Maybe because Google is actual trash and it went from being the best search engine to being an SEO-infested desert of a search, where your query is interpreted however they want not how you want.
Latest example from today - search for "micropython html parser" - 100% of results are about normal python not micropython, with the first 4 results being for generic paid programming courses. It's completely useless as a search engine now.
I just performed that search in Google and the top two results are links to PyPI and Snyk packages for micropython-html.parser. The third result is a link to python.org documentation for html.parser (not micropython).
Bing returns the result for PyPI and the one for the non-micropython python.org result.
I don't see a big difference here (except maybe me learning about Snyk through google and not Bing?).
I mean, this is a big part of the issue. Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back. Sometimes you benefit from that, other times it pushes the results you want way down. I just tested this and there were some micropython related results in the top ten, but the majority were for beautiful soup with no mention of micropython.
> Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back...
There's a problem here though, which is that there is no way for me or any other reader to discern whether the reality of the situation is "it's not reproducible and the commenter is misremembering basic facts about their search results due perhaps to some unrelated frustrations" and "it's not reproducible but the commenter's account is accurate."
I completely share the views about Google's search results being terrible, but it's still possible to overstate how bad they are. And I do find it fairly difficult to believe that Google would show some people paid programming courses as the top 4 results for that query when much more relevant results clearly exist and everyone attempting to reproduce this gets those more relevant results.
nor are we anywhere near being able to inspect how google is doing all this.
if only there were some way to somehow be able to share that information with everybody, some technology so that we can all access such potentially useful information about how google is functioning right now
sorry about the snark, but it's a vent for accumulative frustration from seeing a worsening trend in this regard.
Kafka would recognize this trend; computing is truly becoming a "bureaucrat's best friend".
I often find that frustrating about Google search, but I'm also unconvinced it's a problem that a more-AI-driven approach will avoid. Seems like the idea to try to convince the model to interpret things differently based on user history is still likely to get pushed by product managers, and still technically capable. And then "no tell me about the framework" "conversationally" vs tailoring Google search terms seems a bit of a wash.
I'm about 80% sure that the reason why Google became so bad for my searches is that they added AI elements to it, to make it try to figure out what I'm searching for instead of taking my word for it.
In that sense, I'm not sure more AI would improve the situation. OTOH, better AI just might. There doesn't seem to be a "no AI" option on offer.
Based on my usage of ChatGPT, I think that a more AI driven approach could help a lot. With ChatGPT if it misinterprets what I'm asking for, I can make a clarifying followup query.
> Of course the issue isn't reproducible; Google is trying to do the search based on their model of what you want back.
There could also be other things that make it non-reproducible as well.
It sometimes feels like search just returns whatever it has on hand that seems somewhat similar to your search. It may then do an asynchronous request to pull into cache results from a deeper backend search, but by the time the frontend gets them you've already been served your results. Subsequent searches from other people for the same terms would then get better results than you did, so this sort of optimization would on average improve search quality even if quality is poor for the first searcher.
I have no idea if search engines actually do this. But it seems to explain some of their more mysterious behavior, like immediately returning a bunch of results that have nothing to do with your search terms.
That sounds plausible. There could be some service aggregating search results from multiple systems, and if one of them is slow (maybe breaking some SLA), it would be omitted.
I guess there are probably a hundred Google employees reading this who know whether it’s accurate and we’re just speculating.
It's been publicly known that Google has been bubbling search results for years now, and that one individual's search results have no relation to another's.
Every individuals everything has no relation to another's - which I think is a core cause of society's disconnects. Not that people got along before algorithms drove everything, but it's certainly been a destabilizing factor.
This is a good argument for LLM search: have search be conversational, and let you say "hey, I actually meant this!". Then you could have different chat environments, each tailored to micropython results, CPython results, IronPython results, etc.
All you need is for Google to get worse and Bing's marketing to get better (which it has, by nature of being associated with the biggest tech hype train of recent memory).
Google can incorporate quality signals in near real time. Those signals include leaving and immediately returning to the SERP. So us discussing these particular results could have already influenced them.
That's actually super impressive. So there's basically no "index" anymore, in the sense that the results returned are almost "dynamically" generated? And I'd guess that all of that still needs to be pretty cheap, computationally speaking.
I've seen this before - I've complained on HN that google has no results for X, and within two hours google's first(and only result) was the very thread of me complaining about it.
Google is more than capable of doing such basic fingerprinting, but do you have evidence Google uses it for search results? You can do a trivial experiment on another Google platform: open some video on YouTube, leave it, and look at the front page. Then, look at the YouTube front page in a private/incognito tab. (Alternatively, use two different private sessions.) In my experience, no matter what device or network I use, and no matter what the video was, the first page will always show videos related to the one I opened, and the second will always show an extremely generic set of clickbaity videos (likely based on GeoIP). This suggests that Google uses ordinary cookies for basic relevancy ranking.
Considering people switch to Incognito Mode to get different results, it'd be weird and not particularly commercially savvy to frustrate them and feed their paranoia by serving them the same ones. Non-Google search engines and browsers exist.
I'm also reminded of a CTO complaining that his test sessions suggested the default Google ads on a page with little text content all related to dating. We pointed out that that from Google's point of view, this was probably a sensible ad-targeting decision for a user running an Incognito mode browser (or any browser without tracking cookies)...
> Considering people switch to Incognito Mode to get different results, it'd be weird and not particularly commercially savvy to frustrate them and feed their paranoia by serving them the same ones. Non-Google search engines and browsers exist.
I just installed Google Chrome on a fresh Windows 10 VM to repeat the experiment outside of Incognito Mode. First, I opened a video. Then, I checked the front page and confirmed that related videos had been added. Then, I closed Chrome, reset the VM's state to before I had visited YouTube, and checked the front page again. (I don't think this scenario would be too indicative of a prying user; I can easily imagine corporate systems that regularly wipe out browser data.) Again, the related videos were replaced with generic videos.
I then tried the same thing, except by clearing browsing data through Chrome's UI instead of resetting the VM. The results were the same.
Obviously, these observations could all have been manipulated by sufficiently conspiratorial fingerprinting. But the simplest explanation, in the absence of good evidence to the contrary, is that the site uses and respects browser cookies for its recommendations. Thus my request.
I do believe I just saw an open letter from some Google staff to the CEO reiterating the need to uphold their "do no evil" model.
I can't imagine what it's like for the original employees to watch the company become what it has.
All the things that made Google so appealing, and gain market share, seem to have faded. It's a bit sad, to be honest. I remember being so excited to become a Gmail beta tester, back in the day.
I'm of the opinion that it should be illegal for companies to offer the ability to buy ads for registered product names or trademarks.
Google, Amazon, and Apple all allow trademark and product name squatting. It's gross and abusive.
Generic terms? Sure. But actual trade names for products? That's extortion.
These services aren't helping in discovery if the customer already knows the name. They're merely forcing themselves into that relationship and taxing it.
You then have to buy n-many ads across m-many services just to keep you in front of your competitors that would squat you.
IMO, the services should just not buy the ads for their own name. It might hurt their bottom line a bit, but doing this makes the search engine shittier for the users who know what they want to see.
User input/frustration will eventually lead them toward alternative search engines, or provide enough feedback to Google/Bing/etc to make them disable registered service name or company names from being used as ad terms.
I've been using Neeva for a while now. It's ad-free and (for me, anyway) on par with Google. I have one premium account ($5/month) and one free account (used for work) and have had no issues with either. By default, searches aren't saved, although enabling it can lead to better personalized searches.
Kagi's one I've heard great things about as well, although I'm not a fan of a business model that allows me to pay for X searches before hitting a barrier that prevents further use of the platform (theirs is 200 searches a month for $5, which seems way too low based on my use cases).
In any case, users will force the change, not any government or corporate pressure. Businesses' best chance of fighting it is to refuse to play along.
They provide 100 free searches, 200 searches for $5/month, and 700 searches for $10/month.
If you run over your allotment, you pay 1.5c thereafter.
That's a barrier. That's exactly what I was talking about.
Edit: Admittedly, I didn't realize that they just bill for follow-on searches, I assumed they stopped you. That charge per follow-on search is even worse.
> I'm of the opinion that it should be illegal for companies to offer the ability to buy ads for registered product names or trademarks.
I'm of the opinion ads themselves should be illegal. Companies can "advertise" in a catalog I can choose to look at, but would no longer be allowed to invade my attention with their bullshit constantly.
We've let marketers ruin too many good things as it is, lets just kill off the entire industry for the good of society.
That's too extreme. The economy would fall apart and a lot of people would lose their livelihoods.
Think about second order effects. YouTubers. News stations. Newspapers. Film crews. Publishers. Writers. Marketers (who do more than just ads). All impacted.
Many of the products we use everyday would no longer be viable. Even the premium tiers are supported by ads.
Engineering salaries would be broadly impacted.
The economy is driven by hustle, sales, and ads. I'd rather live in this world than one than one that has no ads. We'd be less productive: less employed, less eager to buy, less eager to work. Maybe some aspire to that, but that society won't be building rocket ships and inventing immortality.
I do hate ads, but they're better than not having them. And I understand their utility and the overall ecosystem they support.
> Many of the products we use everyday would no longer be viable.
I think this is a bullshit myth the industry uses to justify itself. People are capable of paying for things, and to the extent they don't want to then maybe we really don't need whatever it was the ads were supporting.
I mean, a lot of the "content" exists purely as clickbait with a tiny bit of entertainment or information attached so it can product place or sell ads. Fuck it, we don't need it as a society.
>The economy is driven by hustle, sales, and ads.
Allowing jobs that make society worse for profit because "economy" is just the broken window fallacy. We are better off skipping the job part and just giving them money directly.
> We'd be less productive: less employed, less eager to buy, less eager to work.
We'd be doing bullshit jobs less. How is that a bad thing? Lets redirect what productivity we do feel like engaging in on making the world better instead of making the people at the top of the economic food chain wealthier and playing on people's insecurities to get them to pay for shit they don't need.
In my idea world, if I am interested in buying some new product or service I consult a catalog. Opt-in marketing, not bullshit carrot and stick marketing, and certainly not the kind of completely unsolicited bullshit that keeps us from having unfiltered email, answering our phones, or using the internet without an ad blocker.
Google can also return enough ads to push real search result below fold, while also making it as hard as possible to discern between real and paid results.
If you saw how much of Google's revenue comes from ad spending then it makes perfect sense why it is the way it is now. But it goes to show what being hyperfocused on revenue does to the user experience.
Bing is on it's way in that direction. Microsoft needed something big to make Bing relevant again. This could potentially be it.
Will they eat all of Google's lunch? Probably not, but if they can begin to chip away at the insane share (93%+) of the marketplace that Google controls, then it can only be for the betterment of the Internet.
I created aisearch.vip which searches using bing api, removes results containing ads or seo junk, and uses openai to summarize content
to void clickbait. I believe that this is the only way to get the 0-4 good results hiding in the top 20 results. It's paid because it costs to run. But to be honest I myself am a fan of what phind is doing. Just can't understand how they are able to cover costs yet
Microsoft is really still in their infancy of building out their end vision for AI in search. Right now it's roughly a chat bot that summarizes and gives references, without really tying into their core search well. Eventually it will negate the need to click through to many reference, then it will be better able to curate a list of alternative sources for what you seek. I think that's the big problem with AI as it stands now, people think we've already reached the end of the road, when really we're only at the beginning of it. Watch and see what the next decade of it looks like. I agree with Bill Gates that it all will fundamentally changed the way we see and interact with the world (for the better).
> Eventually it will negate the need to click through to many reference, then it will be better able to curate a list of alternative sources for what you seek.
Doesn't that just kind of describe google now though?
I poorly worded that. I meant to say it will be able to answer most questions, but also refer you to the best sources for information that it can't provide.
I've been impressed with what Kagi is able to dig up for me on old and sometimes niche electronics test and measurement equipment. However, I don't think they are targeting the same set of users that early Google was. Among other things, you have to pay for Kagi.
No, but there are other search engines that aren't any worse than Google.
And, apparently depending on the style of your search terms or what you're searching for, one or two are better. I get noticeably better results from DDG, but I know that a lot of other people don't. I can only speculate that the difference must be search terms or topics.
Are you for real ? I mean, pick better examples if you want to poke something, since:
Search for "micropython html parser" gets you https://pypi.org/project/micropython-html.parser/ as the first result with the quote: "This is a module ported from CPython standard library to be compatible with MicroPython interpreter."
Yeah I just vpn'ed to my machine at work and I'm getting results about micropyhton too. But on my personal machine it absolutely thinks I'm interested in buying some generic programming courses and nothing about micropython.
Um, no. Google "bubbles" their search results, meaning that they customize them based on their profile of you. This is not new - it's been implemented and known publicly for years.
I don't feel stack overflow has been rendered obsolete because the snobbishness and moderation people complain about so much has caused the recommendations on stack overflow to generally be of higher quality than those ChatGPT offers and you have more metadata (answer age, votes) about which answers are especially trustworthy.
I'm curious too. When I go to stack overflow, I get lots of clues as to the trustworthiness of a given answer. I don't know how I'd get any clues from an LLM that its solution is outdated or suboptimal in some way
> where your query is interpreted however they want not how you want
Exactly, I feel it is because with Google advertisers are the real customers and they could not care less about user experience unless it affects that bottom line. Case in point is the removal of the dislike button which users loved but advertisers hated. Google is a rich one trick pony right now anyway.
It's absurd how Google will simply ignore the keywords in my search to feed me whatever it's trash algorithm decided fits my search.
And the decline in Google Maps has been shocking. Maps has gone from always reliable to being "trust it if you like wasting time and burning fuel" bad.
I don't know what the hell happened at Google, but it ain't pretty.
It’s even worse. I’ve been using ChatGPT a lot in situations that’d be Google searches before and I love how you can fill in so much detail and it will actually provide you with better results. With Google, additional detail is actually used against you. With enough keywords, it will match just about any site to your query.
Hah it wish I kept this search I did once. I was searching something about lsd. It somehow decided to replace it with "acid" but then showed results about related to pH lol
To be fair, you could always surround micropython in quotes so that Google knows to only show results containing the keyword "micropython". Only caveat is that Google will still show you whatever it wants in case no results contain the keyword. I swear a decade ago it would simply tell you no results were found, but now you need to (1) use quotes in keywords, and (2) click on "show only results containing [keyword]" when it can't find any results yet decides to show you unrelated pages anyway.
The decline started way back when they stopped letting you find mp3's and mp4's of movies and albums. I get that copyright infringement is bad and all, but their engine was fully capable of you typing a obscure phrase, and being able to get web results. Somewhere behind all the filters a lot of powerful searching capabilities just died.
If I had unlimited money, I'd make a fresh search engine, zero filtering to start outside of blatant spam sites, and go from there. Focus on making results be powerful.
I agree, but the part I’m failing to see in the conversation is what the future looks like.
If the chat approach is gaining visits, then ad companies will follow, so what then?
The chat offers up the same seo ad laden tripe but further obfuscates it, and alternatives, while caging it in a conversational tone?
Is that better? Worse?
If these chat offerings only cause search to step back and attempt to recreate the early days of usable search then they would appear a success in my eyes.
They stopped caring about what information you want to get and instead give you the information they think you should get. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's just awful.
Not to mention the constant pain that's localization/internationalization as well as some of the queries becoming worse and worse. The service is supposed to become better with time, not the contrary. Plus, of course, all the SEO garbage.
I trieD this in both DDG and Google (using the !g macro with DDG).
DDG first page of results all pointed to zoom.us links. Google (mediated through DDG !g) contained all sorts of spam links to sites like subdomains of uptown.com.
> Maybe because Google is actual trash and it went from being the best search engine to being an SEO-infested desert of a search, where your query is interpreted however they want not how you want.
Agreed but tbf... every major search engine seems to suffer from the same.
I cannot recommend enough the 'ContextSearch web-ext' extension. It lets you easily search using any search provider. I constantly (1) highlight text (2) right-click (3) select search provider (from youtube to reddit to bing) (Note: my default is DDG):
I don't find Bing's search any better than Google, but importantly, I don't find it any worse.
GPT4 is going to do what Hawaii five-o, Bing Rewards, integrating windows search with Bing, and setting Bing as the default search engine for Edge on Windows never could. Make people use Bing over Google.
I've already set it as my default search engine across my devices as I move to cut Google out of my life entirely. I simply don't feel the need to use any of their services anymore. Their moat is gone.
The only downside I have noticed is that Bing Maps is a pretty bad service relative to Google Maps or Apple Maps and I will go out of my way to avoid using Bing Maps. Good mapping being integrated into a search engine is actually a pretty big deal since it's nice to use a search engine as a front-end for a mapping service, so this is a significant weakness.
> Latest example from today - search for "micropython html parser" [..]
Are you entering the micropython search term in quotes in the Google search box, because I've found that's a moderately good way to get rid of the normal Python results.
My search terms for that search would probably be:
But you literally typed it in the same way that a scammer would word it and then not expect it to find a scam site?? Nice bait, ever considered being a journalist?
You don't seem to be very familiar with users that happen to be older. However, that search is uncomfortably common. Impersonation and scamming of their service is a problem, but when they help the user to the impersonation site.. that's on them.
Perhaps it was a matter of me not paying enough attention, but it seemed like Google degraded slowly over time, and then suddenly all-at-once. Or in other words, it seems like its become unusable for me entirely within the past year.
It totally did! It’s the Eternal September effect on the internet as a whole. Marketers climbing all over each other, desperate to steal the eyeballs of the naïve masses.
> As an AI language model, I cannot infer emotions or intentions with certainty, but the statement does not appear to use typical markers of sarcasm. The commenter is expressing an opinion about SEO and its impact on search, and while it is framed as potentially controversial, it does not necessarily come across as sarcastic.
I can't believe how disconnected I always feel on the Google search conversations here. It still does what I need it for fine, I don't remember it being significantly better than it is now. I guess I'm not a power user? But I also think this is how the most people feel. On this site Google has been a shockingly useless zombie for years.
Since google search results are tailored to your particular history and profile, it may be as simple as you fitting into Google's way of doing that better than others.
It's a bit strange, to me Google seems to be what it has always been, but if you read hacker news it's 'actual trash'.
It's the same with amazon, I purchase from there on a weekly basis and it goes well, but you read the comments on hacker news and it's apparently unusable now.
It is wild how most of modern SEO and "SEO+" involves just outright creating spam. Spamming url strings (keyword stuffing essentially) for location specific ranking is a new one I've noticed being touted.
I can't tell you how many times I search a somewhat niche compound term and the first thing in the results page is a list of shops in my area keyed on some word in the search.
That's unfair to altavista. Altavista never got evil, they just became irrelevant. (And even when they were irrelevant, they still had a search syntax that I miss. You could search for things like term_a NEAR term_b.)
Amen. Buried, unknown to most, Google used to have a similar AROUND(n) syntax. No idea if it still is respected.
Google seems to have refocused around returning any result out of a set of popular links rather than deep dives. It feels like I must quote every term I enter now.
I have noticed that too. Google has become so useless. And with all the little knowledge stuck behind reddit dark patterns, discord locked and utterly unsearchable world. And the modern forum stuff a mess of slow JavaScript that loads on demand. It's like finding knowledge is a fine sand fallings between the fingers. YouTube has some bit of interesting content, but it's 10min for 30s of info plastered with sponsored content. And finding something is harder and harder. ChatGPT and the like won't resist long becoming the same.
My only hope is that it will eventually bring back the notion of trust. Naybe finding a programming job will be harder outside of your network of friends. But won't require silly interviews anymore. Maybe we will get back to lifelong tenure at work?
Anyways I am just rambling here. What do I know anyways.
Latest example from today - search for "micropython html parser" - 100% of results are about normal python not micropython, with the first 4 results being for generic paid programming courses. It's completely useless as a search engine now.