google sucks now

[@digitaljanus]

My wife is a college librarian and was always looking for examples of Google fucking up to use in her instructional sessions. The worst one we found was when we searched for "what to do if someone has a seizure" and Google gave its "helpful" answer pulled from a top (not Wikipedia) search result--a bulleted list of responses. Then we click on the actual link and the bulleted list appears--under the heading "What NOT to do if someone has a seizure." Google's "helpful" answer clipped the heading and just posted the list. 😮

[@hiwrenhere]

Another one is games with multiple entries. I googled "great fairy locations BOTW" went to images, spent a half hour on my switch looking for where they are taking about to then discover Google showed me 9 results for TOTK instead. 😐

[@Y-LAT]

That sucks, but bing is not better I suppose

[@thezipcreator]

@@Y-LAT there's duckduckgo, startpage, among others

[@lurifaks92]

@@Y-LAT why do you suppose that?

[@Y-LAT]

@@lurifaks92 because I use it on a regular basis

[@phil331]

i hate all the ai generated websites clogging search results now

[@pcenero]

Jesus I remember this being a thing starting two years ago and I thought I was going insane that blogs are no longer people. Now I get PTSD whenever I see an article with a table of contents and no images.

[@emmafountain2059]

I do stuff with programming and it is *so unbelievably bad*. I’ll throw an error in Google looking for a stackoverflow question and get 10 AI-generated answers all of which are just slightly incorrect versions of the answer to the stackoverflow question. Like I don’t want your regurgitated garbage and I never will. Just let me see what people actually say.

[@AlanW]

I belive Cory Doctoro has coined the term "enshitification" for this phenomenon.

[@laurenlewis4189]

Yep. His talk at Defcon was an amazing summary with examples. I look forward to reading The Internet Con. I always loved reading his threads/essays whenever he popped up on my Twitter feed (back when it was still Twitter), but the Defcon talk really drove home how good he is at simplifying complex processes for a general audience.

[@nat3315]

+1 the aforementioned "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation". Doctorow brings a great mix of history, current understanding, diagnosis of ills, and clear specific prescriptions for Things We Can Do.

[@MrKyltpzyxm]

Doctrow also did a multi-part series of interviews for NPR's On The Media on the enshittification of the internet. Very accessible summary of his argument.

[@tuckerbugeater]

No he just put a name to something that was inevitable

[@ratewcropolix]

@@tuckerbugeater did you even read the comment

[@Nonzerotonin]

Google is genuinely unusable for finding anything now. I love looking up something and getting 14 results that have NOT ONE WORD of my search query on the page

[@etherealceleste]

No, you're just growing up and trying to use Google for useful information instead of social fads. When Google first started, the results were terrible if you needed technical results. It has only gotten slightly worse as they insert more sponsors into their "link back" popularity-based results.

[@oldcowbb]

use double quote

[@Nonzerotonin]

@oldcowbb if I have an exact phrase that's awesome, but if I quote multiple things it will exclude results that have some but not all

[@crystal4o681]

@@oldcowbb google just ignores the double quotes anyway

[@wearethewearethewearethhe]

biden won't allow real thought.

[@trunk081]

I’m more concerned with how bad it is now searching for emails in Gmail.

[@gribblemeister]

THANK GOD SOMEONE ELSE IS NOTICING THIS. I'll literally search a full name that is fully included in the email of the sender and it still wonder pull up all of the threads, I have to search specific keywoards to find some stuff.

[@dandymcgee]

The reason Google sucks is not just that Google is making it suck (which they are, by accepting ad placements in the top results), it's that they've stopped making it not suck. Websites have always aggressively SEO-hacked with completely garbage strategies (like adding 70,000 meta tags to their HTML), and early Google cared a lot about this and aggressively counter SEO-hacked by constantly changing the algorithm to detect false positive matches. Nowadays, they don't care, and all of the original search engine employees have probably left, so the SEO hijackers are free to do w/e they want to shove their pollution to the top of the results.

[@IskandarAlex2]

Exactly, can you imagine that articles nowadays are just botted or paid writer that doesn't even have insights about the topic they are writing?

[@iLikeMyOwnPosts]

Those of us in SEO know that this is a very, very misguided comment. Google is worse than ever, and it’s not because they’re not trying to block SEO tactics, but because they keep making things to be more and more guided to what benefits them… the recent helpful content update is a great example of them trying to battle spam content and messing things up for legit sites, as the way they applied the update means fair/non spammy SEO tactics were penalized too.

[@ivant5054]

​@@iLikeMyOwnPostslet me rephrase what you said "those of us involved in mass murder aren't the ones to blame, it's the cops that have been getting worse and worse" seriously, the audacity of this b%ch

[@deaddevil7]

Meta tags aren't even that relevant

[@CykPykMyk]

sounds like duckduckgo is the new way i guess

[@eanoxd]

"why does everything get made worse" This perfectly encapsulates my feelings about everything lmao

[@danielplayspiano]

Overexaggeration and the recency bias. Two powerful and misleading thing.

[@danielplayspiano]

@Ruben-fn5li you misspelled yes. And no, capitalism has helped billions despite it's huge faults.

[@mykal4779]

​@@danielplayspiano yes so did feudalism, but humanity is outgrowing it and it's really showing its age

[@joshplaysdrums2143]

my theory is that companies hate feeling like they are wasting money on employees "just" maintaining a good service so they have to find ways to make the product worse to justify paying the developers...so yeah capitalism.

[@wturber]

@@danielplayspiano Yup. Google does do things now in ways I prefer less. They also do some crap I very much dislike. But most large corporations do that. But is it overall worse for most people. Probably not.

[@duality4y]

I am an embedded software engineer and google is hell when it comes to looking up how things work on a technical level or giving you good resources

[@weberito]

Mind to tell us what is not hell?

[@duality4y]

@@weberito wish i knew

[@kneesnap1041]

it didn't used to be so bad. I've been having the same issues, but for more obscure tech, like discontinued formats. I think part of the issue is so many of the sites that used to have relevant information have gone down. But Google has gotten worse at highlighting old forum posts from 2002 which are still there and have exactly what I'm looking for...

[@michaeldebellis4202]

Really? I use it all the time for Python and other tech questions and usually find good answers on sites like Stack Overflow. I agree it’s gotten worse but I think calling it useless is kind of extreme. It helps to use good keywords and remember that you will almost always want to scroll past the first few hits.

[@xmlthegreat]

Hell, searching for parts now throws up those basically-a-scam sites that take the crawler query and dynamically add it to a nonsense website that contains no actual information, so google places that junk site at the top of the results.

[@diegomo1413]

Me: *searches for horchata recipe* Google: “CAN I PLZ KNOW YOUR LOCATION?!!?!?!1!!1?”

[@gekkkoincroe]

Oh boi .... Dis you check permissions ? Google and chrome and assistant

[@rosesapling72]

​@@gekkkoincroe yeah, location was turned off. thats how we want it.

[@rayvega3163]

Yeah I really find it really suspicious they kept asking for my location when I looked up something that isn’t even related to location or anything.

[@ivant5054]

​@@rayvega3163it starts to become related when you think it in terms of how can they sell that information to someone if you search for "lemonade recipe" Google will sell you lemonade providers, or Google will sell lemonade providers your location so that they know where to allocate their logistics and save a buck, or sell the information to beverage companies telling them that X place prefers one type of beverage over Y place everything starts to make more sense when you ask yourself "how can they sell this info"

[@Dargonhuman]

@@rosesapling72 Websites routinely ignore that setting, though, and still ping your IP location. The problem with that is, at least for me, my ISP's main server is nowhere near my actual physical location, so any location based searches bring back results for where the server is located, which is over 100 miles from where I actually live so I need to manually input my location to get accurate results, or in the case of websites ignoring my search preferences, changing the location manually.

[@hagus42]

Friends: Google sucks for a simple reason. They're optimizing for two variables: existence, and shareholder value. Putting aside existence, since they have no natural predators (hey! MS was slapped with antitrust just for bundling a browser!) … the success of absolutely any search change will be measured based on the revenue gained from whoring your information - yes you, the user of Google - out to advertising partners. Anything that negatively affects revenue will be unceremoniously squashed like a stinkbug. It's a mistake to think of Google search results as being "the results of a query on the internet performed by Google". That is not true and never has been. You're seeing the output of a complex algorithm performing a delicate balancing act: weighing your engagement with their service against the value advertisers can derive from that engagement. This algorithm will invariably converge on preferring Britannica and "sciencedirect" because clicks on those chucklefucks will result in ad impressions for Google. Conversely, every click directed towards Wikipedia is throwing away money. There's probably some information theory entropy shit we can toss in here? Some witty aphorisms that turn out to have some mathematical meat on the bones? Am I depressed that GPT is now a better search engine than Google? Kinda definitely yes I am. The first time I used Google it had a "BETA" background wallpaper. The only thing worse than Google sucking is remembering a time when it did not.

[@AustrianEconomist]

No. Google sucks because they’re optimizing for ESG and letting politics get in the way of actual results.

[@hunter7643]

aka capitalism lol

[@declup]

​@@hunter7643-- Not generic capitalism necessarily. Oligopolistic capitalism.

[@raspberryjam]

@@declup The incentive to do shit like this still exists if you're a smaller player. And even still, generic capitalism inspires you to be a bigger player, have less competition

[@declup]

@@raspberryjam -- Maybe, but the idea is that others might not be jerks. And even if they are jerks, their jerkiness cancels each other out and is to their disadvantage.

[@seijirou302]

I'd be okay with normalizing just going to wikipedia instead of google and searching there. Yeah it isn't perfect but Google never was. I'll probably get the relevant page right away, and it will have references. Fuck it, that's what I'm doing now. "Wikipedia It" "Angela sent me"

[@noiseisgold3n42]

you can modify your searches to default to wikipedia's domain

[@ELFanatic]

Firefox let's you set wikipedia (en) as your default search engine.

[@ELFanatic]

@@noiseisgold3n42 Firefox let's you choose wikipedia by default

[@oliverwilson11]

Browsers including Chrome allow you to set search engine keywords. I type w, space, title, enter into the search bar and it and it goes to the page with that title on Wikipedia. And you can set it up for other sites that you regularly search as well

[@whocares_yes]

Or use a different search engine. It is time to abandon google. Personally switched to Ecosia, never been happier. Besides for images, google still excels in that regard.

[@hastyscorpion]

I dunno, I feel like saying “ I am obviously just looking for Wikipedia” is not actually that obvious. You don’t type “wiki” or “Wikipedia” after your search term. And Google quite literally gave you the formula you were looking for. The Wikipedia article you think should be the first option is also not title “coefficient of friction” so why would it be the first result? If you google “ Friction” Wikipedia is the first result. I agree google has gotten worse over the years, but this is an extremely poor example.

[@laser4beam430]

Spot on, if i was looking up this term the first result is exactly what I would want to see

[@Plain--Jane]

this would be valid criticism, if Google hadn't been putting wikipedia links at the top of Google searches for fucking YEARS they've changed the behaviour of google searches and it results in a user experience that is, generally, worse It's kinda hard to fault user error when the user in question -hasn't changed their behaviour-

[@egglyph]

Brother, do you know the difference between "a coefficient" and "a formula"?

[@luckylanno]

There are definitely better results than Wikipedia for this. It's probably the worst website to actually study math and science since concepts aren't broken down pedagogically. A lecture series on a college website would probably be best.

[@whocares_yes]

Then why do other search engines bring Wikipedia to the top? and not Google? Wikipedia does not run adverts, no DoubleClick, unlike other websites. In other words, it is more favorable for Google to show links containing DoubleClick ads in the pages.

[@Strakester]

KZbin is just as bad. Search for a remix/cover of your favorite song, and you'll get: - About 5-10 remixes and covers of you favorite song (what you're actually looking for) - The original song is randomly mixed in there somewhere, even though you're not looking for it - After every 3-5 search results, you have to see 3-5 recommended videos that have nothing to do with your search - After giving you 5-10 instances of what you're actually looking for, it just gives up, and starts showing you random popular songs. Taylor Swift and stuff. Because you searched for music, and Taylor Swift is music, so that's what you want, right? The scary thing is, even if your favorite song is so popular that it absolutely has hundreds of remixes and covers, KZbin Search will still only show you about 10. All the rest are effectively deleted from existence, because the search algorithm refuses to show them to you.

[@kneesnap1041]

I've been having this problem but for finding footage of lost media, and lost tech that isn't documented anywhere but KZbin. It's very frustrating

[@BlisaBLisa]

youtube really does suck now its so much harder to find what i want. the search results are full of a bunch of unrelated shit and also cartel killings for some reason

[@markifi]

have you tried adding "before:2016"

[@wheresthesauce3886]

I was once making coffee and overengineering everything as usual, and needed to know the density of water so I could use my brand new scale to get an extremely accurate measurement of how much water I was about to boil (and because my measuring cups were dirty and I didn't feel like washing them at the moment). Now, I happen to know off the top of my head that the density of water is 8.33 lbs/gal NTP because I work with large industrial HVAC systems for a living, but that wasn't the most useful form when I just need to measure out 8 cups of water. Of course I ran a simple calculation and got 1.04 oz. /fl. oz. (don't you love the avoirdupois measurement system? It would have been very satisfying if 1 fl oz of water weighed 1 oz, and given how close 1.04 is to 1, I suspect it originally was meant to, but unfortunately we're not allowed to have good things. EDIT: Just found out that 1 fl. oz. of water is indeed 1 oz by weight at 212 degrees F, so it makes sense that it is 1.04 at NTP). Being sleep- and coffee-deprived I wanted the reassurance and small dopamine hit of seeing my calculated number in the google search results. To my surprise google suggested in the little special box thing "factual" searches tend to have now, that the density of water was actually 0.959 oz. /fl. oz., which I recognized as being the reciprocal of my number. Still sleep- and coffee-deprived I ran the calculations once and twice again, got my original number both times, and ended up writing out the dimensional analysis. Confident that I was actually right, I looked at the link that google used to feed my LIES. This: www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10769/density-water. Some random post from some random forum from 2009. Thankfully, the actual answer was further down in the thread. This whole example highlights how shit Google results are and especially their suggested answers for "factual" searches. Google fed me the wrong answer, made me question my identity, and is no doubt responsible for making humanity just a little more ignorant. This is the absolute state of "modern" technology. In fact, you may be able to replicate my google search if you search "density of water oz /fl oz." I just tried it now and it fed me the wrong number from the same website again. To the forum's credit, some moderator has made an edit to the original post stating that there is some "disagreement" about this number, which edit has fortunately made it to the google result by virtue of its proximity to the erroneous number. But does anyone really think that people who just simply search for the "density of water oz /fl oz" are going to even read the text surrounding the supposed number their looking for? And certainly almost none of them will go as far as to actually click on the link and read the "disagreement" in the forum post form 2009. Google sucks. Don't trust it. Also, for what it's worth, I'm really not a coffee snob. I use an automatic percolator and drink Folgers black.

[@sinkpisserpro]

As a fellow non-coffee snob, the minute you start doing calculations for yer morning brew… it’s no longer breakfast time, but snob time.

[@Deathwatch05]

I just googled "density of water oz /fl oz." and got the same snippetted wrong result you did. Fuck all of this. I hate it.

[@classypotato9255]

Isnt the density of water just 1kg/L? Just convert units

[@wheresthesauce3886]

@@classypotato9255 that's not the point.

[@classypotato9255]

@@wheresthesauce3886 yeah i got the point, just seems pretty easy to remember as an engineer, do american STEM students not learn everything in metric units?

[@gordonwiley2006]

The reason people use a search engine is to find what they want. Not what an algorithm arbitrarily thinks you want, not what a shareholder wants you to find, and not what other people settled for when they took the same or a similar journey. I do alot of real dumb research for role playing game writing, and since about peak pandemic it has been impossible to get answers to obscure questions without sifting through piles of trash.

[@wturber]

So, what is the reason a search engine exists? It is only partially there to help you find what you want. And that's where things go awry.

[@usopenplayer]

My theory: I think the original folks that really understand the core algorithms don't work on it anymore. The system is complicated, and is trained on a lot of data, it's hard to mess it at this point. Google grows, committees take over, they can't adapt quickly enough, deals get made -> spammers, SEO, and paid deals start taking over. Their data sets have become infected with perverse incentives. Anyone who actually cares doesn't have the access to change the system for the better. Good people will take their ideas to a meeting with dozens to hundreds of people and get shot down because some vice president has a pet project and hangs out with the right people. We are all noticing though, at least those of us who pay attention.

[@trucid2]

If they relied on their algorithm their search results would be way better. Instead, they throw a massive amount of manpower to curate virtually all search results.

[@ELFanatic]

if you look at google's ad revenues, it's gone up a lot over the last few years. Seems to me their prioritize who ever is paying them more ads. I'm sure there was some of that always but it's gotten to the point where it's not usable anymore.

[@andybrice2711]

My related hypothesis: They're desperately trying to build an OpenAI competitor. And they've pivoted all their resources to that. Neglecting search.

[@trucid2]

@@andybrice2711 The degradation in google's search has been ongoing for at least a decade.

[@jensknudsen4222]

Google: Helping you find anything, except what you're looking for.

[@ludviglidstrom6924]

😂

[@Pallethands]

this is why i add the word wiki to the end of so many searches

[@chairwood]

then u get the coefficient of friction fandom page

[@dsgowo]

this is why i often just use wikipedia's search

[@burtcolk]

It’s because all those pages actually have “coefficient of friction” in their titles. Whereas the Wikipedia article is just called “friction,” and only has “coefficient of friction” in the body. It seems like perfectly good policy on Google’s part to prioritize the actual names of pages. It’s certainly exactly the behavior I expect from it. Why would you expect anything else?

[@crookycumbles]

People really out here defending the mega-corp.

[@burtcolk]

​@@crookycumbles I'm not "really out here" saying anything about Google as a company. I'm just really out here saying that these seem like correct search results. That's the topic. Do you have any actual opinion about that, or do you just love shaking your head in disgust? People really out here being performatively exasperated.

[@katzea.a7880]

​@@crookycumblesIf you want wikipedia to appear at the top then just write "wiki" at the end of the search omfg

[@felixthehuman]

@@katzea.a7880 @burtcolk I think what you guys are missing is that algorithms that use metrics like "has search term in title" were used by the search engines that came before google and derided for being just as likely to lead to, say, a sixth grader's book report, as a useful result. One of of Google's big breakthroughs was prioritizing results on a topic by how many other pages on a topic pointed to that page, which is why Wikipedia results used to be so near the top.

[@jimjmcd]

Things get worse (for users) when algorithms switch from enhancing the utility of a product to enhancing its profitability. It isn't just Google--look around, and you'll see it everywhere. Do you remember going to grocery stores and being able to go directly to the product you're looking for? Now you won't find it till you've looked at every product in the the store, many of which have no business being there.

[@Dargonhuman]

My wife and I love casseroles that use french fried onions, but no one store keeps the damn things in the same spot more than two weeks in a row. Sometimes they're with the canned veggies, sometimes they're with the salad fixings, sometimes they're in the seasonal aisle, a few times they were with baking accessories for some unknown reason. It's even worse for the smaller items that they put on those hanging clip strips - it's complete anarchy where those things are placed in the store.

[@Elfcheg]

Imagine building an AI bot on top of broken Google's search results. Imagine people actually using it at work. That would ber terrible, right?

[@ludviglidstrom6924]

Has anyone tried to search on KZbin? That’s a real horror movie.

[@neamupanselutelor7309]

I think that on Chrome you can type the letter 'w' followed by a space in your top URL bar and it will turn into Wikipedia search, but I am not sure. I personally use Firefox and it has the option to make Wikipedia your default search engine.

[@trucid2]

You can add pretty much any engine in a similar way.

[@colbyboucher6391]

Duck Duck Go has a system like this where you can type !w or !yt or whatever, all the codes are user-submitted so they've got everything you can think of and then some.

[@unaliveeveryonenow]

I just add "wiki" to the search term

[@grugiv]

just tried to search it now, the wikipedia article isn't even on there

[@qw3rty629]

its incredibly terrible for art referencing ever since the rise of generative art yes, you can use -ai in the search but i really miss *not* having to do that

[@niamhleeson3522]

They've now built AIs on top of large language models that will scroll through the first 10 garbage results from a search engine to find what you're actually looking for.

[@machineheadslump]

Got any links

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

@@machineheadslump "phind" does something kinda like that (and cites the results)

[@benprytherch9202]

That is hilarious. How long until this also gets gamed?

[@sajeucettefoistunevaspasme]

that's why I use bling bla bla bla but really bing is really useful because of the amount of information that show when you do the search the easy to see sources, the fact that wikipedia is ALWAYS at the left of the screen with a few titles and sentences from the wikipedia article, and the "see also" section which can sometimes be useful

[@twistidclowns]

Google will give me what I want if I reword it a few times... Or randomly on an unrelated search. Most results anymore are auto-generated garbage I only use google if I am out of ideas which site might have what I want.

[@awesomecat]

Even worse is when Google forces you to do Recaptcha, which unlike HCaptcha isn't even a real captcha at all.

[@ruikasasfixer]

im tired of them asking for my location everytime i search something up, like im jst trying to use the calculator real quick 😭😭

[@HebaruSan]

It may have gotten confused by "coefficient of" since it's not in the page title. I tried searching just now for "friction", and that Wikipedia page is the top link (after a definition).

[@oldcowbb]

i don't know is it personalized or what, it shows me a bunch of research papers before the wiki page

[@Igor-ug1uo]

I just add "wiki" to my search every time I want to see the Wikipedia article so I don't have to scroll down.

[@CineWeekly]

I'm definitely turning to Britannica before Wikipedia.

[@_sophies]

I have Wikipedia in my bookmarks bar for this reason. May as well just go straight there instead of via Google

[@ythirteen4018]

Can you explain why you think science direct is trash? I use it quite often in uni

[@krokkoguy]

This is not inherently an issue with google specifically, its a wider problem that applies to *all* search engines (you can verify this yourself with bing, duckduckgo, etc, with the same prompt from the video, you will see roughly the same result.) No, the issue is systemic, in that the environment that search engines foster encourages abusing search engine optimization (SEO). Search results across the board are clogged with irrelevant results, not because of some agenda from google, but because the creators of those irrelevant websites abuse SEO to dishonestly appear more relevant than they are to search engines.

[@btvoidx]

Tried duckduckgo, Wikipedia article on Friction is summarised and put above search results, and the same page is second in search results. DDG works quite well, never had a problem with it.

[@ian_simbotin]

Speaking of Unhingement, it occurred to me that the explanation for (or resolution of) Fermi's paradox about how come no advanced alien civilization is visiting Earth isn't that they reached our stage of technology (namely, building of nuclear weapons) and they've blown themselves to smithereens; instead, they simply reached the Age of Unhingement when everything turns to shit and the civilization fizzles out into garbage.

[@junkbucket50]

Wikipedia was deliberately ranked lower in their page rank metric as it frequently ranked higher than brands websites who paid for advertising

[@dylandoh6495]

Because the love of money.

[@N0d4chi]

Google is getting progressively worse. Used to look up stuff for civil engineering, hardly find anything useful anymore. Tragic

[@divinegon4671]

Same problem, different subject. Anytime you google something along the lines of: why does [insert any illicit drug] feel good? Or.. “where does meth come from?” ….. questions that any young curious person would have … the results are nothing but REHAB ADVERTISEMENTS. It’s actually difficult to get direct, to the point answers to any drug related questions. I know most people might not care, but sometimes people are just fascinated by drugs/chemicals and how they work. I did not used to be like this. I remember sometime around 2014,15 I was not getting these results.

[@ginkgobilobatree]

I always add something to indicate what I want - "coefficient of friction wiki" or "Cousins IMDB" to make sure it's near the top 3 of results. The top, sadly, is always something sponsored.

[@Bananamann]

In their antitrust trial it came out that they’re intentionally making searches worse so you stay on for a few seconds more, or search something else. All for that ad money

[@TwoLeggedTriceratops]

I think you know why. Gotta be green on those quarterly earnings reports. Just don’t look in the rear view mirror, the red tire tread marks are the blood of their own users and others. Maybe one day people will say enough is enough, until then, it’s full speed ahead in the most risk-averse way possible!

[@Ervine4]

If you search for “friction” the actual title of the page Wikipedia is the first result. It’s not some conspiracy

[@snowman7514]

lmao i searched that and the top results were english-chinese dictionaries cuz my region, true tho

[@Wingsfanacc]

It still shouldnt be this hard

[@sebbog]

why does "Hello" show up a song first and not a definition?

[@radicant7283]

Got comfortable and stagnated. Guess it's duck duck go now

[@Victoriacatchesfakes]

Funny how this pops up when "Ya Girl Renae" has been saying this for 6 years. Its crazy to me how many on KZbinrs are just now seeing this. She was right the whoile time.

[@dimitriisov1262]

I actually keep a list of things Google completely fails at, one time when I searched what the world's smallest animal was the top result was " frog. " Another time I wanted to know the total number of satellites that it ever launched and I asked for it and it responded with 255 as the top result and no matter how I phrased it it would always do that number because it was talking about a specific year. In one particular annoying example I wanted to know if any animals had evolved to resist radioactivity but no matter how many different ways I tried to search it it kept giving me results for " adaptive radiation, " which is a completely unrelated topic in biology.

[@daruyami]

frog

[@ivant5054]

I find it hilarious that I know answers more related to these searches than those google is able to provide, but I know them from unrelated topics that google itself provides smallest animals studied from searching stuff on tartigrades number of satellites in orbit from searching how many starlink satellites have been launched, are operational and how many have re entered the atmosphere and burnt evolution towards radiation resistance by searching how flora and fauna has changed around the chernobyl powerplant and how there's mold growing inside that is able to use ionizing radiation specifically for metabolizing nutrients

[@xmlthegreat]

I believe Ed Zitron covered this recently, and proved that Google is actively making search worse in order to increase engagement times with websites.

[@mrbrightside3440]

wait, why is science direct a bad website?

[@laser4beam430]

I dunno, I use it and find it useful most of the time especially since i think it has more peer reviewed stuff than wikipedia which this video claims to be the best of all websites.

[@testacals]

Britinica is still popular and has good info. Google doesn't have to give you a wikipedia link. It doesn't know that you want a wikipedia link unless you specifically told it. The first result was good and even had the formula most people would want. This is such an absurd criticism

[@hotbeefman69]

I learned 15 years ago that Google is all about who pays the most. My mom paid for google ads for her business and then set up a bot to click on competitors' ads so that it would use up all their ad money. All about the $$$$.

[@harleyspeedthrust4013]

your mom is hella based for that

[@declup]

Do ads even work? I know everybody assumes they do, but do they really?

[@oceanb0rn05]

​@@declup yes, they do. There's a right wing think tank here in Brazil called "Brasil Paralelo" that made their SEO so powerful that you can look up stuff "Adams Family" and end up on their site. Weirdly enough, their SEO budged is higher than Meta's and Google's.

[@kneesnap1041]

Careful, that's called click fraud, and it's illegal.

[@hotbeefman69]

@@kneesnap1041 Oh it was over 20 years ago, I'm sure she's in the clear. 🤣

[@bkbland1626]

That's how capitalism works....Every time.

[@yerbadeldiablo6751]

why is science direct a thrash website?

[@6754bettkitty]

Google seems to be prioritizing making money than having quality products.

[@RickMacmurchie]

Just don’t use google, bing uses Wikipedia for its direct answer and usually has Wikipedia as the top or near top result

[@keelo-byte]

I remember when my complaint was google isnt useful for finding info anymore, just for selling you crap. Now it's not even useful for that.

[@buybuydandavis]

LLMs are probably sucking up their engineering. Search is probably considered legacy tech.

[@RC568]

I hate when I google a word and I see movies or other types of media instead

[@izachu904]

the container in the right is literally a brief wikipedia info

[@Tumbolisu]

the container on the right literally says britannica

[@MapSpawn]

To answer your question, "Why does everything get worse?" It is called the engineering dilemma. I'm actually trying to solve this problem with a solution in physics. Part of the issue is lack of stake, and lack of physical. Every digital item that you cannot have stake in that has no physical counterpart will experience heightened entropy in the form of engineering dilemma. Believe it or not, entropy can manifest inside of our decision making abilities.

[@Ethanthecrazy]

To answer your question: to enrich shareholders.

[@bjornikd]

Well yeah, because the wikipidia website has its title as Friction, not the coefficient of friction, so its pushed less.

[@nocturne6320]

Google was always dogshit, since they modify the search results order based on ads etc.

[@jayframe929]

Nowadays you need an AI to navigate search results, but the same way marketing has ruined search through SEO, they will ruin AI to sell more garbage.

[@oviattexnihila7397]

Dead on. I have stopped using Google and most search engines for that matter because of this reason. I can't do a quick search anymore and find useful information.

[@smileyp4535]

Duck duck go. Duck duck go. Duck duck go.

[@kylezo]

DDG is terrible and has been for years. It was cool in 2013 I guess before it was purchased by Ms, now it's less secure than an incognito tab lmao

[@talideon]

​@@kylezoThat's not true. DDG is a privately held company. Personally, I find its search results to be significantly better than Google's currently, though that's frankly a very low bar.

[@the_legendary_poseidon]

Trust me, we are getting dumber by the day. Tiktok was just the catalyst we all required and now shit has really started to take up speed

[@shantanukulkarni8883]

It's not that Wikipedia is intentionally getting pushed down but other websites simply have a better SEO. Google also tries to give chance to other websites to rank in top results whenever possible. So Google doesn't want a monopoly over top results. It's their way of keeping things fair.

[@etherealceleste]

Google always sucked. Google was never a "search" engine. Google has always been a "popularity" engine. The results have always been based on "link back", aka popularity.

[@felderup]

google has sucked since metacrawler was a thing, it's a long tradition of suckage. i use dogpile now...

[@fgvcosmic6752]

I thought this was just me, thank you for validating this for us all

[@Hyposonic]

Why didn't you just search on Wikipedia if that's specifically what you want? What you did is like going to a used car dealer and hoping they have the brand of car you want.

[@Boardwoards]

it's called piecemeal social engineering, popper did more than swans.

[@DeadlyBlaze]

Can someone explain the hate around Sciencedirect? The only time I've seen it is when someone uploaded a human genome claiming to be a dox on some person and that's it.

[@sunsetdev]

If this is a serious question, the actual answer is “people like me.” Or rather, people who do the job I used to do before the job I do now, which is only slightly less morally bankrupt. It’s search engine optimization, but it’s also the removal of blue links in favor of “integrated” advertising. Hey, what do you call an ad that’s not marked as an ad? I don’t know either. What’s the difference between SEO and ads? Does the distinction even matter?

[@btrenninger1]

The answer to this why is because an unspecified, but a specific set of people want it to be worse.

[@gteixeira]

0:25 What a roast lol

[@anthonynelson6671]

Holy **** yes! I thought it was only me for a while thinking this about googling stuffs now! The results provided used to be so much better years ago. Thank you for making this, and, yes I agree with the being sad that it has gotten worse for the searcher.

[@LilfoxTheHybridHylian5967]

Not only that, its crashing people's phones, lots of ads, greedy with money and trying to charge you for ridiculous things now

[@NorroTaku]

Duck duck go gang unite it sucks too, but at least its private 😂

[@drachefly]

at least the top link does answer the question…

[@CaptainLian]

ESPECIALLY using google on mobile is trash. I was trying to research on bike related fixes, and it kept showing me ads of bikes instead. Searching anything on mobile just bombards you with ads instead of showing information I actually need. I wish "Don't be evil" was google's motto again.

[@aharris3600]

Most of my google searches have Wikipedia or Reddit on the end of them for exactly this reason. Reddit is still ok for trying to solve software/smartphone/multimedia related issues.

[@proboscideank.7069]

Google search results are useful if you want to see a ranked list of links that make Google the most money when you click them.

[@frag0638]

Because wikipedia doesn’t have Google Ads inventory

[@BarvGwydh]

This is a very very tame example, it's unimaginably bad and useless unless you are searching for a very particular thing. Same with KZbin, and even then, it can be hard to find a very particular video. Try searching anything that comes to mind on KZbin and scrolling through 20 videos, it's pure trash.

[@opufy]

complacency is why, we gave too much reliance on google and one day they can pull the rug from under our feet.

[@luckygamer9197]

didn't work when i searched for the derivative

[@laser4beam430]

Not to defend google as a whole but I dont think this is a good example. Most of the people looking up the coefficent of friction just want the equation to find it which is provided at the first result. Most people do not want to read the history behind it, for that reason I think this is a good case and probrally not the best example for your point.

[@talideon]

Even then, Google isn't helping. The first result was a Britannia link to a page with a worse version of what's on the Wikipedia page. And coefficients of friction aren't straightforward things: you can't just plug stuff into a formula and get out an answer, but rather have to figure it out experimentally. That's why this is actually a _good_ example.

[@yxyk-fr]

"because reasons"

[@kylezo]

The answer, as usual, is capitalism and profit motive. Search engines have largely made themselves deprecated through commodification of traffic for ad sales

[@gitstautusgitstutasgitstatus]

It was magic, now it's garbage.

[@oldcowbb]

YES, and they always show shits like albums and companies with the same name before the actual thing, they do this even for wiki pages, it's always an obscure album and they also love to rephrase you keyword using synonyms, pro tip to avoid this, use the double quote to search for the exact phrase

[@JimSendre]

Wow! I just tried it on my computer and Wikipedia doesn't even show up. Simple wiki shows up but there is no Wikipedia link at all!

[@TrappedInFloor]

They've sucked for years now on almost too many levels to list. The point here is just one aspect of it. Not sure I agree that Wikipedia should be the top result for inquiries, maybe for for most scientific and mathematical queries, but Wikipedia also sucks much the same as Google on the whole. People need to learn that many search engines exist, they often provide different and sometime interesting results and you should use multiple for any search you want to make.

[@brys555]

I'm kinda surprised it didn't spew out tonnes of offers with braking pads or some lubricants, like they are usually do when I try searching for something. Looking for datasheet of an IC? You'll get shops selling it. Or alli-like scam sites. Looking what is vegan leather made of? You guessed it - shops. You type 4 words and it ignores 2 or 3 of them, then it looks for shops selling whatever is related to the remaining two.

[@LinucNerd]

Google has been unusable for years, at least 7. And it's only gotten worse and worse

[@limcry1919]

Google search always was horrible, just the worst search engine.