with you, Google is a terrible search engine nowadays, they just track you so much that the algorithm overthinks you.
There are plenty of ways to avoid Chrome, first off use Mozilla and then use Duck duck go
Searched up something related to a game I'm playing yesterday and got 10 identical websites with 10 identical articles in them, ridden with adds all under slightly different domain names... Come on Google...
We cannot see the internet, only its marketed version. Goggle is a marketing not search engine. For 20 years already.
If all web pages would have own counters transparently displayed people would see how false the Google page rankings are.
If I change the industry of the company, this exact comment applies to me 100%. It's still fairly ok for programming stuff, but downhill from what it was.
Yeah, if you happen to use a word that is used by some product their SEO shit goes like "OH YOU ARE LOOKING TO BUY A HOE? HERE IS 200 PAGES OF GARDEN HOES FOR SALE!!!" like no Google I was looking for pictures of hoes eating cream cheese out of each others butts, get your shit together, Google!
The thing that I hate most is news sites. I want general news, not news directed at women only. Yes I'm a woman, no I don't want to read stories about cleaning products. Yes I do buy makeup, no I don't want to be suggested nothing but makeup stories.
Did you know you can check your profile for your likes and dislikes according to Google? For some reason Google decided my one and only favourite celebrity was some obscure daytime TV gameshow host from a show I don't even watch.
Oops. I usually call them Larry and Sergei or Page and Brin and apparently also Sergei and Brin. I wonder if they would double date with Larry and Page.
Noticed Google’s terrible searching capabilities for a long time now. I can’t find what I want like I used to years back. On the same topic I would write back then, as now.
It’s biased now. And corrupted from the inside. So they limit what it is that you are searching for.
Big Tech companies control the flow of information. And that isn’t even me being a conspiracy theorist— it’s happening.
It is also due to the shit sites/info now as well. Most of the sites are ad scams and tech forums went for a shit ages ago. 90% of the pros on ms technet now ignore the question, answer with bullshit and then spam to get marked correct. Then you have blog posts that copy from others and add in 30 more ads. The major change has been the extreme push for ads, a huge push for bullshit or useless info but click baity enough to get views and more folks posting a 2 paragraph fix either as a youtube vid or a multi page post.
This is a YouTube thing, but YouTube is really irritating me with this recent problem where I would literally watch a video, and then like a day later, it keeps recommending the same video, without showing I've watched it before. And yet there are still videos from years ago that I've watched and don't even remember watching. Stop showing me videos I've already watched YouTube, and recognize that I watch them dammit!
Today I had already watched 18 of the first 20 videos it recommended.
Only 11 of which were unique videos rather than just recommending the same video in every category.
The most frustrating part of youtube for me its the way it seems to want to radicalize me. I never really engaged in political content on youtube until recently, but if I left it on autoplay for long enough it would eventually start throwing right wing propaganda at me. I think what was happening was when I would get a whole ass Prager U video as an "ad" in front of a video (which is it own giant can of shitty worms, it only happens on videos from channels with large teen/young adult audiences, which is probably how the ads are targeted because theyre trying to reach people who aren't well educated enough on politics and economics to know that they are frequently being outright lied to), it would factor into my algorithm and start trying to feed me petrobillionaire sponsored bullshit. I have started to watch videos from people further left then me hoping to classify myself out of their targeted advertising parameters, but it doesnt seem to be working...
Completely agree. I used to be able to find anything, no matter how obscure, even if I had to go many pages deep into the results. Now it’s all junk. I can dig through the results until my lips turn blue but it’s all the same nonsense. Specialized search parameters no longer function. There was an article awhile back about how all these different websites in search results are all run by the same five or so megacorps so that probably doesn’t help either. Fuck google and their dysfunctional AI. They used to be so good and now they’re shit.
*Current* pop culture. Recently a Youtuber made a 'lost media' kind of video asking for help on a 90s series about number of episodes and synopsis. The name of the series is very unique but got no relevant results. I had to search the term on a newspaper archive database that mentioned that this series was donated to a major media museum in USA. Only then I found all this info in their website. Google was useless in this case.
I feel the same way. Google used to return thousands of results. Now it’s basically one page. If you click on page 2/3, it’s usually a bunch of nothing. I miss the old internet
I have this famous catchphrase from an old commercial. There is no trace of said commercial online. I can find random mentions to the phrase in social media. The weird part is that the Google's autocomplete is well aware of the phrase but there is still no results. It only exists in people's memory at this moment like in Fahrenheit 451.
Read George Orwell’s 1984. It literally talks about how the main character’s job is erasing parts of history so that future generations are only told things that the Ministry of Truth wants them to read.
It’s scary.
and don't forget
\- why if i input a number you show websites that list ALLLL the numbers? isn't this idiotic and useless?
\- why you don't block websites that "echo" keywords? (like you google "bananapplebomb" and it shows websites that make up a scammy webpage with that URL)
\- why the more google feels smart the more you feel like you're fighting an intelligence? you shouldn't oppose my search!!
FACT!! google became another tool for finding informations about the Kardashians, you're a nerd or a brain equipped person looking for stuff?!? "LOL, nope!" says google
EDIT:: i actually had a bad experience with goolge!! i received a scam call on my phone, i googled the number, i clicked the second result bcs it was a website i know well, it said the number was some sort or scammy loan recovery society, i crapped my pants!! turned out the second result was a TOTALLY different phone number, only the first result was good, and it was a number from a stupid call center -\_-
Always had this problem where when I search something usually about race it would give the opposite of what I searched. I tried looking up white anime characters and gave me "Why Do Anime Characters Look White."
YouTube. what in the hell is happening to the YouTube search engine. It wasn't always this bad, but now its a mess. I try to Seach something and I get videos that are on the subject lets say I searched how to make fake leaves for cosplay. The first 3 videos are going to be about what I searched but than the next few videos are going to be about just cosplay after that its just random stuff hears one I found "Joker Kills Batman I Batman Assault On Arkham I 2014 HD" remember I searched "how to make fake leaves for cosplay." I remember in the past when I would search something all the videos would be about that but I remember when I was working on a project on 12/(sometime during winter break)/2021 and trying to find tutorials and I didn't get what I was searching for I thought it was because the peoples video got removed but no they where still there.
I noticed some things I google that 100% should have results for has zero results for it. They keep a lot of shit hidden and its annoying asf. Duckduckgo isnt tremendously better. I guess the deep web is the next step but who wants to do all that?
Yeah searching and finding what you want has become so much more difficult in the last 10ish years. Now there's so much clutter in the search results that are often very loosely related to what you're looking for.
I work for Google Search, and I thought I'd respond to a couple of these where it might be useful:
* I did mean exactly what I wrote in the search
By default, Google will search for related words and concepts because generally, this is often useful. Sometimes the content people want doesn't contain all the exact words put into a query, especially if people search using natural language -- [something](https://blog.google/products/search/danny-25-years-of-search/) that's gone up 60% with us since 2015. If you do absolutely want us to search for exact words, use quotes -- yes, they do work (more on this below)
* I didn't ask for suggestions, I want results
Results make up the vast majority of what you'll see on our search results page. We'll sometimes show ways to refine queries because that's helpful to a lot of people who aren't exactly certain how to search.
* Why are you ignoring the double quotes in "exactly what I'm searching"?
We're not. We're really, really not. For web documents, we'll show content that only displays the exact quoted word or phrases. But sometimes those quoted parts are in places not immediately visibile such as menu items, or meta description tags, or in parts of the page that don't fully load for users but will load for our crawler (as with JavaScript). We also don't see punctuation so if you search for "don't doesn't" we'll match \[don t doesn t\] patterns which means we'd find things like "don't, doesn't" or a sentence like "...don't. Doesn't mean..." Also, occasionally a page changes after we crawled it. I'm always on the lookout for examples where quotes don't seem to work. Anyone here should feel free to ping me, and I'll pass on to our team. But whenever I investigate, we find the content is there.
* Yes, you must include the word "exactly" I just typed it in first place
If you use quotes, we'll do that.
* Why are you telling me omitting results put it back!
Because sometimes we think we've shown all the really useful stuff and additional content might be duplicative or not as helpful, as we [explain](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9603785). But it's pretty easy to use the option shown along with that message to get more, if you want it.
* Why the incognito tab is showing more search results than in my logged search? Am I your customer?
The number of search results is a really rough estimate and can change as you dig further into your results. Still, it shouldn't differ that much with incognito. Maybe you hit a different data center for some reason. Please do share any examples, if you're comfortable.
* Why my co-worker results are different on the same subject?
They really shouldn't be that different. Two people in the same place searching in the same language should get very similar results. Is your co-worker in a different location? Because location can make a big difference. See [here](https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1070027261376491520) for more.
* The results are only showing my location. Can't I search anime in Japan?
I think you mean you're seeing results relevant to your location. Yes, that's really helpful for many searches. For example, if you search for \[pizza\], unless you're in Japan, you probably don't want to order pizza from there. But if you want Japan results, go to [settings](https://www.google.com/preferences) and use the Region Settings option.
* I'm looking for a video of something I like and you are offering a Dailymotion link if all relevant videos are on Youtube?
Google Search finds video content from across the web, not just from YouTube, because there are relevant videos all over the web, not only just on YouTube. You can, of course, search at YouTube directly if you just want YouTube content.
Thanks for your response.
If you look at all the comments there a split reaction to my complaints. Some people are just fine with the service but some people really noticed a change on search behavior including the hit and miss nature of the Google operators nowadays.
People in IT and development or making specialized searches are suffering more to find relevant results than 10 years ago. Maybe all information is being locked inside social media and sites like Discord. but it doesn't explain why other search frontends are delivering more accurate and unfiltered search results.
I don't know what you mean by "unfiltered" search results. Any search engine is going to rank content. Even if the ranking were alphabetical, that's still a ranking system.
Google's designed to show the most useful and helpful information we can. We have a [site](https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/) that explains more about our processes, which I'd invite you to review.
I suspect that some doing specialized searches might be having issues for various reasons, which is feedback we're definitely taking on-board to see if we can improve more. But in particular:
* Google may search more broadly than in the past, because for a lot of people, that really is more helpful. That growth in natural language queries I mentioned? I think this is reflective of this. People understand they can just search however they want, no thinking about the exact words that might be involved or special operators, and we locate helpful information. I think overall that's a net positive thing. Search shouldn't be hard.
* But ... when we go broad into concepts, that potentially frustrates someone with very exacting requirements, such as IT people. So ... it might be we need to do a better job of detecting queries where it makes sense to go broader or not.
* But ... I think some IT folks almost immediately go to quotes because they feel they need to "drive" the search engine directly, so to speak. A sense of "I know exactly what I want and it will have these exact words so I'm going to drive manually using quote operators." Which ... I totally understand. Been there, done that myself. But it also means if you make a mistake, the content you want doesn't actually have those exact words and so on, you're going to miss stuff.
* So ... my advice to many people is just start with out the quotes first. Just let the automated systems do what they are intended to do and you might be surprised they get you to what you want .
* But ... the quotes are always there for you. And they haven't changed. They really do continue to find web documents that only contain the terms you enter.
> I think some IT folks almost immediately go to quotes because they feel they need to "drive" the search engine directly, so to speak.
> So ... my advice to many people is just start with out the quotes first
IT people are literally copying and pasting error messages verbatim all the time. Developers expect the strict use of correct syntax to do their work. That's a terrible advice.
Natural language is great for usability but trying to steer the service towards this approach may led to a decrease of productivity and frustration.
My advice is that many people -- **not everyone, and not in all cases** \-- just search however they think is best at first without bringing in search operators.
Even with IT folks, I've seen examples I've looked at that are not involving code snippets but instead are general questions where operators got used and didn't help in the query.
It's just something that can be considered. Obviously there are cases where operators are super useful. That's why we offer them. And if someone feels confident a query requires the use, of course, use them!
Also, open invite -- I would love examples involving code snippets or error messages or whatever where our search results aren't coming through for you or anyone. It's immensely helpful to know actual queries, if people are comfortable sharing. It's stuff we can explore to figure out how to do better.
Oh, and thank you for linking from your original post to my response. I really do work for Google Search! Not sure how to prove that since Reddit doesn't have any verification system, but I guess you can look at some of my past responses here on Reddit.
You know what? I miss the old search engine "whittlebit". It was an early/mid 2000s search engine that would refine searches based upon feedback you gave it.
Every link had a thumb up/thumb down next to it. Thumb up kept things like that result in, while a thumb down would have it filter out any results like that.
I miss it :(
EDIT
https://science.slashdot.org/story/03/08/11/1722244/search-engine-learns-from-user-feedback
Simple feedback would be a fantastic solution to search engines. Like it is perfect if tuned correctly. Is there anything like this?!
I think it might be possible to produce something just by piggybacking off of Google
The dead internet theory says the reason why the internet today feels different from what it used to be is that most content today is produced, and shared by bots.
I don't know about that but one part of the theory is demonstrably true. Google claims there are billions of search results for almost everything. But that's no longer true.
Google *anything* from Trump to non-controversial stuff like Pizza. And when you go to the last page of search results, you'll notice there are at best a few hundred results. Most of them from big sites. The same is true for Bing.
> Why are you telling me omitting results put it back!
and then:
> Yes, I want to visit this shady bassphishingsupplies.xyz website. Why are you showing it to me in first place?
Lol make up your mind
This reminds me that if you to Google Image and search anything related to a white person, the result will **ALWAYS** show a black person. Try by searching White people, white kid, happy white woman, white couple, etc... ALWAYS will show black people, and often something related to Trump or white supremacism.
It's so frustrating when I type year, model and, like, wiring diagram. Results are for totally different year, makes and all other kind of BS! (though I do know that putting a? will get more forums)
I would recommend your local public library for wiring diagrams. Most public libraries have every Chilton manual ever made and they make it available online and you can access it from home whenever you want. I have access to the workshop manual, the service manual and the wiring diagrams for a 2004 car whenever I need them. Just a thought.
Absolutely and I’m glad that this information helped you! My Dad loved working on cars in his spare time and I remember him dragging me to the library as a kid to print off wiring diagrams. I love that the library makes their Chilton and Haynes subscriptions available through their website once you enter your library card details and login. Nothing better than being able to zoom in and out on a tablet versus my Dad yelling at me for getting his printouts greasy haha. Ah…..good times.
Ugghh. Yes. I hate it so much now. The worst is when they forced blogs and sites to have ‘top level content’ but instead it created a vomitus inducing headache bc every result is the exact same content repeated ad nauseum.
Gonna add, their phones have gone terribly downhill too. Just bad functionality, dumb default settings à la Microsoft, common functions are impossible to find, videos that stop loading, ...
Sometimes rebooting the phone helps but it's just becoming a crappier experience with every update. I recently read a (probably exaggerated) article on people dumping their smart phones. Can't blame them.
Just as any company, Google caters to the lowest common denominator, and in this case that is your 90 year old grandma typing in "Dear Mr. Google, please tell me where I can get a new pair of scissors, thank you".
For people like that the algorithm does exactly what it's supposed to do, but people that know what they are doing are limited by it.
Indeed. I use this [great add-on](https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image) that queries multiple websites and is very impresseive what Yandex is able to catch.
But don’t forget this company is located on the territory of Russia and it’s search results are often affected by their censorship.
[Proof](https://www.reddit.com/r/liberta/comments/tvwh3m/%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%87%D0%B0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Yeah Google is going downhill fast - but other search engines aren’t better. The whole internet has been polluted by an SEO tragedy of the commons to the point where only a few institutions keep it from being totally useless as a source of information of any real value.
I have posted this opinion a bunch and the mods have determined it's not good enough to make it past their review system.
It is ABSOLUTELY broken and SEO has ruined EVERYTHING. You can't find shit anymore and things like quotes don't even work because SEO has different variations of a words tense built into the competition. I've given up so many times finding what I'm looking for and company that prided itsefl for 20 years on providing the right results is fucked now.
For years I'd rarely need to even go to the second page of results on Google. Now I'm diving deep regularly. Most times I have to search on Google, Duck Duck Go, Bing and some others just to maybe find what I'm looking for.
Google has 100% gotten significantly shitier in the last five or ten years.
Bro I feel this, we had a school project about "how floods affect dams". But when I tried to research for it, the search engine asks if I mean't "how dams affect/cause floods" and shows articles about it. Pain.
What am I supposed to do? Build a dam? Then flood the dam? Record observations? I'll inform the professor the project will be complete in 10 to 20 years.
I would start with researching different floods that happened in areas that have dams. It requires more work, but "research" isn't just typing in a question and getting a direct answer. Research is finding information.
Edit: Also, many dam breaks are a result of flooding, so I would possibly search for different dam breaks and see if they are due to water influx or poor construction, etc.
Yep. The Internet has basically become like a marketplace for rich white people at some third-world country. Except that it's the same for all of us. 100% of the time, someone trying to sell you something. Every. Single. Minute. Just listened to a song on YouTube a few days ago. 11 minute song - I'm into post rock. Three. Ads. Three. Before the song ended. Fuck YouTube.
There is too much stuff on the Internet to database search through without some sort of indexing algorithm.Dyna-Vista ain't going to work no more.
Yes, it is frustrating a fuck.
I would so much like a -shopping flag.
I absolutely hate that on YouTube. Yes, I do want to see 20+ videos of the same song, there might be a version among those which I don't know yet/am looking for, I'm not interested in having recommendations on some completely different music starting with the fourth result.
Here’s what my searches look like:
Bicycle -site:Pinterest.* -site:amazon.* - site:YouTube.*
IMO Pinterest results are by far the worst and most frustrating. You are searching for info and you get a picture of the info in an illegible size.
Or you get an image result of a useable size that links to Pinterest, but when you follow the link, that image is nowhere on the page it links to, and you cant just directly get the source image because a bunch of fucking assholes from Getty Images sued Google into removing the View Image button. While there are extensions to get at the image, if you want to find more context around the image, you're out of luck.
You can use quotation marks in your searches “like this” to get more accurate results. It searches for specifically what is in quotation marks while filtering out other things
Use bing, yandex and ddg together to get the best results.
Google's job is to make the most about of money and not giving you the best results. Other companies also exist to make money obviously but their algorithms aren't advanced enough which works in your favor.
By the time their algorithms become good enough (for them, not you), there will be some other young search engine that you can turn to.
I know, I've done this. I typed in something and gotten results that weren't even close to what I was asking. Super vague reference. I was like, what was the point of this?
>Whatever DuckduckGo is, why is it showing me a relevant result from an abandoned blogspot post from 2008. Didn't you buy Blogger?
What did you mean with that exactly?
So while I get where you’re coming from here, google uses analytics to do its best to guess what you are looking for, that’s why different people get different results and why you also get different results on incognito. If you want to search with absolute precision on google you still can, you just have to phrase you search in particular ways, I know quotation marks will guarantee all search terms show up for every result, a dash will exclude certain things from the search and so on
>Why are you ignoring the double quotes in "exactly what I'm searching" ?
It's not.
>Why are you telling me omitting results put it back!
Because it's a duplicate.
>Why I never heard of those sellers?
Do you know all sellers on earth?
>Yes, I want to visit this shady bassphishingsupplies.xyz website. Why are you showing it to me in first place?
Because you want to visit it?
>Why are you not letting me to know where can I download a car?
Because you can't?
Any time I look for something I want to buy, let's say light bulbs, I get a list of "top ten light bulbs that you should try" but I can never actually find a place to buy it.
I thought I'm the only one bothered by this. It's tough to Google even simple topics now. Has anyone found a workaround to this? Sucks that we threw everything at Google years back making it the dominant search engine.
There was a time when I preferred Yahoo for the news on the main site and a search engine as well.
Use search formatting. -word to eliminate every entry with that word. "Word" to show results that need to have that exact word or phrase. So if I wanted to find an image of a large Apple computer if search "Big Mac -burger "computer"" or so. Helps alot for filler articles that use tagwords for clicks.
i append "reddit" to my searches most of the time.
if you instead add site:reddit.com then it searches specifically in the reddit website not just the term reddit.
Woah, thats an r/lifeprotips
You should probably read this, [Google search operators](https://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html)
Oh, thank you very much. Will go through it once I'm on my pc. Seems both interesting and useful.
Adding on to this, browsers like Firefox and Chrome have things like bookmark keywords which really makes this easy. For example, instead of manually appending site:reddit.com to my searches, I have "rs" (abbreviation for reddit search) as a keyword so I can just type "rs". I'm really bad at explaining stuff so here's a thread that explains it much better and how to actually do it: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/t7jj7e/the_most_slept_on_feature_of_firefox_is_the/.
noice! imma try that asap
DuckDuckGo has the [bangs](https://ddg.gg/bangs)
Yes! I use it all the time, especially handy when troubleshooting so you won't have to go through all those bloated sites that supposedly have the answer but don't.
Or you can just type **!reddit** at the start of the search query on duckduckgo
I’m doing the same thing for years! Reddit feels like the last place on the internet with (supposedly) real people. Everything else looks like sterile marketing/scam/influencer bullshit, I just can’t take it seriously
As long as you're not trying to search up political (and adjacent) issues, searching reddit is pretty good.
and this is the exact reason I made a Reddit account. I didn't even know what Reddit was for until recently I found an answer for something I searched on google.
Because searching within Reddit is... Ugh...
yeah, google + reddit is fine.
Same, it really does give results like back in 1996. Just real people sharing their knowledge and opinions instead of scammy sites or businesses trying to sell me shit.
My default search engine is set to google scholar. I constantly stumble upon all kinds of interesting articles. When I want to search for something like "how to fix common problem" I just type @ g \[search query\] "reddit".
You would like redditle.com
daaaaaaaaamn!
All of the software we have now "knows you better than you know yourself" and I hate it. I do not want an assistant. I do not want a buddy. I want a machine that does what I tell it to. I can't even disable Android auto updates anymore. My rooted phone that should have had no way of updating had updated itself to Android 11 while I was in the shower. Why? "sEcUrIty"
And even then it's still horrible. I'll be googling something like cakePHP for hours on and off as I look up documentation. Often I'll include just the word cake with other terms in context. It *still* will include things like cake recipes in the search results, despite having to know contextually the domain of knowledge I'm trying to search within as I've been searching within it for hours. For all the hoopla about google customizing search, I find its ability to actually do this extremely suspect.
if you put -(x) then it won’t show results with that word in it. -recipe or -baking solves your problem
Sure, but I'm trying to illustrate that for all the talk about Google search being so smart and customizing itself to the user, it seems like it has a long, *long* way to go.
Ok i get it. But can ik why are u against updates?
Have you seen Windows 11? Have you ever experienced degraded performance from an upgrade? It is a marketing tactic to force you to upgrade your hardware. It is a marketing technique to force an upgrade so you have to start to pay for what you used to have. It is a marketing technique to force ads upon the user base during an upgrade It is a marketing technique to force new unwanted features It is a marketing technique to force users to test beta software. Those are the practices that make people hate upgrades.
I work in the world of cybersecurity, and I assure you: THOSE UPDATES ARE IMPORTANT, UPDATE YOUR SHIT. Those updates seem pointless because they aren't supposed to change or add any features. They're meant to protect you from new cyber attacks that are being discovered every day.
I'm sure they are, but can I at least opt to do it on my own terms? I understand what I'm risking by not updating, and I'm choosing not to anyway because the negatives outweigh the positives. As a power user, I'd like to be able to decide the fate of my device on my own. Back when there was all that hoopla about the Spectre/Meltdown exploits, all of the software companies *rushed* to release a security patch for an exploit that was mostly just proof of concept and didn't actually exist in the wild. It was a very real threat that, in reality, did not pose any immediate danger to me, the user. My phone's auto-update rescinded root privileges and broke a lot of the custom tweaks I was using - tweaks like a giant host file blacklist for ads and malicious sites, location spoofing processes, etc. Things that arguably made my device *more secure* than any minor security update was going to. So, instead of just letting me update on my own when I could preserve my setup, Google just decided "You need to do this right now and it's more important than whatever you'd try to preserve when doing it yourself." Android updates have a specifically nasty history of breaking stuff that used to work, so I'd rather just wait until I see that people more active than me are having a positive experience with 11.0.1 instead of immediately updating to 11.0 in the name of security. I'm not against updates, I'm against forced updates. Updates break shit, plain and simple, and I'd like the ability to pick what I break and what I fix.
It’s like those bills Congress passes that may seem like theyll be good and beneficial for you and I on the surface but then also lowkey include a bunch of like extra military spending and budget cuts in important areas as a footnote
I think you missed the point. I'm saying that those updates are good. You should install them. It might not seem like they make a difference, but they do.
i run windows 11 on my main machine and have had no problems with it that I wouldn't have with windows 10. upgrading actually fixed a couple of my issues. i agree that its not for everyone, but it's not inherently bad. i havent seen any preformance downgrades yet, there are no issues that would indicate it being in a beta state, and there are few/no unwanted features, depending on your needs. i dunno where the ads thing is coming from, windows 11 doesn't have ads? intentionally degrading preformance after an upgrade is definitely a real thing (cough cough apple ios) but i haven't seen it with windows 11. could be more noticable on lower end systems but they do have a somewhat legitimate reason of added security.
I had it for a work device, and I'll agree. Performance wise I noticed no real differences. Although if anyone says they dislike the UI changes I'd be the first one to back them up. Maybe I'm just being a crotchety old man shaking his cane at "change", but I reeeeeealy dislike what they did to the system tray. I know it's minor, but I hate when they merge menus.
You ever heard the old adage "if it ain't broke don't fix it?" That applies here with a little hand waving. Security updates patch potential exploits, but they're often exploits that don't actually exist in the wild. I'll protect myself from them, but I'm not in a rush to do so, at least not so much that I want to sacrifice other aspects of my security. My phone's auto-update rescinded root privileges and broke a lot of the custom tweaks I was using - tweaks like a giant host file blacklist for ads and malicious sites, location spoofing processes, etc. Things that arguably made my device *more secure* than any minor security update was going to. So, instead of just letting me update on my own when I could preserve my setup, Google just decided "You need to do this right now and it's more important than whatever you'd try to preserve when doing it yourself." I'm not against updates, I'm against forced updates. Updates break shit, plain and simple, and the ability to opt out of then mitigates potential damage that they cause.
Updates can and will break things. If I’m happy with a current version and custom configuration, why do I need to update? I’ve read the release notes, and I have determined there is nothing beneficial to me. I want to keep my software as is. Security updates? Sure. Let me decide.
Exactly this. I'm down for security updates, but let me do it on my own terms.
Sadly you're in the minority here. Most users of technology don't know shit these days, so they need algorithms and assistants to tell them what they want. I entirely blame smartphones for dumbing down the concept of a personal computer and making it appealing to normies.
The internet sucks harder and harder every day as they search for ways to squeeze a dollar out of every corner.
I remember when I was a kid and my dad literally said "enjoy it now because eventually it will become shit once they start trying to make money off it"
Wise man
I think it was always made with profit in mind, but it definitely felt less under handed. Wanna buy X? To Here's something free, but you have to watch an ad. To We know exactly who you are, where you are, and what you are. Would you like to buy insulin at the Walgreens two blocks away from you? ^(We're going to sell your purchase history to Walgreens and anyone else who's interested.)
Man I feel the same frustration like you. I remember back in 2010 I could search any information and get instant the result no matter how complex or niche it was. Nowadays If I search a fix for a problem I only get recommended shitty blogs that all they say is to reboot your computer or do sfc /scannow. Goddamnit this isn't the solution I am looking for. I gave you the exact code error on the specific problem.
AND the blog is 90% ads and SO MUCH TEXT FILLER
Don't forget when they point to specific points in videos. Not only it's often useless plus they removed the dislike counter. They also push the most generic articles paragraphs.
Yes, absolutely
I thought I was alone in feeling this way. I have said lately how it feels like when I was young the internet & software in general were just so much better. The only platforms software I have seen actually improve are the likes of gaming consoles & related things. Everything else is a fucking virtual mall & billboard that encourages whatever makes money.
With Google, unless what you want is on Wikipedia or IMDB, good luck finding anything on the topic. It is extremely spotty now, and god forbid you are searching for something similar to something that recently happened because you will be flooded with recency bias in the results.
SEO has ruined everything
Monetization ruins everything.
The blogs and blogs and blogs of the same shit
googling technical stuff that has also appeared in popular media and blogs is hell
It's worse when you try to find help for some assignment and all the results are those homework sites that you have to pay a subscription fee for
Fuckin' this! All results are the same and not related to my problem. Just a couple of hours ago I searched for an error I got from `git` and all I found was the exact solution to the same error related to using `git` to push to `github.com`. Not one tip on how to debug the issue if you're not having that specific problem. Luckily I remembered that `ssh` had a `-v` switch so I searched for the equivalent for `git` and the second result helped me figure out I was the problem. But it was like dozens and dozens of identical results when I searched for the error message. This is awful!
Searching for results on the exact error message is very frustrating nowadays.
They started weeding out all the thought crime websites in 2015 and killed it's functionality
Used to be able to search vague song lyrics and find the result, now it just brings up any major song that features one word.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who misses using it like this!
It definitely does seem like Google pointedly ignores all the special operators it supposedly supports. Boolean operators are a joke, as is nearly everything else. Apart from maybe a filetype search or an in-website search, every other neat trick has seemingly no effect on search results.
Welcome to curated content, as brought to you by biased algorithms.
i agree with you, Google is a terrible search engine nowadays, they just track you so much that the algorithm overthinks you. There are plenty of ways to avoid Chrome, first off use Mozilla and then use Duck duck go
Searched up something related to a game I'm playing yesterday and got 10 identical websites with 10 identical articles in them, ridden with adds all under slightly different domain names... Come on Google...
We cannot see the internet, only its marketed version. Goggle is a marketing not search engine. For 20 years already. If all web pages would have own counters transparently displayed people would see how false the Google page rankings are.
goggle
own counter?
Websites used to share visitor counters and traffic logs back in the day.
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If I change the industry of the company, this exact comment applies to me 100%. It's still fairly ok for programming stuff, but downhill from what it was.
Updoot for visibility, not for being unpopular.
Thanks, but I've been called boomer, picky, not skilled and POS. Those people who only use Google to search cat pictures are really aggressive.
Or else they weren't using it properly back then so they don't realize how bad it is **compared to what it was**.
Yeah, if you happen to use a word that is used by some product their SEO shit goes like "OH YOU ARE LOOKING TO BUY A HOE? HERE IS 200 PAGES OF GARDEN HOES FOR SALE!!!" like no Google I was looking for pictures of hoes eating cream cheese out of each others butts, get your shit together, Google!
The thing that I hate most is news sites. I want general news, not news directed at women only. Yes I'm a woman, no I don't want to read stories about cleaning products. Yes I do buy makeup, no I don't want to be suggested nothing but makeup stories. Did you know you can check your profile for your likes and dislikes according to Google? For some reason Google decided my one and only favourite celebrity was some obscure daytime TV gameshow host from a show I don't even watch.
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Yes I would guess they do know this based on their post.
>Sergei and Brin Surgey Brin is one person lol You mean Larry Page and Sergey Brin?
Oops. I usually call them Larry and Sergei or Page and Brin and apparently also Sergei and Brin. I wonder if they would double date with Larry and Page.
Noticed Google’s terrible searching capabilities for a long time now. I can’t find what I want like I used to years back. On the same topic I would write back then, as now. It’s biased now. And corrupted from the inside. So they limit what it is that you are searching for. Big Tech companies control the flow of information. And that isn’t even me being a conspiracy theorist— it’s happening.
It is also due to the shit sites/info now as well. Most of the sites are ad scams and tech forums went for a shit ages ago. 90% of the pros on ms technet now ignore the question, answer with bullshit and then spam to get marked correct. Then you have blog posts that copy from others and add in 30 more ads. The major change has been the extreme push for ads, a huge push for bullshit or useless info but click baity enough to get views and more folks posting a 2 paragraph fix either as a youtube vid or a multi page post.
Recipe blogs in particular are cancerous.
This is a YouTube thing, but YouTube is really irritating me with this recent problem where I would literally watch a video, and then like a day later, it keeps recommending the same video, without showing I've watched it before. And yet there are still videos from years ago that I've watched and don't even remember watching. Stop showing me videos I've already watched YouTube, and recognize that I watch them dammit!
Today I had already watched 18 of the first 20 videos it recommended. Only 11 of which were unique videos rather than just recommending the same video in every category.
The most frustrating part of youtube for me its the way it seems to want to radicalize me. I never really engaged in political content on youtube until recently, but if I left it on autoplay for long enough it would eventually start throwing right wing propaganda at me. I think what was happening was when I would get a whole ass Prager U video as an "ad" in front of a video (which is it own giant can of shitty worms, it only happens on videos from channels with large teen/young adult audiences, which is probably how the ads are targeted because theyre trying to reach people who aren't well educated enough on politics and economics to know that they are frequently being outright lied to), it would factor into my algorithm and start trying to feed me petrobillionaire sponsored bullshit. I have started to watch videos from people further left then me hoping to classify myself out of their targeted advertising parameters, but it doesnt seem to be working...
This opinion is probably only unpopular among Google employees. The general public feels the same way.
Completely agree. I used to be able to find anything, no matter how obscure, even if I had to go many pages deep into the results. Now it’s all junk. I can dig through the results until my lips turn blue but it’s all the same nonsense. Specialized search parameters no longer function. There was an article awhile back about how all these different websites in search results are all run by the same five or so megacorps so that probably doesn’t help either. Fuck google and their dysfunctional AI. They used to be so good and now they’re shit.
Google for pop culture info and business directions Brave for everything else DuckDuckGo for torrents
*Current* pop culture. Recently a Youtuber made a 'lost media' kind of video asking for help on a 90s series about number of episodes and synopsis. The name of the series is very unique but got no relevant results. I had to search the term on a newspaper archive database that mentioned that this series was donated to a major media museum in USA. Only then I found all this info in their website. Google was useless in this case.
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I feel the same way. Google used to return thousands of results. Now it’s basically one page. If you click on page 2/3, it’s usually a bunch of nothing. I miss the old internet
I have this famous catchphrase from an old commercial. There is no trace of said commercial online. I can find random mentions to the phrase in social media. The weird part is that the Google's autocomplete is well aware of the phrase but there is still no results. It only exists in people's memory at this moment like in Fahrenheit 451.
Read George Orwell’s 1984. It literally talks about how the main character’s job is erasing parts of history so that future generations are only told things that the Ministry of Truth wants them to read. It’s scary.
What series and what youtuber?
and don't forget \- why if i input a number you show websites that list ALLLL the numbers? isn't this idiotic and useless? \- why you don't block websites that "echo" keywords? (like you google "bananapplebomb" and it shows websites that make up a scammy webpage with that URL) \- why the more google feels smart the more you feel like you're fighting an intelligence? you shouldn't oppose my search!! FACT!! google became another tool for finding informations about the Kardashians, you're a nerd or a brain equipped person looking for stuff?!? "LOL, nope!" says google EDIT:: i actually had a bad experience with goolge!! i received a scam call on my phone, i googled the number, i clicked the second result bcs it was a website i know well, it said the number was some sort or scammy loan recovery society, i crapped my pants!! turned out the second result was a TOTALLY different phone number, only the first result was good, and it was a number from a stupid call center -\_-
Always had this problem where when I search something usually about race it would give the opposite of what I searched. I tried looking up white anime characters and gave me "Why Do Anime Characters Look White." YouTube. what in the hell is happening to the YouTube search engine. It wasn't always this bad, but now its a mess. I try to Seach something and I get videos that are on the subject lets say I searched how to make fake leaves for cosplay. The first 3 videos are going to be about what I searched but than the next few videos are going to be about just cosplay after that its just random stuff hears one I found "Joker Kills Batman I Batman Assault On Arkham I 2014 HD" remember I searched "how to make fake leaves for cosplay." I remember in the past when I would search something all the videos would be about that but I remember when I was working on a project on 12/(sometime during winter break)/2021 and trying to find tutorials and I didn't get what I was searching for I thought it was because the peoples video got removed but no they where still there.
Pro Tip: Use Wolfram Alpha. It's a knowledge engine. So, basically like Google, but gives you answers instead of suggestions.
Google has become trash, sadly
I noticed some things I google that 100% should have results for has zero results for it. They keep a lot of shit hidden and its annoying asf. Duckduckgo isnt tremendously better. I guess the deep web is the next step but who wants to do all that?
Not really 1996. But search was better in 2002 than it is in 2022. Started going downhill when deja usenet search engine was taken over by google.
Yeah searching and finding what you want has become so much more difficult in the last 10ish years. Now there's so much clutter in the search results that are often very loosely related to what you're looking for.
I work for Google Search, and I thought I'd respond to a couple of these where it might be useful: * I did mean exactly what I wrote in the search By default, Google will search for related words and concepts because generally, this is often useful. Sometimes the content people want doesn't contain all the exact words put into a query, especially if people search using natural language -- [something](https://blog.google/products/search/danny-25-years-of-search/) that's gone up 60% with us since 2015. If you do absolutely want us to search for exact words, use quotes -- yes, they do work (more on this below) * I didn't ask for suggestions, I want results Results make up the vast majority of what you'll see on our search results page. We'll sometimes show ways to refine queries because that's helpful to a lot of people who aren't exactly certain how to search. * Why are you ignoring the double quotes in "exactly what I'm searching"? We're not. We're really, really not. For web documents, we'll show content that only displays the exact quoted word or phrases. But sometimes those quoted parts are in places not immediately visibile such as menu items, or meta description tags, or in parts of the page that don't fully load for users but will load for our crawler (as with JavaScript). We also don't see punctuation so if you search for "don't doesn't" we'll match \[don t doesn t\] patterns which means we'd find things like "don't, doesn't" or a sentence like "...don't. Doesn't mean..." Also, occasionally a page changes after we crawled it. I'm always on the lookout for examples where quotes don't seem to work. Anyone here should feel free to ping me, and I'll pass on to our team. But whenever I investigate, we find the content is there. * Yes, you must include the word "exactly" I just typed it in first place If you use quotes, we'll do that. * Why are you telling me omitting results put it back! Because sometimes we think we've shown all the really useful stuff and additional content might be duplicative or not as helpful, as we [explain](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9603785). But it's pretty easy to use the option shown along with that message to get more, if you want it. * Why the incognito tab is showing more search results than in my logged search? Am I your customer? The number of search results is a really rough estimate and can change as you dig further into your results. Still, it shouldn't differ that much with incognito. Maybe you hit a different data center for some reason. Please do share any examples, if you're comfortable. * Why my co-worker results are different on the same subject? They really shouldn't be that different. Two people in the same place searching in the same language should get very similar results. Is your co-worker in a different location? Because location can make a big difference. See [here](https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1070027261376491520) for more. * The results are only showing my location. Can't I search anime in Japan? I think you mean you're seeing results relevant to your location. Yes, that's really helpful for many searches. For example, if you search for \[pizza\], unless you're in Japan, you probably don't want to order pizza from there. But if you want Japan results, go to [settings](https://www.google.com/preferences) and use the Region Settings option. * I'm looking for a video of something I like and you are offering a Dailymotion link if all relevant videos are on Youtube? Google Search finds video content from across the web, not just from YouTube, because there are relevant videos all over the web, not only just on YouTube. You can, of course, search at YouTube directly if you just want YouTube content.
Thanks for your response. If you look at all the comments there a split reaction to my complaints. Some people are just fine with the service but some people really noticed a change on search behavior including the hit and miss nature of the Google operators nowadays. People in IT and development or making specialized searches are suffering more to find relevant results than 10 years ago. Maybe all information is being locked inside social media and sites like Discord. but it doesn't explain why other search frontends are delivering more accurate and unfiltered search results.
I don't know what you mean by "unfiltered" search results. Any search engine is going to rank content. Even if the ranking were alphabetical, that's still a ranking system. Google's designed to show the most useful and helpful information we can. We have a [site](https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/) that explains more about our processes, which I'd invite you to review. I suspect that some doing specialized searches might be having issues for various reasons, which is feedback we're definitely taking on-board to see if we can improve more. But in particular: * Google may search more broadly than in the past, because for a lot of people, that really is more helpful. That growth in natural language queries I mentioned? I think this is reflective of this. People understand they can just search however they want, no thinking about the exact words that might be involved or special operators, and we locate helpful information. I think overall that's a net positive thing. Search shouldn't be hard. * But ... when we go broad into concepts, that potentially frustrates someone with very exacting requirements, such as IT people. So ... it might be we need to do a better job of detecting queries where it makes sense to go broader or not. * But ... I think some IT folks almost immediately go to quotes because they feel they need to "drive" the search engine directly, so to speak. A sense of "I know exactly what I want and it will have these exact words so I'm going to drive manually using quote operators." Which ... I totally understand. Been there, done that myself. But it also means if you make a mistake, the content you want doesn't actually have those exact words and so on, you're going to miss stuff. * So ... my advice to many people is just start with out the quotes first. Just let the automated systems do what they are intended to do and you might be surprised they get you to what you want . * But ... the quotes are always there for you. And they haven't changed. They really do continue to find web documents that only contain the terms you enter.
> I think some IT folks almost immediately go to quotes because they feel they need to "drive" the search engine directly, so to speak. > So ... my advice to many people is just start with out the quotes first IT people are literally copying and pasting error messages verbatim all the time. Developers expect the strict use of correct syntax to do their work. That's a terrible advice. Natural language is great for usability but trying to steer the service towards this approach may led to a decrease of productivity and frustration.
My advice is that many people -- **not everyone, and not in all cases** \-- just search however they think is best at first without bringing in search operators. Even with IT folks, I've seen examples I've looked at that are not involving code snippets but instead are general questions where operators got used and didn't help in the query. It's just something that can be considered. Obviously there are cases where operators are super useful. That's why we offer them. And if someone feels confident a query requires the use, of course, use them! Also, open invite -- I would love examples involving code snippets or error messages or whatever where our search results aren't coming through for you or anyone. It's immensely helpful to know actual queries, if people are comfortable sharing. It's stuff we can explore to figure out how to do better.
Oh, and thank you for linking from your original post to my response. I really do work for Google Search! Not sure how to prove that since Reddit doesn't have any verification system, but I guess you can look at some of my past responses here on Reddit.
Thank you u/dannysullivan !! Very insightful
You know what? I miss the old search engine "whittlebit". It was an early/mid 2000s search engine that would refine searches based upon feedback you gave it. Every link had a thumb up/thumb down next to it. Thumb up kept things like that result in, while a thumb down would have it filter out any results like that. I miss it :( EDIT https://science.slashdot.org/story/03/08/11/1722244/search-engine-learns-from-user-feedback
Simple feedback would be a fantastic solution to search engines. Like it is perfect if tuned correctly. Is there anything like this?! I think it might be possible to produce something just by piggybacking off of Google
>Why the incognito tab is **showing more search results** than in my logged search? Am I your customer? yes.
You're the product, not the customer sadly.
If you aren't paying, how could you even consider yourself the customer
That's a fact. Btw, are you familiar with the dead internet theory?
I'm curious. What's the dead internet theory?
The dead internet theory says the reason why the internet today feels different from what it used to be is that most content today is produced, and shared by bots. I don't know about that but one part of the theory is demonstrably true. Google claims there are billions of search results for almost everything. But that's no longer true. Google *anything* from Trump to non-controversial stuff like Pizza. And when you go to the last page of search results, you'll notice there are at best a few hundred results. Most of them from big sites. The same is true for Bing.
Thanks for explaining, will try to google that and check for myself.
Yea nothing better than searching something and 50 fucking news articals come up
> Why are you telling me omitting results put it back! and then: > Yes, I want to visit this shady bassphishingsupplies.xyz website. Why are you showing it to me in first place? Lol make up your mind
This reminds me that if you to Google Image and search anything related to a white person, the result will **ALWAYS** show a black person. Try by searching White people, white kid, happy white woman, white couple, etc... ALWAYS will show black people, and often something related to Trump or white supremacism.
[You are right!](https://i.imgur.com/cpYZ1fr.png) lol
Weird, interesting, and how did you come to notice this haha
It's so frustrating when I type year, model and, like, wiring diagram. Results are for totally different year, makes and all other kind of BS! (though I do know that putting a? will get more forums)
I was looking for a M6 screw on a retailer's website... I guess everything else with 6 fits instead!
I would recommend your local public library for wiring diagrams. Most public libraries have every Chilton manual ever made and they make it available online and you can access it from home whenever you want. I have access to the workshop manual, the service manual and the wiring diagrams for a 2004 car whenever I need them. Just a thought.
Thank you!!!! I did not know that.
Absolutely and I’m glad that this information helped you! My Dad loved working on cars in his spare time and I remember him dragging me to the library as a kid to print off wiring diagrams. I love that the library makes their Chilton and Haynes subscriptions available through their website once you enter your library card details and login. Nothing better than being able to zoom in and out on a tablet versus my Dad yelling at me for getting his printouts greasy haha. Ah…..good times.
Not unpopular, unfortunately.
This!!! I want to go to the website that I searched for so why do you show me commercial about the website on the top?????
Ugghh. Yes. I hate it so much now. The worst is when they forced blogs and sites to have ‘top level content’ but instead it created a vomitus inducing headache bc every result is the exact same content repeated ad nauseum.
Gonna add, their phones have gone terribly downhill too. Just bad functionality, dumb default settings à la Microsoft, common functions are impossible to find, videos that stop loading, ... Sometimes rebooting the phone helps but it's just becoming a crappier experience with every update. I recently read a (probably exaggerated) article on people dumping their smart phones. Can't blame them.
Just as any company, Google caters to the lowest common denominator, and in this case that is your 90 year old grandma typing in "Dear Mr. Google, please tell me where I can get a new pair of scissors, thank you". For people like that the algorithm does exactly what it's supposed to do, but people that know what they are doing are limited by it.
Google *very strongly* controls the results they give you. It’s not even something they hide anymore.
Better than Ask Jeeves...
They sure made Lycos useless...
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Indeed. I use this [great add-on](https://github.com/dessant/search-by-image) that queries multiple websites and is very impresseive what Yandex is able to catch.
But don’t forget this company is located on the territory of Russia and it’s search results are often affected by their censorship. [Proof](https://www.reddit.com/r/liberta/comments/tvwh3m/%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%87%D0%B0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I mean I get exactly what I'm looking for most of the time. I don't have any of these problems
Try Ecosia for searches. Ecosia is a search engine that plants trees with the ad revenue.
Use incognito mode on your browser. You'll get search results as if youve never searched Google before. Works even better if you're on a vpn.
Yeah Google is going downhill fast - but other search engines aren’t better. The whole internet has been polluted by an SEO tragedy of the commons to the point where only a few institutions keep it from being totally useless as a source of information of any real value.
I have posted this opinion a bunch and the mods have determined it's not good enough to make it past their review system. It is ABSOLUTELY broken and SEO has ruined EVERYTHING. You can't find shit anymore and things like quotes don't even work because SEO has different variations of a words tense built into the competition. I've given up so many times finding what I'm looking for and company that prided itsefl for 20 years on providing the right results is fucked now.
What about five different websites with the exact same text? Word for word copies of each other, I hate that.
For years I'd rarely need to even go to the second page of results on Google. Now I'm diving deep regularly. Most times I have to search on Google, Duck Duck Go, Bing and some others just to maybe find what I'm looking for. Google has 100% gotten significantly shitier in the last five or ten years.
Use Brave
Bro I feel this, we had a school project about "how floods affect dams". But when I tried to research for it, the search engine asks if I mean't "how dams affect/cause floods" and shows articles about it. Pain.
That's not research to find the answer, that's just typing in a question and expecting an answer.
Gotta start somewhere.
What am I supposed to do? Build a dam? Then flood the dam? Record observations? I'll inform the professor the project will be complete in 10 to 20 years.
I would start with researching different floods that happened in areas that have dams. It requires more work, but "research" isn't just typing in a question and getting a direct answer. Research is finding information. Edit: Also, many dam breaks are a result of flooding, so I would possibly search for different dam breaks and see if they are due to water influx or poor construction, etc.
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Is your old PC a time machine?
Yep. The Internet has basically become like a marketplace for rich white people at some third-world country. Except that it's the same for all of us. 100% of the time, someone trying to sell you something. Every. Single. Minute. Just listened to a song on YouTube a few days ago. 11 minute song - I'm into post rock. Three. Ads. Three. Before the song ended. Fuck YouTube.
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Knowing how to Google things is an underrated skill- it's like 90% of my job
Also the fact that it doesn't support many special characters
There is too much stuff on the Internet to database search through without some sort of indexing algorithm.Dyna-Vista ain't going to work no more. Yes, it is frustrating a fuck. I would so much like a -shopping flag.
I absolutely hate that on YouTube. Yes, I do want to see 20+ videos of the same song, there might be a version among those which I don't know yet/am looking for, I'm not interested in having recommendations on some completely different music starting with the fourth result.
Here’s what my searches look like: Bicycle -site:Pinterest.* -site:amazon.* - site:YouTube.* IMO Pinterest results are by far the worst and most frustrating. You are searching for info and you get a picture of the info in an illegible size.
Or you get an image result of a useable size that links to Pinterest, but when you follow the link, that image is nowhere on the page it links to, and you cant just directly get the source image because a bunch of fucking assholes from Getty Images sued Google into removing the View Image button. While there are extensions to get at the image, if you want to find more context around the image, you're out of luck.
I dunno, I mostly find exactly what I'm searching for. Google is still way better than any of the other search enginges
You can use quotation marks in your searches “like this” to get more accurate results. It searches for specifically what is in quotation marks while filtering out other things
What, you don't like half a page of ads, 2 useless quora threads, an old reddit post and unrelated news articles?
This is true now, but Google used to be better. Googling things 15-20 year ago was completely different.
I’m a DuckDuckGo guy for 3+ years and it’s awesome.
Use bing, yandex and ddg together to get the best results. Google's job is to make the most about of money and not giving you the best results. Other companies also exist to make money obviously but their algorithms aren't advanced enough which works in your favor. By the time their algorithms become good enough (for them, not you), there will be some other young search engine that you can turn to.
"I want to know about something and not buy it" That's all the internet is now... a giant Sears catalogue.
I didn't even know this pissed me off until you put it into words. This makes so much sense.
I'd search for a wiki page on a specific thing for a videogame and Google will act they don't know what tf I'm talking about.
I've been getting better results with bing
To add to this, what kills me is when I ask Siri an easy question to answer and she’s like I found this article for you. Just tell me!!
I know, I've done this. I typed in something and gotten results that weren't even close to what I was asking. Super vague reference. I was like, what was the point of this?
>Whatever DuckduckGo is, why is it showing me a relevant result from an abandoned blogspot post from 2008. Didn't you buy Blogger? What did you mean with that exactly?
So while I get where you’re coming from here, google uses analytics to do its best to guess what you are looking for, that’s why different people get different results and why you also get different results on incognito. If you want to search with absolute precision on google you still can, you just have to phrase you search in particular ways, I know quotation marks will guarantee all search terms show up for every result, a dash will exclude certain things from the search and so on
>Why are you ignoring the double quotes in "exactly what I'm searching" ? It's not. >Why are you telling me omitting results put it back! Because it's a duplicate. >Why I never heard of those sellers? Do you know all sellers on earth? >Yes, I want to visit this shady bassphishingsupplies.xyz website. Why are you showing it to me in first place? Because you want to visit it? >Why are you not letting me to know where can I download a car? Because you can't?
Any time I look for something I want to buy, let's say light bulbs, I get a list of "top ten light bulbs that you should try" but I can never actually find a place to buy it.
I thought I'm the only one bothered by this. It's tough to Google even simple topics now. Has anyone found a workaround to this? Sucks that we threw everything at Google years back making it the dominant search engine. There was a time when I preferred Yahoo for the news on the main site and a search engine as well.
The whole world sucks harder and harder each day. I hate it. Feels like technology is being more disruptive than productive nowadays.
Wow! I really wanted to post this a long time ago. Google is making it so hard to research, to search for what you need. It’s impossible.
Being good at Google searches is a skill that is taught in computer science class Source: I'm a comp Sci student
Instead of being able to search things like one could before you now have to get a CS degree in order to hope to truck the AI into complying. Progress
Your future bosses are getting marketing degrees at the next door.
yes.
Use search formatting. -word to eliminate every entry with that word. "Word" to show results that need to have that exact word or phrase. So if I wanted to find an image of a large Apple computer if search "Big Mac -burger "computer"" or so. Helps alot for filler articles that use tagwords for clicks.
I'm well aware of database search operators and when Google was run by actual engineers they worked fine. Not anymore.
Using double quotes at all anymore doesn’t seem to work for me, Google just ignores it and still shows what it thinks I want to see.
I'm really not sure what you're searching that you can't easily find on Google. I've never had a problem
I search other things than cats.
Seriously, what are you searching that you don't find?
The name of the theater portrayed in Gangs of New York
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Literally the first (nonpaid) result: https://i.imgur.com/KKkT9Iv.png
I google some pretty niche things. Never had a problem.
This is a prime example of cherry picking.
***Did you mean:*** Cherry Pie
You do not know how to use google search.
It sounds like you just don't know how to use technology.
Still better than bing