• Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    196
    ·
    1 year ago

    “We’ve ignored all the meaningful terms you were searching for. Now here’s a bunch of pinterest and quora spam.”

  • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    101
    ·
    1 year ago

    Half the time I look at a website or article it is just AI generated crap anyway. Oh you want a product review? Here are a half dozen articles that have summarised the Amazon reviews of an item, with no first hand experience.

    • DrMango@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      81
      ·
      1 year ago

      Google “Best vacuum cleaner”

      Top 6 hits: “We evaluated the 5 brands that paid us the most and found that they all suck up your dirt. We can’t really speak ill of any of them because this is an ad and we signed a contract. Please use our embedded links so we can have more money.”

      • Cenzorrll@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        What’s worse is most of what comes up isn’t even a hands on review, it’s literally someone doing what I just did, which is type “vacuum cleaner” into Amazon and see what came up. Then they give it reviews based on the bullshit in the description.

        I want a review from someone who sees these everyday and has a deep hatred of every vacuum in existence. He’s the one who knows that such and such used to be good until they replaced this part with plastic because they have a new CEO, and now it’s no better than a dirt devil.

        At least with vacuums however, there’s a few guys out there with carpet swathes, children, and dogs at home that get to take vacuums from work and do youtube tests with them. Unfortunately they usually don’t try to game the algorithm so they’re pretty deep in there.

  • Saneless@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    85
    ·
    1 year ago

    Search engine protocol:

    Ignore first few results (ads)

    Ignore next few results (bullshit spam comparison farms)

    Ignore really annoying site you think is ok but is a usability nightmare

    Ignore subsection of reddit links

    Find 0-1 useful links on first page

    Regret

    • Shialac@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      51
      ·
      1 year ago

      The sad thing is the Reddit Links probably contain the most useful answers that google will show you

    • Uphillbothways@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      Trying to find the tiny “show more results” button sandwiched between the first page of shit results and the weird AI bubbles of shit results just to find semi-decent shit on pages 2-3 makes me wish i was dead every single time.

  • Blapoo@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    71
    ·
    1 year ago

    Once AI is handling search for us, many may never learn the concept of “search term”

    • whatsarefoogee@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      ·
      1 year ago

      “AI” is already handling the search for you. The big search engines are probably the first mass scale adopters of machine learning.

      And they have lost the war with SEO spam to a hilarious extent. What makes you think the same won’t happen with chat bot AIs? Bad actors (including PR agencies) will inevitably figure out where and how to spam comments in order to bias the AI models in favor of their agendas or products.

      If the data they consume is filled with something like “fossil fuels don’t cause global warming because XYZ”, the chat bots will repeat it. They don’t have the capacity to reason.

      There hasn’t been a reason to flood the internet with low effort spam because it’s easily detected by humans who read it. But the ML algorithms will be a lot easier to trick.

      • Blapoo@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Apologies, I used the overly vague term “AI”. Any company creating an LLM that has web search + scraping capabilities will be at the mercy of the search results.

        That said, LLMs are actually quite skilled at ignoring noise (repetitive data), so gaming SEO may lose popularity. Hell, the practice will DEFINITELY lose appeal once LLMs are just browsing for relevant content and summarizing without any citations (links to the sites). And even of they do cite, no one will click them.

        Convenience > Fact

        tldr; This additional layer of obfuscation between search and result will reshape the fabric of the internet with time

    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      You can already outsource a lot of this to Bing. If you need to know the right temperature for making french fries, you can google a bunch of “recipes” (AKA life story of the author + history + vacation photos + cooking instructions) read them through and… actually better make some coffee while you’re at it because this is going to take a while. Anyway, the other option is to ask: “Hey Bing, I’m making french fries, but I don’t know how hot the oven should be.”

      Spoiler: 220 °C

      The scary thing is, what happens when people start doing this for more important things, such as what to do if your child has swallowed something or how to parallel park your car.

      • Barbarian772@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        200 or 220, depends on if you are using a convection oven. But that’s beside the point, I really hope AI finally kills SEO.

        • backseat@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m making french fries, but I don’t know how hot the oven should be.

          Contents:

          • What French fries are
          • Why you might want some
          • The dangers of French fries
          • Where to buy French fries
          • Ways of preparing French fries
          • Other names for French fries

          And so on.

        • KluEvo@wirebase.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Oven cooked french fries are a thing, and have a surprisingly high popularity

        • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Correct. However, if you buy frozen ones, you do need to heat them up some way. I ran out of nuclear weapons again, my flamer was out of gasoline, so using the oven was my best option.

            • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Hey Spez, can you throw some more subreddits into the dumpster fire. The temperature is almost right for popping some popcorn.

    • Anamana@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      True but they will learn the concept ‘inefficency increases individual profits’. Google has been getting worse and so will AI search eventually.

        • CaptainAniki@lemmy.flight-crew.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          In the Greatest Generation postcast they posit that you can actually get anything you want materialized at a certain temperature.

          A Stradivarius violin. Luke warm.

          • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Is is possible for something to be replicated that if one of its defining features is the person who built it?

            If the violin was replicated, it was not built by Stradivari, and thus is by definition not a Stradivarius.

            • CaptainAniki@lemmy.flight-crew.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              In the 24th century, where ownership is a foreign concept, I don’t think they give a flying fuck what ancient neck-beard built the instrument if it’s per-atom perfect. They don’t give a fuck about materials, only outcomes.

      • Saneless@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        Until they’re sponsored

        “I realize you seem frustrated from my responses. Nature’s Choice has a fantastic Stress Reducing gummy available at your local CVS”

        • ohlaph@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Yeah, the gentle product hints at first will be driving people away quicker than a Monstered up Uber driver.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        It already is. If you want to play a game of D&D with chatGPT, there’s a very specific prompt carefully crafted for that. If you want to chat with a with a total psycho, there’s a prompt for that. If you want your AI to do something it was specifically forbidden from doing, just craft a very specific prompt for that, and you’re good to go. You can even find sites that collect various prompts for just about any purpose you can imagine.

  • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    61
    ·
    1 year ago

    This is especially frustrating when trying to find parts for vehicles or machinery. Used to, one could search for something like “1988 Suzuki Samurai Oil Filter” and get the answer for all the common filter brands. But now all you get is links to an auto parts website, where you have to use their shitty search function and hope they have what you need.

    • Etienne_Dahu@jlai.lu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      I know your pain, I’ve skipped it entirely and always go for the part number. There are great resources for BMWs with sites like realoem.com, but what about other manufacturers?

    • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      I have been experiencing exactly this with a Suzuki in the last week. It gives me links to parts stores that don’t even have the part I’m looking for. Come on Google, get your shit together!

    • markr@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      1 year ago

      Product information search is now totally useless. I used to be able to use a part number to find a manual, now it is just scammers Amazon and eBay.

      YouTube videos were once good sources for DIY, now the useful shit is buried behind product placement bullshitters.

      • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        Or websites showing the first page of a manual and requiring payment if you want to see the rest.

        • Godwins_Law@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Unfortunately I feel like if that ever got popular then it would inevitably become tainted by people trying to promote certain products.

          • maggoats@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            There might be some kind of trust system that could work. I have no idea of course but I’m envisioning something like Stack Overflow’s system and a bit of community correction and authority à la Wikipedia.

    • Misconduct@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      What’s been pissing me off for years now is googling a specific company and getting a wall of advertisements for their competitors first. So. Dirty.

    • such_fifty_bucks@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      Often you’ll find a ‘print recipe’ button somewhere near the top of the page. Click on that, it’ll take you to what you’re looking for without all of the crap nobody cares about.

      • Chocrates@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, I despise that every fucking recipe is a blog post. I don’t care that little Becky loved this soup, I just want to know how much salt I should add.

      • Trofont@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        100% what I do. Print to pdf and then never go to the site, because they’re so over loaded with ads and pictures that will load and cause the page to bounce around.

        • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Firefox+AdNauseam

          Watching the numbers on each page go up is entertainment enough. Best part is that it stops the ad popping in the background so your page rarely jumps

            • such_fifty_bucks@lemmy.one
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              1 year ago

              AdNauseam integrates with UBO, so you’d get both. Basically, it virtualizes clicks on ads so ad sellers get charged for the click but it’s all hidden in the background from you.

              That said, I kinda have mixed feelings about it. Ad clicks will help support sites you like, so even if you’re blocking ads you’re still getting ‘served’ and ‘interacting’ with them. On the other hand, it tells sites 'hey all these ads you’re serving aren’t making your website shitty and unusable (but they generally are) so keep it up! And it tells ad agencies and the industry ‘oh yeah we sure love clicking ads keep slapping them in my face at every corner’. And if ad buyers are realizing their clicks are all ghost clicks, they’ll stop buying ad space. Which just means shittier lowest common denominator ads in more places.

            • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              It’s different from the technical end but it works by clicking the ads and filling them with junk to cost. It essentially removes the ad for you

    • dx1@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The horrible reality is that Bing has actually become a competitor to Google, simply by Google getting worse and worse. Microsoft used to be the main bad guy, but these days they practically seem benign compared to the others. Not open source like you’re saying, of course.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      The infrastructure to crawl, store, and serve search results to billions of users is phenomenally expensive. A government might fund it (which comes with its own concerns), but a non-profit will struggle to compete.

      • spaduf
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Federated search is possible but has not gotten a lot of attention yet.

          • spaduf
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            There’s actually a lot of theory and early work out there on the topic of federated search. While existing search aggregators like Searx and YaCY certainly qualify as federated, search infrastructure built from the ground up with decentralization in mind would look very different.

      • 33KK
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        When you factor out all the garbage content it’s suddebly affordable lol

    • rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Wikipedia probably has the resources to do it, wikisearch. Somebody talk them into it. But yeah, modern search engines, pretty amazing the ones from two decades ago actually worked better.

      • SJ0@lemmy.fbxl.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yacy exists but it’s bad enough that it’s one of the few options I don’t self host.

    • Chocrates@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      This could be interesting. The infrastructure required to scrape the internet though is going to be so daunting. Google got to build it up slowly as the internet got bigger. Bing is backed by a huge corporation that already has data centers. A new non profit player is going to take a huge coordinated effort.

      • SpikesOtherDog@ani.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        I know P2P had become a dead buzzword, but what if people dedicated a portion of their computers to assisting an open search engine.

        I would wait 30s for accurate results. It could also piggyback on a search aggregator.

  • Captain_Shakespeare@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    1 year ago

    I swear sometimes it feels like a superpower to have grown up in the 90s and learned the ground rules for multiple OSes, search tools, and file systems - the descendants of which are nearly all still in use today.

    I defer of course to any oldheads who can still bang out a long .bat file or compile and configure Linux; I just mean it’s a very useful quirk of the era that skills learned on windows 3.1 or OSX are still broadly applicable, even in fields where ‘using the computer’ is a minor task of one’s workday.

    • Natal@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      I agree so much. It feels like I “understand” how a computer talks and interacts as opposed to most people I work with just learn processes by heart and have no clue what to do once their process breaks.

  • Octavio@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    1 year ago

    Somebody mentioned something about a thing in outer space called a dark star. It sounded interesting so I googled it and got millions of links about a Grateful Dead tribute band called the Dark Star Orchestra. I’m sure I’ll be seeing ads for that for months. 😂 ChatGPT gave me a nice summary but of course I didn’t have any way of knowing whose work I was reading.

    • Captain Poofter@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Or even if it was accurate.

      The future seemed so much more promising when I was a teenager. Now I’m mid 30s and the present is very… corporate and lame. Very lame. They’ve even programmed the younger generation to be sanitized and accepting of blandness. Imagine growing up with only one or two genuinely creative movies being released a year. Zoomers don’t even have their own music genre, it’s all just nostalgia. Sigh.

      • CoderKat@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Knowing how to do what you did is vital for using a search engine effectively. It’s not possible for a search engine to know what you want when a word has multiple meanings (well, not yet, anyway). It could have just as easily have been the other way around, where OP wanted to search for a niche band but all they could find is astronomy things.

        Adding context like “band”, “astronomy”, etc is important if you’re googling anything non trivial. Sometimes you even need to identify different words to search. Eg, there’s a programming language called Go. But “go” is such a generic word that it’s hard to search for. Searching for “golang” tends to help a lot.

    • krzschlss@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s rather tragic that a tribute band called Dark Star gets priority over a scientific Dark Star. I don’t know if it’s because more people search for the band or because this search engine is trying to sell you albums by this band…

      • Soylentcolaispeople@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        To be fair, the band puts a lot of effort into marketing and keyword targeting, and scientific teams researching dark stars only publish for specific spaces towards other scientific people that are already looking at those places.

        • krzschlss@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t mind it. I just think we all should value scientific research into astronomy, no matter the volume of interest, more than marketing strategies for a product, be it art or not. I might be wrong tho…

    • Voswi@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Did you use any search operators, like quotes or minus signs to get rid of the clutter?

    • necrxfagivs@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I totally agree with you, but googling ‘dark star space’ or ‘dark star science’ you get what you’re looking for.

      • dsemy@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Nobody ever likes anything

        If you really don’t believe me, check out [no longer available] - my Searx instance which I stopped using because of Kagi.

        Edit: I realize now you didn’t reply to me, I came back to the after seeing people downvoting my (honest) comment in this thread and your comment kinda pissed me off so I just wrote a response quickly.

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          When we’re talking about the issues of search engines, and a whole bunch of people come in and “organically” promote a paid service, then my astroturfing detection rises up. This is how modern advertisement works and it fucking sucks.

          • dsemy@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            1 year ago

            I get what you’re saying, but it’s not very nice to accuse people of astroturfing when you can quickly look at their other posts/comments.

            Literally every person in this subthread who said something positive about Kagi is very clearly just a normal user who has recently posted things completely unrelated to it, judging by their history.

            Maybe I’m being naive about how sophisticated these campaigns have gotten, but it seems unlikely that a small company will invest the effort in making it seem this believable on such a niche platform.

            • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Literally every person in this subthread who said something positive about Kagi is very clearly just a normal user who has recently posted things completely unrelated to it, judging by their history.

              Yes, this is exactly how it works. This behavior is well documented.

              Not saying 100% all these users are astroturfing accounts, but I’m just pointing out this looks like it

              • stankmut@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                1 year ago

                It’s tough, because people also like to recommend things they like. If a friend in real life told you about the new CastX® Iron Extreme™ cast iron skillet that they got and how they love its rich iron flavor, you would just think they just like their new pan.

          • 33KK
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            I haven’t used kagi, but the service being paid is not the red flag you think it is, as long as the privacy policy and ToS make sense.

    • dsemy@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      Kagi is actually awesome.

      I just started using it this month and I’m blown away by the results.

    • twei@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      Do they already have their own index? Last time I used it (when it was still beta) it was quite okay, but it was basically yandex or whatever with a different front-end and site-pinning

      • Netto Hikari@social.fossware.space
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        Look at https://kagi.com/faq .

        They basically query other search engines and APIs in a privatized manner and they use their own indexes as well. I used Google, Ecosia, StartPage, DDG, a self-hosted SearXNG instance and then Brave. I liked DDG and I kinda liked Brave Search, as well. But in comparison to Kagi, they’re all not that good in my opinion.

        The image search of Kagi is especially what blows me away. It just shows relevant results for my queries and I’m satisfied.

        • atyaz@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          I love kagi. I use it mainly for work, where it gives much better results. It even has a programmer lens so that it shows results that are relevant to programmers. But its image search didn’t work that well for me. Not sure if I’m just not formulating the queries right though.

    • nitefox@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s why I use brave search, it’s a free search engine and the results are actually really good

      • atyaz@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        Even if it’s good, their long term goal will always be to appease their advertising customers, not you. Google has the ability more than anyone else to make the perfect search engine but they’re not spending their time and resources on that because that’s not what will increase their revenue. That model is just fundamentally broken.

        • nitefox@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Idk, I found it to be quite good but it may be just me knowing how to search stuff (even tho Google just gives shitty results and DDG is hit or miss)

          • Netto Hikari@social.fossware.space
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            I also know how to use keywords, etc. And maybe I went a bit overboard when I said Brave Search sucks. It doesn’t suck, but with Kagi, I don’t feel like a product any more and the search results make sense again, like with Google a couple years ago. Most free search engines just don’t work that good any more.

            If you would’ve told me 2 years ago that I’ll be paying for a search engine in the future… Well, I would’ve thought that you’re crazy. But here I am now.

  • Raglesnarf@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    1 year ago

    my lil trick is I’d just add “Reddit” after most searches to find others in a similar situation or maybe a solution

    • berrodeguarana@lemmy.eco.br
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      1 year ago

      2 months ago that was fine.

      Now I don’t have an app for that, the website on my mobile doesn’t open my search and instead tells me to download the official Reddit app, or the subs are nsfw or private.

      Sigh, so much for easy answers at a type of the finger :(

      • 𝑔𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑥𝑖@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Not that I’m recommending anyone give reddit any more traffic or leverage, but I’ve been using Stealth app at the recommendation of someone else on here. It’s downloadable through f-droid and specifically is meant to keep you anonymous and avoid any trackers and other trash normally found when opening reddit links. You can’t even log into an account. I use it on the rare moments I’m looking for stuff on there, it makes me feel a bit better about it.

        • berrodeguarana@lemmy.eco.br
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Solid advice m8, I downloaded that 1. Funny thing that the 1st thing I saw on the app once I entered was a message saying “in a few weeks Stealth will end due to end of free API”. Sigh, these last months all these huge internet companies are making such a mess.

    • pitl@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      Up until the API debacle, that was my solution too. Now even that doesn’t work. It’s so bizarrely hard to look something up on the internet now.

      • dingus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Does this work any better than DuckDuckGo? People praise DDG, but imo it’s results are pretty shit and I could never end to sticking with it. It can’t even get basic quoted text syntax correct.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Oh fuck man, that’s a great find! Thank you for sharing that. It’s actually providing really substantiative results which I haven’t seen from Google for at least 5 years.

        I have definitely bookmarked that website, even though I use duck duck go I will probably use that as an alternate now.

        Another good search engine that’s less useful for searches but for providing information is of course Wolfram alpha

    • Littleborat@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Maybe that does work again after the thing with subreddits going nsfw has been somewhat resolved but not sure. It was my thing too. I heard good things about bing of all places. In general search just got worse over the last 5-6 years.

      • Sparky678348@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        People talk about Bing and duck duck go like they’re good replacements, and I’ve given them honest good faith tries.

        I always switch my search engine back to Google after simply not getting the results I’m looking for

        • jmanjones@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          you can use Google or Bing from duckduckgo using !bangs. g! (for google) or b! (for bing) then whatever you are searching for. I use g! all the time for non privacy related things. and since duckduckgo doesn’t use trackers and all that the results can be terrible so sometimes I just resort to using g!

          • dingus@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Using DuckDuckGo to search through Google seems pretty damn pointless if you ask me. If the search engine is shit and I am just roundabout using Google then why even bother?

            I know you said the thing about trackers, but a lot of us don’t really care about that. If the end result is just using Google anyway then I’d rather just start with Google and not use another site to use Google.

            • jmanjones@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              oh yeah. if you don’t care, there really is not a point to use duckduckgo. I should say IMO because I’m sure a much more technically minded person will have a better answer.

            • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              I disagree. A lot of the Google search results are based on your previous search history and your advertising profile the company has generated for you, which skews and promotes most of the front page Google search results as advertising links. And unless you’re searching for an actual product, they are not so useful.

              Like if I want to search for comments, and all my search results are advertising me telescopes and astronomy software that’s not so helpful.

        • hotdaniel@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think something broke with Bing’s advanced search. It doesn’t seem to respond at all.

      • zettajon@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I used Bing chat to plan my itinerary for my next vacation. These LLMs are the new best way to search, although the recent stories of their results becoming worse doesn’t bode well

  • Annoyed_Crabby@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Tfw you searched something and the top10 answer is mostly copied homework without much variation, and then the best one is from reddit.