Google executives acknowledged this month they need to do a better job surfacing user-generated content after the recent Reddit blackouts.

  • qimdbxfk6@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Google search is a pain from a year ago.

    When searching for something on Google, you should include terms like “Reddit”, “superuser”, “Stack Overflow”, etc., to get better results. Because if you don’t include them, the first page of Google looks like a bot-generated page. Of course, Google are ‘not quite happy’.

  • MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This means they realize that whole search is so useless that people have to rely on reddit for actually finding something useful.

    • swan_pr@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yet, we rely on Google to search reddit because their search function is useless lol

  • shiftenter@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I remember the art of crafting the perfect google search query and knowing you’d eventually find that obscure bit of info. Now I have to quote nearly everything in my query and if a single result in the first 100 results is tangentially related, I’m grateful.

    • MrGG@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I’ve noticed this too, and I want to say it was only noticeable in the last year or two — but it seems to have gotten even worse over the last couple of weeks. Even when I quote something or -exclude a term it is still giving me what it thinks I actually wanted.

  • static@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    It would be cheaper for google to just buy reddit, remove the adds and open the api’s again.

    Having relevent search results is priceless.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It’s going to be interesting watching the downfall of Google.

    Google’s got a bit of a problem: THE search engine, THE place people have gone to find information for two generations now…can’t find shit. And it’s about half its own fault.

    I’ll put right around half of the blame on “platformization.” Your Facebooks and your Twitters are, for the most part, deep web. Google doesn’t get to search Facebook; you have to sign into a Facebook account to see much of what’s there. Twitter is slightly more open…but not really.

    The other half of the problem is Google’s own making; the surface web is a twisted, pus-leaking cancerous abomination of its former self, riddled with absolute useless nonsense vomited up by computers for the express purpose of convincing Google to show it to searchers, with no intention of being useful in any way. So the surface web is effectively bullshit and online shopping.

    That leaves Reddit. A for-profit platform on the surface web. Even before this whole fiasco, folks were making grumbling noises that they’ve gotten in the habit of appending “reddit” to google search strings because a. that’s where all the actual answers are and b. Reddit’s own search feature has never actually worked. So some of Reddit goes private for a few days and suddenly Google doesn’t work so well.

    So what are we keeping them around for?

  • cmrn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I still think it’s absolutely insane that Google just willingly runs ads to so many illegitimate and deliberately harmful sites too.

    If you search for any software and click one of the first few links (the ads), you’ll almost always end up on a scam site. What a useful search engine…

    • kat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I downloaded a virus in high school computer lab. I was looking to download Chrome, and Google pushed a scam Chrome link to the top. I still have no idea how or why it happened.

  • TrickyCamel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Whats bothering me the most about it is that Reddit is still a valuable source of information for so many things, can’t get around a boss fight in a certain older videogame? Yep, there are about 10 threads about it on reddit from years ago.

    The amount information on there is big enough that often times many of the top useful search results are in reddit, I hope Lemmy can fill the gap, at least partially but I’m aware that it could years and that’s only if the fediverse picks up well enough.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

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  • Penryn_@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Google search has been pretty weak for awhile now. I/O spoke a lot of big talk about bring generative AI into search, but from my part of the world it still seems the same.

    • The_Pete@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ai isn’t going to fix the first page being all ads, that’s a business decision.

      If they wanted to return actual content they could do that without AI.

  • Wolfram@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I didn’t realize how important Reddit was to get quality results from Google. Without Reddit almost the whole 1st page is just SEO optimized sites. It’s just ironic that alternate search engines are better than Google now.

    • ConTheLibrarian@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If AI art is just ripping off IRL artists than it’s safe to assume chat GPT’s training was >50% reddit & Wikipedia content.

  • LollerCorleone@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Startpage still seem to give me good search results despite using Google index itself. I guess a lack filter bubble have its own benefits.