What Happened To Google Search?

[@enricotartarotti]

Learn how I ACTUALLY made my most successful videos (such as this one) with hands-on, practical behind the scenes breakdowns: www.enricotartarotti.com/storybehind?

[@roxaskinghearts]

they mute common sense while promotes hate

[@notsmartist]

I use duck duck go, it's based on Google search but finds what you want

[@rainbomg]

I just don’t think _more_ tech is the answer. We need less tech. We need more interaction with _life_ both literal and figurative. The amount of time we spend touching inanimate objects and not living our lives isn’t good, and it’s only increasing. I think we are sacrificing our lives to touch machines because so much work is going into making us believe they are *real* and in turn it’s making us _less_ so. Go touch grass, everybody. We need a path forward where geniuses aren’t all sucked up by tech and in turn profit. We need to connect to people and not numbers. We need to stop maximizing, maxxing, and mass producing. Selling things might be profitable but is it the only thing that matters? Cui bono? We are at a precipice where we have tools and we still remember what it was like before they became more than just _tools_ and we can still build a way forward that spares us the brutal reality we are moving at breakneck speed to create for ourselves. I guess the future depends on how many people opt for what’s real and warm vs what’s artificial and cool. Nihilism is easy, sincerity is difficult. I believe we are better than this.

[@DudeSoWin]

Down with Reddit.

[@sportschad]

Back in the mid 2000s, Google felt like a library to me. Now it feels like a shopping mall.

[@rob14]

But for things you don’t want to buy!

[@Ubu987]

Soon, it will feel like a prison.

[@tailkinker1972]

@@Ubu987Soon is now.

[@atklm1]

Back a few years more, we had encyclopedia and thesaurus and maps on CD-rom. Wikipedia was launched 2001 and it took a decade before it surpassed books and CD-roms in useful article quantity, quality and reliability, and with faster updates than any company-upheld business could ever do. And ad-free. Global community working and moderating around the clock for free and paying everything.

[@sportschad]

@@atklm1 Oh man. I remember my dad giving me Grolier and Encarta CDs when I was a kid.

[@zelkuta]

Glad someone has noticed, I thought I was going crazy. KZbin search results are also basically useless. The quality of search results is almost as bad yahoo search used to be back in the day. Google is increasingly becoming more useless by the day. I for one would like to see a user ability to tune and customize the search algorithm.

[@Kromiball]

@@haobinlu THAT'S A BROWSER

[@fadipola7533]

@@Kromiball yes but they have a native search engine, it's 80% compared to Google

[@Kromiball]

@@fadipola7533 Ah, I see... I've never heard of it.

[@thegoodolddays9193]

Google has a tendency to latch onto one word and only show results for that. It's weird.

[@elloochador69]

Gave up on google, chat gpt nowadays.

[@samsibbens8164]

You haven't mentioned it but a lot of people in the comments have: Google search has thrown specificity completely out the window. It ignores the order of the words you put entirely even when using "quotes". It completely ignores punctuation like periods or commas too. It doesn't matter if you're looking for X, if Y is more popular it'll show you Y

[@swdshchck]

YES! This is driving me nuts. You used to be able to use AND, OR, or an exact quote, but now it treats everything as AND or OR. Quotation marks are completely ignored. I don't understand why this is happening? I remember when Google was a good guy. Money corrupts, I guess.

[@Robodie]

And wildcard, boolean...basically the reasons Google worked somewhat decently. At least I'm not alone here. Hi, guys and gals.

[@OuroborosChoked]

I feel like this comment section is a support group. 😆 I've noticed it too! Exact wording doesn't matter. It'll search for whatever it feels is close enough to what you wrote, even when that results in the opposite of what you wanted. I've noticed times where it will ignore the minus operator, making certain searches completely impossible.

[@Robodie]

@@OuroborosChoked That's it, I'm hugging you now. We are going to get through this... Drinks, anyone?

[@davidzoller9617]

Well, I'm not an expert, but the more search results you have to click, the more ads they can throw at you. I'm also getting annoyed by the search-results. Maybe I will search by Metager again, used to be the best before Googele. The Russian one also might be very good.

[@PiraticOctopus]

What concerns me the most is how quickly it’s gotten as frustrating to use as it is. Five years ago I was able to google search for a pdf of the manual for a specific piece of equipment, so I could find the ID number for a replacement part, and I found it fairly easily. But trying to search anything that requires such a level of specificity nowadays is a miserable experience. It’s so frustrating knowing that the information you want is (probably) out there and NOT having a good way to find it.

[@darknesspretends991]

True. Finding anything like engineering, deep technical stuff, datasheets is a pain. For instance, if you don't know nothing about exact pattern like amd64 programmers manual and looking for interrupts logic/architecture, you'll stuck on pseudo technical websites that will teach you to install updates, do sfc scannow, reset your windows or buy a new PC. I hate it when you literally cannot find anything useful about windows even when you took some logs, put service name in quotes etc, but those "solutions" to simply go for a new PC lol are shown up because google makes internet friendly for newbies

[@SingmetheSea]

This, but for socializing. I miss being able to find people with similar interests, social skills, and level of intelligence. I'm not trying to make out like I'm amazing by any means.. but I know how to use punctuation, paragraphs, and the three variations of "there", and sometimes I even like reading for fun. I always loved being around creative and interesting people, many of whom were more driven and confident than myself. Now life feels so incredibly lonely, and I can't even use the most wonderful search & communication tool ever created to talk to other people. And now that more people than ever are meeting their romantic partners online, there's ZERO reason you shouldn't be able to search for the right person efficiently. Yet there isn't an app or site online now that'll let you search by interests and worldview. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I can't believe I mostly missed out, and I can't believe how fast everything became trash. Wish I could've forseen this.

[@michaelarakova7259]

Hi! That’s odd… I moved to a new place recently and was able to find manuals of all my home machines in the same way, brand and ID got me to the pdf easily. I’m just putting this out there as it’s a clear difference with your experience but I wonder why… I do believe you, but I’m just a bit baffled

[@hopeseekr]

It's like the Altavista days in 2003 after Yahoo's results died due to overreliance on Mozilla Directory (remember that?!). Then a new young startup came that revolutionized my life for the next 18 years (Google!!) Not since 2022, however...

[@kentslocum]

Same! I needed to find the user manual for a microwave that curiously didn't have a "Cook Time" button. Instead, all I got were shopping links to modern microwaves made by the same brand. Google wasn't even trying to find the exact model number I typed in quotation marks!

[@dubesor]

I work in the tech industry and have been using search engines since 1998 (Astalavista), and I am an advanced "googler" who knows pretty much all the technical syntax and search term refinements. In the last 3 or so years I noticed I can no longer find what I am looking for and result quality dropped massively. My advanced searches with exact refined syntax get utterly ignored and Google switched from displaying what the user asked for, to displaying what Google wants you to see - no matter the input. This is EXTREMELY noticeable if you have used search engines for multiple years and observed their functionality. As a result I barely ever use Google anymore, I was already disliking Google for obvious privacy reason but not even getting good results was the nail in the coffin. Nowadays I am using mostly searx, ddg and startpage but even so, the results aren't as good as they could be in prime Google. SEO has a lot to do with this, but it's even more so on the side of greed over functionality.

[@MegaShrooom]

Ddg uses Google as its source and lies about user privacy. Don't bother with it.

[@chrismullin8304]

I have been hammering nails since ‘98, and desperately need advice, on the best way to use/acquire a VPN I can trade you for advice on how to fix things in your home! -Chris

[@mcchristenson]

@@chrismullin8304 for android, apple or pc?

[@Dancestar1981]

Absolutely I’ve noticed it

[@CakePrincessCelestia]

Google literally turned into a product search...

[@TheToxiss]

There used to be a meme about the 2nd page of Google, that you never have to click that far. For the last year or two, I sometimes have to search on 4-5th page to get some proper results. The first page is usually just ads or some generic AI generated content.

[@Shonicheck]

Yeah... When i have more than one page of resulsts i am ectstic, since i have more to choose from.. Sadly it is way more frequent for me not to have resulsts or to have very few in my searches. i remember the days when i used to have thousands of resulsts if not millions on more popular topics, given they very less relevant on average, but it was waaay easier to find something and you rarely hit a wall of "what else do i do to find shit" all you had to do is just keep searching...

[@ghyslainabel]

I remember Alta Vista that bragged about giving the most results. Reducing the web from 1 billion to 1 million pages was not useful. Enter Google, that, at the time, decided that the goal of a search engine was not to provide the most results, but to provide the most useful results. Google became so good that for a time, the saying was "if it not on the first page it does not exist." Now we are back into Alta Vista territory, where the useful results can be anywhere.

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

At least they still have pages. So many sites have done away with pages in favor of doom scrolling friendly pages that keep adding more and more results as you get to the bottom of the ones that you've got. Good luck skipping to page 20 of the thread if you know that's where you want to go without having to load the previous 19 pages worth of content.

[@JohnKerbaugh]

More pages more ads!

[@stevengill1736]

Is there a way one can exclude business and stores from a search?

[@JimBillyRayBob]

Google used to have a discussion search tab that searched discussion forums. You could use it to search for actual people talking about a subject instead of commercial interests trying to sell something, so... Google got rid of that tab, of course.

[@Spliteyemoto]

I feel like there are so many google features like this that I forgot about.

[@yura2424]

For some reason there no way of changing the voice on Google Translate.

[@aventureraclette]

Yeah, it was so usefull

[@ResortDog]

Thats was directly gagging free speech for complainers censoring information instead of enforcing language and grace standards for time outs, not politics.

[@billbush-t5x]

Google is the enemy that sequesters info and aids the evil globalists. As for finding what you search for, ask ya mama.

[@Ridingrules10000]

I've been saying this for several years. 10-15 years ago, I could have an answer to pretty much any question in minutes. Now when I search, I see what Google wants me to see instead of what I'm searching for.

[@splashpit]

Yea I thought it was just me till I used my wife’s tablet to search for something , totally different results

[@ELFanatic]

youtube's search is WAY worse when it comes to producing results of what they want you to see. I'll search for an interview from a year ago and it'll show results for a couple interviews in the last couple months, then it's just nothing related to what I searched for.

[@Ridingrules10000]

@ELFanatic , they view themselves as an entertainment network rather than a repository of priceless information. It will be their undoing. Fyi, you should be able to use a custom date range. That helps a little.

[@theoaure3774]

@@ELFanatic Yes, thank you for pointing this problem exists heavily on KZbin. I will search for, say, a news video I know exists and it will take me pages and pages to get through the approved news outlets. I can even include the channel name or news outlet's name in the search and I will always get the approved news outlets first, whether that be CNN, NBC, ABC, etc. Recently watched a video where the pope was mentioned for less than 1 minute of a 1 hour video and there was a KZbin context added to the video about a previous pope... it's insane. And all KZbin does for these is cite an encyclopedia or Wikipedia, as if those are just facts. I can't use those sources for serious academic papers but KZbin gets no pushback for trying to influence people. Do not be fooled about their official excuse, their removal of the dislike feature wasn't so KZbin creators could feel better about their content... KZbin creators still see the dislikes on the backend. It was because during COVID you had news videos being downvoted en masse. I struggle to remember 1 news story that wasn't heavily downvoted after just a few months into COVID. They removed the dislike counter solely to hide how unified people were against the bullshit.

[@woody4487]

I have no problems with getting what i want, just learn how to use this tool, huh

[@hexahedron1612]

A huge problem I've had with Google is being unable to escape shopping-related results. For instance, I'm interested in alternative fashion and would like to see content relating to individuals' creative styling, but so many searches get clogged up with cheap fast fashion sites that spam keywords in the description, trying to get you to buy inauthentic and barely related garbage. Another thing is that more and more, Google is favoring popular results no matter how much you try to get at what you actually want. If you want "why is X doing Y?" but "why is X doing Z?" is more commonly asked, even putting the search in quotes isn't helping so much anymore.

[@Zodroo_Tint]

There is a reason they make 200 billion a year and it is not because they let you stop seeing shopping related results.

[@Skelterbane69]

Reminds me of yesterday, actually. I was searching some info on samsung SSD's and their write cycles and I only got results on where to purchase them. Had to go to reddit, to get a single related answer.

[@jaschabull2365]

Yeah, I often use Google image search to find art references, and have been recently noticing how frustrating it is that image search doesn't show me the pictures I'm after and instead will just show a bunch of catalogue images of the subject of my search for sale. That and it often just gives images that go along with news articles which happen to be related to what I'm looking for (which I guess is probably due to all the more recent articles being deliberately crafted to draw search results). I remember once trying to look up an image of a Hassidic Jew to get a picture of how they dress and getting nothing but the images for articles which covered the latest filming of the series, Shtisel. Which, yes, technically has Hassidic Jews, but isn't exactly what one who just wants a generic picture of Hassidic Jew garb is going to be looking for.

[@jessh4016]

It almost replaces your search with a more popular one that uses the same keywords. I love alternative fashion too, and when I look for styles, it's hard to find anything that's not just what you would get searching for 'fashion' by itself. I've taken to just doomscrolling foreign fashion sites like worldshopping's fashion section

[@jaschabull2365]

@@jessh4016 Yeah, basically it'll replace your search. I've noticed it's been getting really liberal with considering certain words interchangeable that really aren't in certain contexts. My absolute pet peeve in that regard is that Google seems to think that "vs" is interchangeable with "and". Trying to look up the difference between certain things is a real pain because of that (especially considering the "and" doesn't even have to be between the other 2 terms, and can be anywhere on the page to be a result).

[@oswaldrabbit1409]

Google definitely has a problem. I was researching the destruction of medieval era architecture in Athens and on the Acropolis, and despite very specific search terms just kept getting the typical travel sites and stuff. Makes it way too difficult.

[@OutOfNamesToChoose]

Search engines have redefined 'valuable knowledge' as 'financially valuable knowledge'.

[@outsmokeyou]

Right? For something like that I would instinctively add ‘Wikipedia’ to the search now.

[@Joe-ug2mb]

@@OutOfNamesToChoose naw man it's political, google is liberal and t hey want to keep the world liberal in spite of how bad it is for the world.

[@OutOfNamesToChoose]

@@Joe-ug2mb You're shadow banned, and I only see your comment in my bell notification tab. Anyway, I agree, but I'd say that that's because that is what's more financially lucrative; telling people to be more free with what they do and to ignore the consequences leaves a lot more room for business to step in and sell people s#!t. E.g. Healthy at any size allows fast food companies to sell more slop for profit.

[@tamarindo709]

Wikipedia is biased too

[@herodontus]

You're right and they somehow made it worse since you posted this video. Google's decision to use AI for "better" results was the last nail in the coffin for me, someone who used to know all the tricks to google search and works with SEO. Since late 2021, I can't find anything on Google because its search AI shows me what *it* thinks I'm actually searching for, regardless of my actual keywords, markup, or wording. It lowkey feels like gaslighting.

[@GMillyxo]

bing

[@SoaringSuccubus]

Yes, it also feels very patronising. Forcibly trying to shove you into some sort of lowest common denominator of "the average searcher."

[@chistinelane]

If you used to do SEO then you are the reason it has gotten that bad. Was it worth an extra few confused clicks?

[@alleeadl289]

i use brave browser and search engine it's surprisingly good

[@BusyBusinessHostingNPromotion]

They're on the way out soon people realize it

[@bikesbeersbeats]

Its not just google, youtube search is dreadful and skewed towards specific channels. Its incredibly difficult to escape the echo chamber and uncover independent/individual channels with good content.

[@thorinbane]

I typed in the exact name of my one playlist but didnt come up, everything but. Had to include my name and it showed up down the list. Yt is a symptom of google.

[@bikesbeersbeats]

@@thorinbane there is a channel called sexycyborg that goes into this problem in depth with testing of her channel. bit of an oddball channel but she highlights the problem well. i'm a youtube mechanic and there are thousands of useful guides for home diy but youtube hides most of them. its so frustrating.

[@heyitsmeian]

Please if anyone has found a way to find low-subscriber or smaller KZbin channels let me know. I've trying advanced search terms, keywords, etc but can't get any decent results. It makes it impossible to connect with other small channels. I'm trying to meet up with other musicians who are perhaps doing the same type of content as me - but all results are just silos of 500k+ sub channels.

[@pferdschur702]

@@heyitsmeian You can add a filter to only show very recent videos. That usually gives me other stuff. On Android it's in the menu right of the search box. I found no other way yet.

[@heyitsmeian]

​@@pferdschur702 Thanks for the reply, this is basically my current and very unsatisfying method. I wish I could just search a topic and then filter by

[@sgtigerj]

I have felt this more strongly with KZbin search results. We used to be able to search for specific videos on KZbin and the recommended videos below a video you just watched used to be related to what you just watched but it is not so anymore. Infuriating when you’re using KZbin to find tutorials or information

[@eyjele]

So true, every time I am searching for something, instead of giving a list of videos related to my search I get 3-5 on topic, and then absolutely random sh*t related to my VIEWS HISTORY and NOT to my search. I don't know whom does it help, I wholeheartedly hate it.

[@sgtigerj]

@@eyjele totally this as well. This is even more frustrating you’re right

[@KayMyName]

@@eyjele true @youtube need to fix this

[@SugaryPhoenixxx]

@@KayMyName They are doing it on purpose. They dont want any of those old videos that dont follow the narrative to be seen by anyone. When I search for videos I watched in the past, it is as if they vanished. & the content that is being pushed is mindless BS completely unrelated to my search. & it is topic sensitive because some innocuous topics I get much better search results for.

[@LikeAndFavBF3]

You can even type an old video title word for word and it will still not appear in the search results

[@Jes9119]

It's nice to see people are finally noticing. There is absolutely no chance that nowadays that every single problem doesn't have at least one other person searching for the answer and yet, it feels like you're the only one having the issue because of how useless search engines have become.

[@tsm688]

I don't think the internet has changed that much. Quite a lot of it is due to google's declining quality. Half of what they show you are paid results.

[@CircmcisionIsChi1dAbus3]

it looks like we are seeing technological tribalism, where tech companies are competing with one another for monetary resources at the expense of the quality of service they provide. It's human history 101, a great leader rises and solves a problem and everyone loves them, gives them power and control to help make their lives so much better, and they manage to do exactly what they promised, until eventually, they start annoying people and we realize we gave all this power to someone who may end up exploiting it like every single person in the history of humanity has done. That's the rise of the tyrannical leader.

[@lithiumflower31337]

I feel like it's because people use the internet differently now. Previously everyone used a website or blog to convey information, or were talking on text based forums, all public and easier to see/search for. Today, people don't do that anymore. Any website or blog is more likely to be random text meant to convey an ad, a lot of people post things in a video, which is hard/impossible to search through, or use a closed off method like a mobile phone app. If you want old information, it's all still there (for now), but for anything new, there's no where to go if you don't already know where it is. A site like Reddit only still works because it maintains a very text-based approach (especially using old reddit com) and given what new Reddit looks like and them hosting their own images/video now, who knows how long that will last.

[@xPewz]

@@tsm688 thats exactly what he was saying..

[@fhunter1test]

@@tsm688 worse - they stopped indexing older stuff - so it is still there, but it is no longer searcheable for one reason or another. This change actually happened around 2012-2014 or so, I guess.

[@Parasprites]

the best part is when you notice google censoring and removing sites from their search results when you used to be able to find them through it, searching the same term through bing actually nets you the results you want

[@donsolos]

That might work for some stuff but bing has gone down the same rabbit hole. They now filter out some of my search results as well making certain things impossible to search for.

[@XeosLolicon]

​@@donsolosuse duck duck go

[@donsolos]

@@XeosLolicon unless you are searching for obvious things duck duck go is hot ass

[@nanattechi]

@@XeosLolicon duckduckgo user here, it's still regurgitating the same crap as google but with no sponsored links. seo articles are a nightmare and i ended up looking for answers in reddit instead.

[@pro-hz7kx]

@@donsolos yeah they straight up REMOVE websites and discussions from search results and the only way to find them is if you specifically put the website you search for, it’s outrageous

[@BingBong67489]

One sad thing is that it feels like the old internet has gotten buried or erased. I can't access a lot of old stuff anymore, either because I just can't find it on Google or because it's been deleted. Growing up with the internet in the 90s and 00s, the internet always felt like it would be this permanent repository of stuff that constantly grows...but now it's feeling more and more transient as time goes by.

[@josepablolunasanchez1283]

Do not worry, it is always somewhere. It is only that Google is getting blind.

[@CoffeeAndBusiness]

Try the way back machine

[@Simboiss]

Sometimes, web sites simply disappear.

[@josepablolunasanchez1283]

@@peterbonucci9661 I was searching for a blog of someone and it did not appear. What dark content did it have? "How to develop sense of humor"... Geez, Earth is doomed if people look for such a thing...

[@literaryinitiation]

@@peterbonucci9661 Can you share specifics? I'm intrigued. Underground professor webring internet is where I want to be.

[@Nulono]

Something you didn't touch on is that Google has started just dropping search terms from searches. For instance, searching something like "fix iPhone reboot loop" may require searching through a bunch of "how to reboot iPhone" articles, because Google no longer requires all search terms to be in a result.

[@HCG]

He doesn’t touch on it because it’s not an issue. It’s why you use quotation marks. It searches for the exact term or terms in the quotes. Google has been that way forever,

[@caldoreo]

@@HCG even with the quotation marks, it mostly brings up something completely irrelevant.

[@theclearsounds3911]

Yes, and Google substitutes what THEY think I mean. I look up "schematic diagram" and I get results for "user manual". I can never find what I'm looking for if it's a schematic.

[@imeakdo7]

@@theclearsounds3911 this is intentional. Device manufacturers do not want people to access schematics

[@theclearsounds3911]

@@imeakdo7 Oh, yes, that's very true. But, is Google doing this deliberately to give manufacturers what they want? Plus, other people sometimes post schematics, and getting a barrage of user manuals makes it hard to find the actual schematic.

[@mildlycornfield]

I was GOOD at googling things, I could use advanced techniques and specific search terms to get what I wanted, but now using academic/technical terms gets me entirely unrelated results and what I actually wanted hidden behind 'these results may not be what you're looking for'

[@unclemick-synths]

Yep "these results may not be what you're looking for" gives me the results I was _asking_ for, not what companies paid to show me or redirections to Google's indirect income sources.

[@ericwazhung]

Imagine: When I was in college during Google's first years, folk got degrees, even doctorates in essentially being good at searches. Wildcards, boolean logic, regular-expressions, etc. were de-facto search options for decades, then Google put everyone else out of business, and got rid of most the "advanced" search options, and those highly-sought folk with many years of skills-training and experience, were rendered useless, not because their skills aren't needed, but because the only search engine remaining decided to do-away with tools that had existed for decades, that businesses and research institutions and government relied on to such great extents as to seek folk with those skills in the first place... Now those experts, just like everyone else, are getting a full page of useless results, another page containing terms that Google deemed are the same (and are not, at all, within the context), advertisements, pop-culture, autogenerated pages, etc. What a world. What I don't understand is why folk and businesses alike aren't up-in-arms about it.

[@destroything]

Well, now we have to use different search engines

[@ericwazhung]

@@destroything would love to... are there any that aren't just wrappers?

[@omegahunter9]

I do a bit of technical and scientific research, and google simply fails to deliver. I moved on to other engines years ago.

[@nobodyatall7039]

In the old days when I searched for something on Google I got lots of results from forum threads where people were discussing the topic that I searched for. Now I mostly get tangentially related shopping results and mainstream media articles about it.

[@stackflow343]

My favorite example is after scrolling past all the ads, promoted retail, social media links, and trending videos - are all the results that say in a footnote _"Does not include X: Must include X"._ Wow thanks for listing results I specifically did not want and reminding me that I did not search for. Very helpful.

[@W_Pipeline]

they now hiding that too...

[@vaiyt]

Absolutely hate this, most pf my searches require 2-3 tries just to get Google to stop secong guessing me.

[@yourdreams2440]

Sometimes I have to put every word in quotes so it doesn't skip words.

[@gamingbud926]

There are some special things you can do to avoid that. For instance '2022K "game"` will force the results to include things that mention "game" if you put quotation marks around it.

[@vaiyt]

@@gamingbud926 even doing that doesn't work sometimes, google will outright replace the results of your search for things it thinks you should be looking up instead

[@martinharris5017]

Glad you've addressed this. As a researcher I've found that Google is "shrinking" and searching is getting harder every year. We are told that we have tens of thousands of search results but we can only access a few hundred before we reach "the end". Even then, most results are merely repeats and reposts of the same info!

[@veightsuper4053]

Yes! I was trying to use that to find the less commercial pages by patiently clicking through to page 15 of results, but after a few pages there were “no more” which was impossible for the topic.

[@martinharris5017]

@@veightsuper4053 And yet up until the last page it says you are on "144 of 15600000000 results" The next page, it says "Looks like you've reached the end". BUT. At work my Google is set to Singapore, while at home my search is set to NZ. The results are equally limited but a completely different mix. Thats because the results are limited according to algorithm, and the algorithm is subject to human input, which is "tweaking" by Google's engineers to censor or promote certain articles or sites according to both business interests and local politics. It appears in some cases to override SEO efforts by site administrators (of which I am one). Since 2016 (Trump's presidential win) and 2017 (Ardern's "Christchurch Call" censorship initiative) the amount of algorithm-tweaking has increased massively. This is another factor in why Google is dying. Social engineering and politics determining what you are allowed to see and what they prefer you to see first.

[@alainportant6412]

It's censorship. They started doing that right after Trump was elected. They basically broke their own algorithm trying to censor political results that didn't go their way.

[@Willowy13]

That is because Google is censoring results. I like to treat myself with natural products. Everytime I search something, the first results are always of doctors debunking what I am searching... which I am searching after reading many scientific papers showing the thing I am searching does work.

[@martinharris5017]

@@Willowy13 Check my last response Willowy. you are more or less correct but I explain in greater detail.

[@auvember7842]

I feel so vindicated. Recently I was trying to troubleshoot what should have been a simple tech problem (think like “how do I change the volume on my phone” something stupidly simple like that.) and I was literally crying with frustration at how there was NOTHING relevant to my question on the search, just ads, articles infested with ads, and infuriatingly smug FAQs with terrible ui and no useful info. I finally found one obscure page of a person complaining about my question… no answers, several years ago. I thought I was going crazy.

[@Senjamin]

I've had this happen too. I even put quotation marks around the model of my device to try and help and it still pulled up unrelated models (mostly as ads) the only thing that actually worked was tacking reddit on to the end, and the reddit link led to a KZbin video showing how to fix my issue.

[@Skelterbane69]

And once you find that one reddit post, withh the same problem posted, it just says solved, but the OP never wrote the solution lmao

[@Sonic-ww6wm]

What was your question I'm curious

[@t-rex8977]

2 weeks of searching why my iphone 12 decrease volume by itself and no relevant answer!

[@cjay2]

Google now limits the number of available pages of search results to about 5 max. What happened to the huge limitless internet? What happened to being able to search the 30th or 50th page of a search result, and finding really interesting stuff on smaller sites?

[@jessicamarsh1337]

Yes. I really like marine biology (especially deep sea marine creatures), and have been trying to research it. It's a nightmare to research subspecies, or species with similar names. For example, the bigfin squid is very different from the bigfin reef squid, but Google does not care. Whats also annoying is that many sources will try to antagonize deep sea creatures, which is easy to do, seeing how alien they look. and it is a nightmare to find something that doesn't say something like "THIS EVIL [insert creature] WILL HAUNT YOUR DREAMS!".

[@tuptap2457]

Idk if this will help you, but if you put something in parenthesis and search for say "Reef squid" it should search for places where these words appear just as in the parenthesis- with no word in between them and so on. It sometimes doesn't work perfectly nowadays, but it's the only way I can find some specific things that are made up of words that commonly appear in different context.

[@Mylstrydr]

Wow, it's interesting to see someone who's experienced the exact same problem as I have. A while back, I wanted to find a very specific kind of deep-sea squid, and it wouldn't come up in search at all despite being a discovery at least several decades old.

[@immigrant6902]

The species are going deeper and deeper..

[@inklovemail]

you might be able to try google scholar, or a large website with marine biology portal. if you can find articles that arent paywalled scholar is pretty good

[@thardump859]

Of course the propaganda machine is trying to make you be afraid of anything that isn't human. It's trying to tell that poor innocent sea creatures different than us are "bad" and "wrong" and "should be wiped out for not being mammals". Don't listen to it! These poor sea creatures already have it hard enough with there environment being increasingly poisoned and ruined. They don't need to be demonized by these AI jerks. I hope you can help these creatures. I should be helping these guys too if I'm being honest.

[@bluevoices]

I’m glad I’m not imagining this. The biggest thing that made me notice this was searching for images. I remember a few years ago you could type in long terms and get a seemingly unlimited number of photos! But now, I can scroll to the bottom and run out of results. It’s super weird.

[@userbc44]

Yep!, when I was very young you could search images for lets say, jack o Lanterns. You would get 10,000 pages of pictures. YES 10,000. Now as you said, you get less. What equates to maybe 4 or 5. pages.

[@koob1413]

@@userbc44 I think specifically with image search, Google got sued by Getty images so they had to change.

[@JaSon-wc4pn]

Amazon tablets worse, Every search gives the same result If its not Amazon Etsy or Ebay or in America Amazon can't find it in the UK Trying to check in advance if B&Q stores have a certain product. Kills the device

[@GabrielOnuris]

And at the bottom you get that "some results were omitted from this search because they were removed for violating DMCA blablabla..." Yeah, yeah, whatever, where is my results?

[@SlayerDUDE1993]

This Is exactly why I use yandex to search images. Google suck bad compared to it

[@RavingKats]

Google's image search is a nightmare now too. It doesn't match the image but rather matches aspects of the image to items available for purchase via online stores. It's awful and has become mostly useless, unless shopping I suppose.

[@Krzys_D]

Yandex image search is a great alternative

[@WindTurbineSyndrome]

I do lookups on specific clothing to understand price for resale. Google has become useless. They won't let me find what I want but what they want me to buy. Also Google is destroying the online reseller market by telling buyers what the item is worth a form ASF monopolistic interference in a business iften driven by women run businesses. Reddit is going public soon it has significantly changed its terms of service and user people are finding they cannot delete their posts. Reddit is on course to be destroyed in 2024.

[@CloneDaddy]

It's not even much good for that either, these days.

[@3_eyed_magician]

​@@Krzys_Dyeah, its really accurate

[@qwertydavid8070]

That's not the only problem. Google Image search nowadays is just dominated by AI images and art. I want to preface this by saying that whatever stance you have on AI art is not the point. I just want to see real content made by real people. I want to discover new artists that I can follow, or I want to see a unique human perspective on something. So many of the images are just AI generated and it just feels so soulless. Maybe AI art has a place, I just wish there was some sort of in-built filter to remove them. But that seems unlikely since all tech companies are just doubling down on ai tech.

[@Quasindro]

I haven't finished the video yet, but the fact that I didn't find a single comment about Google's blatant censorship of certain topics is astounding. I'm a history student and it's very difficult for me to do basic research.

[@porkpie2884]

Yep, the censorship is so blatant, and mirrors how history is erased in Orwell's 1984

[@jtfike]

Spot on. So,e topics are washed away and you can’t get legitimate information. When I enter a library, I should be ab,e to find fiction and non fiction. Yes they are labeled as such but the library has both. Google will not let me find what it considers to be non fiction anymore when that is precisely what I am looking for. I am not surprised they are trying to revise history.

[@Quasindro]

Your replies aren't showing up for me guys

[@DianaAtena]

@@Quasindro I can see 4 out of 5. I wrote that they're erasing..,.hi....story. Sorry for writing like this, but surely you understand why (since writing it fully does not show the reply...).

[@rklos11]

Gotta go back to basics and use a library I guess. Go ogle is more of a reccomendation engine these days anyways.

[@jec_ecart]

Heavy censorship. Now the search results from other engines look totally different

[@Jin-Ro]

I remember having conversations on usenet in the mid 90's where we believed the internet would turn to shit once Governments and Corporations took notice. We completely under estimated just how shit it would become.

[@fungames1594]

That was around 1998 right ?

[@Jin-Ro]

@@fungames1594 Pre-Google buddy. So 95'ish

[@brownie830419]

It's not just about governments and corporations. It has become more easily accessible. You don't need an above average IQ to enter. Now see the results...

[@fuqupal]

Governments INVENTED the web

[@KB-zf6me]

Yes, it's well and truly fucked. Getting information is and was THE main magical thing about the internet. For years, profit maximisation along with dark design patterns has slowly taken over, and now they make information harder to get on top of that. I am not looking forward to what the internet is likely to become over the next years, and I've been thinking that chances are we'll go full circle, the only real places will become those that are hard to find/access again. Sad. Oh, and here's a new one: Google Now on Android devices now serves up sponsored content. Like, the bit that shows you news headlines that it thinks you'll find interesting. Yeah. There's ads now. I'm appalled ethical lines seem to be crossed much more easily, I'd bet it's picking up pace.

[@andrewhawkins6754]

In ~2015, Google took away a lot of the strict keyword operators that allowed me to actually find what I wanted. Since then it's practically useless to find very specific information using Google like obituaries, old newspaper articles, etc.

[@homofurstadalbertpopoloch4878]

AND "term" still works.

[@fyrchmyrddin1937]

Trying DuckDuckGo and Brave often yields the same results, and they don't even allow the string operators which Google does. I notice that the article doesn't mention that China is trying to take over, or at least heavily influence Reddit.

[@atlas4733]

filetype: still works, as well as -example for excluding stuff, and quotes for specific words appearing in pages. I believe you can also set a date window

[@masksarelies391]

Site: still works. But I notice "+" and "-" seem to do very little. It's like goggle says to me "No, I know what you want"....

[@shockthetoast]

@@atlas4733 excluding with "-" still works... Sometimes. It's been very inconsistent for me.

[@alexander1989x]

You know things are bad when a few years ago you would search a niche thing and you would find related results but now you simply get a "Sorry, no results found". This was unheard of before.

[@Bytheirfruitsshall]

I get that all the time, just this year though, it's so frustrating when you have read it in a book in the past someone wants some proof they can read online, zilch

[@FollowMe4REP]

Yep. It’s really horrifying.

[@TheViper4Life]

Yeah especially when you KNOW good and damn well there's no way you're the first or only person asking this question.

[@losthorizions1415]

Been here a long time starting with what altavista and excite ... It's been getting worse and worse every year, it all junk results now and it's so weird this video came into my feed because yesterday I was searching a company/ brand name and got no results, that cant be right?? turns out now google only searches in your location for some things. I live in the sticks for 40 years, whatever I search for is not going to be related to my location.

[@davidstrm5005]

@@losthorizions1415I just started putting Reddit on the end of my searches lately, so this video confirmed what I noticed was the new way to actually get it working lol

[@CS-uc2oh]

A search engine with category options for searching would kill right now. Like a search engine that only searches medical journals or blogs or videos only niche topics, etc.

[@notyou2353]

I swear that there used to be a Google search function that searched only scientific journal. Google Scholar, I think it was...

[@emilpersidski]

​@@notyou2353 It still exists.

[@ausboss20001]

@@notyou2353 it still exists i think

[@kaydreamer]

My mind is blown at the part about Reddit. I started adding 'Reddit' to the end of my google searches organically about a month ago. I'd just begun to notice that I often found good answers when Reddit pages popped up in my usual searches, so I figured adding 'Reddit' would cut through the noise. I had no idea this was a growing and well-known thing!

[@kotzebrecher]

The best option to access detailed information on a very specific topic is to ask in the subreddit of that topic. The second best option, if such a subreddit does not exist, is to post slightly incorrect information about that specific topic in the subreddit of the less specific parent topic

[@The_Copper_Element_Itself]

Its very sad that we are on the point where reddit is the most reliable search "engine"; even tho it is completely biased and corrupt. But just the fact _humans_ make it is enough for it to be in the podium

[@aaronrigg5208]

I started about a year ago reddit googling

[@jythmivena6617]

@@kotzebrecher ah yes, hanlon's razor!

[@jumpropemf]

I’ve been doing this for years. Glad you found it recently

[@bricology]

Something I cannot understand is why Google changed their reverse image search functionality. First they stopped allowing you to specify the sizes of results you wanted (now it's only "small", "medium" or "large"). Then they took away the ability to add text or keywords to help disambiguate the results. And now they turn the image you loaded into a product search, by isolating one portion of it, and looking for ways to funnel you into shopping. It's infuriating! Why would they want their results to be LESS relevant than they used to be?!

[@Ryuko-T72]

This has been my most infuriating development for the past year and a half. Omfg, I wanted to pull my hair out when they changed the default way to reverse image search. I asked reddit, and they told me "tough titties" Now I just want the old website back but haven't found an alternative, and use the stupid google lens (against my will)

[@MangaGamified]

Didn't know if not didn't notice the "And now they turn the image you loaded into a product search, by isolating one portion of it, and looking for ways to funnel you into shopping" Maybe a coincidence or not cause I have ublock origin. I'll try to notice if I'll use it again(currently using duckduckgo )

[@StoneWeevil]

_Why?_ To funnel you into shopping, of course!

[@Aldenfenris]

​@@StoneWeevilagreed, they are top dog, everyone used them, now they can turn into "cash" mode, and just funnel you to whatever makes them the most money. After all, what are you going to use? Ask Jeeves? Altavista? Bing? Just be glad the engine is still "free"

[@stoutlager6325]

Initially I think they did this as there was a problem with doxxing. Reverse image search was so good it was trivial to figure out the identity of a person from a single photo reverse search. This is why they started breaking it. After that they began to try to influence how the internet was used and what parts of it google wanted to direct traffic towards. Yes it's about money but also about control. Google isn't really a search engine anymore. It's more of an advertising portal.

[@ic5889]

The move from forums to discord servers for information is honestly such a shame. So much information is made unaccessible

[@mrscruffles801]

Discord has its uses but for EVERYTHING? No.

[@ic5889]

@@mrscruffles801 I think discord is great for communication! But it's a terrible way to archive things

[@mrscruffles801]

@@ic5889 Yeah. Modern internet seems to be _against_ preservation doesn't it? Or is that just me?

[@TheCSJones]

@@mrscruffles801 No, that's a good observation. "The internet never forgets" is just a meme and most information and content is becoming really temporary, either pulled down due to platform/DMCA/hosting issues after a week or just lost to obscurity in days due to everyone moving onto the next social media trend.

[@victoriazero8869]

@@mrscruffles801 People today seems to be more adapted to short term engagement and information.

[@drowningblonde]

I also think a lot of people stopped using Google because of all the bias and misinformation of search results we had around covid.

[@keithrees4755]

problem is most search engines are following the google idea

[@farenhite4329]

One jarring thing I noticed is that negative search operators just do not work. Either it broke or they removed it for some reason. Trying to search up something and adding "-[thing you dont want]" was incredibly useful and now that it has been removed from google and youtube is insane.

[@Zodroo_Tint]

This is one of the big problem but also there is the other problem it just ignore some of the keywords like you type: (one two three) and it gives you a search result like: (one two -three- ) in the first hit and you know there is no way there is no (one two three) result out there because you just searching a page you know it exist you just forgot where. Nope, google want you to read what they want not what you want. But yes, the other big problem the search just ignore negative keywords.

[@problemsalving]

Yeah same. I also used to be able to put words/phrases in quotation marks so it would show me results with those words in them, but it doesn’t work anymore for some reason so I don’t even try

[@ahcapella]

@@problemsalving The use of quotation marks still functions _somewhat,_ but yeah, it's weaker now. It's a major source of frustration to me! "We're Google…we know what’s best for you." I hope that someone designs a search engine that works the way "Googling" used to work circa 2012, and ultimately topples the Almighty Autocrat Google search engine from its throne.

[@evandonovan9239]

I think due to the way they've changed their algorithms to handle semantic search, operators are essentially broken. I wonder if an old-school search engine (based on the data from Common Crawl, perhaps?) could be successful because of this.

[@JaredHayter]

What's jarring to me is that I can use negative (-term) and positive ("term") operators just fine right now. Either you're mistaken or the Google search we each have access to is very different. I would recommend using Google Advanced Search if you want to perform a very specific search, but there are many powerful tags that are easy to use right from the search bar.

[@BDVinci]

KZbin search results have also gone down the drain as of late. You can search anything and the results will always include results like "People also searched for this", "You may be interested in this", "Watch this thing again", "Here's some Google images of your search", "Look at these products related to your search", etc etc. It's so bad that when I look up a band or artist, I don't get some of their most famous songs among the results anymore, how is this even possible?

[@yadabub]

The best thing about "People also searched for this," is that the suggested searches often also return no useful results. Google sits back and laughs as their search becomes more and more useless.

[@waverider227]

exactly it just leads you to a dead end

[@thecolorjune]

I’ll search terms and it will either be the worst quality unrelated videos, or 10 videos I already watched. What??

[@duskadown6751]

To me, it really feels like these little "People also searched for..." things are algorithm generated. I've gotten them suggesting searches that people _probably_ wouldn't google, with nonsense grammar and random "relevant" key words. I hate them with a burning passion. For so much data spying shit going you'd think it would actually be something I'd wanna see (on KZbin), but I don't want to watch these videos just because other people have, too.

[@jordanphilipperris]

One thing I have to say about KZbin (Maybe this is because of Google), is that my first 2 KZbin accounts, once they were really starting to take off, I got the 3 strikes pretty dang fast and my account/everything was axed... Now, with my 3rd KZbin account I can barely get any views at all, and trust me, there are quite a few others that are having this exact same issue!!

[@GlennHamblin]

What really ticks me off is that Google eliminated all of the helpful search modifiers. You can no longer exclude words with the '-' symbol etc.. It's like we don't really care about what you want to see, we want to make sure that you see what we want you to see.

[@floatcheese]

yes!!!

[@HeinRichKocHPretoria]

Most big websites' search engines are next to useless. It is not difficult to design a local SE. I think they want it that way.

[@abchernin]

Err... The exclusion operator "-" still works for me. Also still listed on the Google support page ("Refine Google searches/Operators").

[@abchernin]

The quotation operator for exact term search has been going through a hippie "it's whatever, man, words are just, like, social constructs" phase, tho

[@egregius9314]

@@abchernin Oh my god, so much this. I hate Google second guessing what I'm looking for; as if they assume I don't actually know what I'm typing.

[@casualcausalityy]

Their censorship on YT is disgusting too.

[@C1Nuke]

It is almost impossible to write constructive comments - you write a "wrong" word and immediately, their "artificial intelligence", together with "neural networks", delete the entire comment. Although you didn't have any bad intentions.

[@pro-hz7kx]

@@C1Nuke Literally George Orwell book you can’t mention.

[@thewildmitchell]

I didn't even realise that me adding "reddit" to the end of my searches for anything specific or technical is actually me knowing, ahead of my search, that Google was gonna bring up a ton of irrelevant content. Half ai-written, half written by SEO zombies. Not only is SEO such a boring concept, it's also toxic af. Very insightful video dude, glad this one got recommended to me ;)

[@TeodorLojewski]

Interesting!

[@rap3208]

yeah, they'll intentionally bury the information you're looking for under a ton of pages or they might not even show it at all. I usually use othere search engines if the topic is China, Russia, political, geopolitical or anything that goes against the establishment narrative.

[@RanetaCroak]

I've been using this trick for a long time but I got surprised at how so many people are doing this too now, Google got very shitty at showing good results. And I'd like to add it got worse since AI got better. Google results feel even worse since then.

[@davidstrm5005]

I literally just started doing this and then I see this video and the comments basically confirming this is the new meta lmao

[@Joodhandle]

What is SEO?

[@mistertamura6190]

One of the main reasons why I'm sick and tired of Google's search engine is because it finds less and less of what I'm actually looking for. The ubiquitous SEO culture is doing a great job of ruining the web.

[@SergeantExtreme]

Only if you don't use Kagi. That has, by far, the best results out of any search engine currently in existence.

[@LifeofBrad1]

Yeah. Even image search results are crap now. I remember back in the day, you could spend ages looking at all the different images it came up with. Now it just comes up with images that've been posted on social media and mainstream news websites.

[@escoladecuriosidades]

Not to mention the search always panders to what's is most searched. If you search "how KZbin makes money" for example, all answers are "how to make money on KZbin" No Sherlock, that's not what I was searching, but it's what most people search with those keywords.

[@pan2aja]

Censorship is to blame. You cannot find even simple name available freely on Internet

[@a64738]

I stopped using Google 6 months after it started, until then it was the best search engine. It is a very long time ago google was the best... And now sadly all the major search engines including duckduckgo have become totally useless as all the things I am looking for has been removed, replaces by thing that has NOTHING to do with the things I search for. For now only search engine I know of that still works is yandex .

[@hoozn]

It is sad that the same thing also happens to the YT search: more often than not, when searching for very specific topics (or artists), I get maybe a handful of proper results, followed by a similar number of clips that are just „sorta right and/or ontopic“, before the list continues with clips that have titles/descriptions containing the actual search terms… This is about as annoying as auto correct in messenger apps

[@josepablolunasanchez1283]

Years ago I listened to a song called Gravity by Ucranian singer Zlata Ognevich. I forgot her name and I was looking her song under Ukranian music with all possible keywords, and I could not find her. KZbin delivered mainstream news on Ukraine and videos on how bad Russia is. I had to search sequencially my list of subscriptions until I found her channel. Lame search engine.

[@elu9780]

Worse, when you search for something, you now get stuff that is usually in your recommended even if it's not related to your search at all. That's just atrocious.

[@Muzikman127]

@@elu9780 fucking hate that. Also, try searching for something in incognito one time instead of logged in, and you'll see that even the not "for you" results are _heavily_ tailored. The annoying thing is that I'm searching because I am looking for something specific, probably something that I'm not already getting in my feed! That's why I'm searching!! You have to scroll through 50 results to get 5-10 that are even vaguely what you're searching for. Infuriating

[@hlavco]

And instead of admitting that it's out of results, KZbin's search page will eventually start repeating videos from earlier in the list.

[@dariusdauderys6218]

Google and KZbin are the same... For example Project Veritas video about Pfizer was blocked out from both at the same time few days ago.

[@some1namedno1]

I'm glad I found this today. I've felt this way for a long time, but just the other day I searched some information on a band and there was a list of about ten links from different websites ALL WITH THE EXACT SAME-WORD-FOR-WORD-TITLE AND HEADLINE. This modern internet is maddening.

[@bade7]

What was the band?

[@YehudiNimol]

Putting Reddit at the end of search queries has saved me thousands of times. It's one of the most effective ways you can find something nowadays

[@hasturxix]

Reddit is doing a better job at giving users more accurate search results and it's not even a search engine

[@bjamesW32]

Also put it in quotes. Also "forum" helps. It brings real queries higher up into your results instead of the purely SEO crap. But its a race to the bottom. You don't think SEO tweakers are on to these "tricks"?

[@Cam1417-TK]

Agree.

[@kalreynolds5829]

@@bjamesW32 It gets to the point where you have to be searching a specific site with google to get anything. Which isn't sustainable and limits results to what forums you know are actually useful.

[@monkeypoxenjoyer7793]

Deadass

[@jkdalton5620]

Sometimes it feels like Google Search is intentionally trying to piss you off.

[@themodfather9382]

You're half-right. They intentionally shut off the search feature, and they intentionally want people to 'gradually' get used to the new system, which is a system based on nonsense recommendations. Eric Schmidt said 'the internet will simply disappear'. He wasn't joking when he said that. And in the future they're going to try to switch to some AI crap that will be completely useless anyway

[@sofieberger8851]

Google trying to troll its users would be more fun than the sad reality. :) Cause some years ago google started to censor and blacklist all sites. And later they went totaly crazy and only started to show whitelisted sites. During this time you only saw pinterest or reddit as a result (both heavily moderated). Reddit didn't got big because it was good. It got only big because it was one of the rare whitelisted sites by google. Every other forum and co got fully censored, shadowbanned and removed from google results cause of political reasons and googles shareholders (BlckRck/Vngard)

[@Jurgir09]

That's monopoly 4 ya

[@solomon-uu5xh]

Google & KZbin are the modern day New World Order Nazi censorship & propaganda platforms

[@drksideofthewal]

@@Jurgir09 Yeah, maybe people shouldn't have been memeing on Bing and other non-google search engines.

[@evan-grove]

The part about adding "reddit" to the end of your google searches is so true. No matter how random your problem is, there is probably somebody who had that very problem 8 years ago, posted it on reddit, and got a decent response.

[@rkan2]

And now that there is no longer a reply time limit on Reddit posts, it is getting better everyday!

[@pagatryx5451]

Literally the only reason to use reddit in my opinion. But yeah it's great for that. Solving technical issues, informed purchases, reviews, etc. It's really good for that stuff. Even just asking a question/explaining your problem usually gets a response pretty quickly.

[@Skullcandy5282]

@@pagatryx5451 Was just about to comment the same thing. I don't think I've ever browsed reddit, I'm normally looking for a specific fix to an issue or a discussion about a game, movie or TV show. If you don't add reddit to the end of you'r Google search you just get copy and paste articles that personally drive me mad! Gaming journalism is awful for it, I swear 80% of articles don't have the information you're looking for it's just copy and pasted update type info with no new added content.

[@pagatryx5451]

@@Skullcandy5282 Yup gaming journalism is my main reason for it too. It's FULL of half-assed, likely AI generated articles that often don't have the information, and if they do, it's 90% bloat or in too little depth. Every time I wanted to look up something like a quest in Elden Ring, rather than recommending me the Elden Ring wiki which provides all of the necessary information in great depth, it instead wanted to push me onto these crappy articles. So I often searched it on reddit instead because it was quicker. A lot of this comes down to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which is basically all these 'media' pages care about. The quality of the content isn't important, it's how far up the list they appear. So that's what they're focused on doing. Google actively choosing to favor businesses and their control over SEO, instead of users and their relevant content, is the problem. Whilst it's possible for websites like the Elden Ring wiki to improve their SEO, it typically leads to businesses and professionals having an overwhelming advantage. Typing 'reddit' after a search works because Reddit has high SEO and so its results will come first.

[@Nystariii]

@@Skullcandy5282 I do what you do, except I will surf around the subs of shows I'm interested in or games I play, just not random subs. So many weirdos on Reddit just want to fight you for having a slightly differing opinion and it's not worth the stress level...if you bump into the same faces when discussing a shared interest there's far less likely chances of a hostile encounter for no reason other than thumbs up or thumbs down. Which reminds me why I don't often comment on YT either xD

[@statbot7347]

I am not sure if I just missed it, but I don't think you mentioned that companies can literally buy higher spots on the search. The more money they put in, the higher they go.

[@stoparret]

3:30

[@brentfisher902]

Kind of like a radio station getting paid money to play a certain record on the air....It's payola...

[@KittyCatnap]

I remember Googling things and search results being accurate.. good times. I'm glad others have started to notice the bullshittery.

[@brianlane9534]

They were instrumental in slandering a president.

[@blessed7927]

I noticed it after 9-11! I thought BIG businesses blacklisted little businesses!

[@wayfa13]

@@blessed7927 no money no SEO

[@spvillano]

There are two factors at work, as primary confounders of a good search. Commercial advertisements getting priority and the incorporation of some of their AI products, the latter ignoring order of words in a phrase, even when one uses quotes like in the old days. AI doesn't mean what most think that it means. It's really Artificial Idiocy, as it's far from ready for prime time. Fortunately, there are other search engines and search engines that search multiple search engines that can help and Google Scholar still works correctly.

[@plebjames]

It's not just bullshittery, it's also fuckery

[@nzoomed]

Something else I've noticed recently is when googling a subject, typically a Wikipedia page would be the first result, but now quite often I don't see any Wikipedia links and have to put wiki into the search phrase to get it to show.

[@tewoh8836]

I've actually more recently defaulted to using Wikipedia as a search engine when dealing with this. I miss when I could find Wikipedia articles merely by using google

[@shiramizu413]

What's even worse is that wikipedia itself has been getting a lot worse for some time now. A lot of it seems to be people injecting their own opinions into what's supposed to be factual information and deleting parts they don't like.

[@Swansong321]

Wikipedia is inaccurate!😂it's NOT facts..just random people's opinion..it's more like a forum..it's NOT quality content at all

[@arisaka233]

@@Swansong321 😐

[@CelestialsStorm]

Good part of Wikipedia to is it links its sources so you can just use the sources for your info

[@TwentyNineJP]

Even Wikipedia articles often don't show up on the first page of results anymore. That was the first real sign of search getting worse for me.

[@HappyGick]

Happens to me too. Many times I have to *explicitly* add "wikipedia" to the search so the article shows up. Other times the article just doesn't exist, but that's a lot rarer.

[@cinialvespow1054]

I could understand not including Wikipedia if it was less good than what they gave you, but no they just give you a SEO article ahaha.

[@soniablanche5672]

Good, Wikipedia is terrible, especially for political topics

[@InventorZahran]

@@HappyGick You can also just go to Wikipedia and search for what you're looking for there.

[@TwentyNineJP]

@@soniablanche5672 Who is googling mostly political topics other than people working in the field? Wikipedia is the best available source for most kinds of information in English.

[@dandymcgee]

you used to be able to search google for specific images, of specified file formats and sizes. nowadays, if you do the same search, all you get are millions of avatars from random online forums, and no real images. it's infuriating for finding art references.

[@HeinRichKocHPretoria]

And they are removing Adult photos.

[@Skelterbane69]

My process usually involves: *Searching, with straight up wrong results *doing the quotes thing, to get specific words prioritized and then ending up with no results instead *putting reddit at the end of the first search and getting an immediate result

[@Skelterbane69]

Also doing -this to get rid of that search term, which also just ends with no results *Anger.*

[@HiGlowie]

That’s exactly what I do as well! Google has fallen so far. Is there a better search engine?

[@barbiemary67]

The last one is so true! If I have a question about, idk, some info of an anime, it doesn't matter how many times I put "is X Z's father", "are X and Z related?", "X wiki", it probably won't show what I want (not even reddit pages that talks exactly about what I wrote) until I put "Reddit" on the final Edit: and what really pisses me off sometimes is that Google often don't put pages on the language I'm searching. If I want an specific information about something, I'll probably search in english for a better result. But even if I'm typing in english, the first few pages will appear in my native language - not what I was asking for

[@lanthanumlanthanium6373]

That doesn't even scratch the service. When I was researching Kratom in 2015 to see if I wanted to take it, I found many websites with decades of research by real scientists and user reports detailing how well it worked for them and the potential downsides, I weighed that with the risk of taking Ritalin for my ADHD and realized that amphetamines are much much more dangerous. Fast forward September of 2016 when Scott Gottlieb was the FDA Director, he waged an all out war on Kratom and tried to ban it multiple times. The search results on Google no longer showed the websites I had used to make my decision and instead were replaced by fear mongering sites and WebMD, MayoClinic talking negatively about it, saying people had died from it, which is false btw, nobody has ever died from solely ingesting Kratom. It's a very scary world when all the worlds information is stored on a private database where our constitutional rights are no longer applied, there's no 1st amendment on the internet, it's all private.

[@osmark86]

@@HiGlowie AI like ChatGPT does a better job for a lot of areas. I don't google tech solutions anymore.

[@user-eu5ol7mx8y]

I miss the internet of the 90s and 2000s. People making their own websites in html and sharing their genuine thoughts and interests. Vast variety of internet forums, where people could freely discuss the topics that interested them. Nowadays, you just have a few giant sites, everything is centralized, filtered, censored and controlled.

[@anthonygreenfield123]

Yea remember how hatreon was shut down

[@KingdomRepublic]

Indeed, And Reddit while being a good search alternative to Goolge, Reddit is basically a fascist breeding ground as you could get banned for anything!

[@phenom682]

Neocities? Anyone?

[@bjtaudio]

My web site is in html, its links on a static page. my own server too

[@Mircat123]

And THAT is why google sucks now. Not for the reasons this youtuber states.

[@allyperfectcosima5472]

I was literally just thinking earlier today about how people always used to talk about having all the information in the world at your fingertips and how now it feels impossible to access much

[@itskittyme]

Please register to read my reply on this.

[@nugsymalone1247]

Sounds like a win for the government

[@itsrxbin]

i dont know how it isn’t labeled as censorship. it’s insane

[@steviesevieria1868]

@@itsrxbin how can giving the results page to the people that pay the most possibly, conceivably, by any reasonable person, ever be considered “censorship”? There’s terms that are being used these days, like censorship and fake news by people who ….are just totally brainwashed

[@ModMINI]

History will show that civilization peaked roughly 2019... then a pandemic came along and we all became stupid toxic masculinity eventually destroyed all life on the planet.

[@BigHenFor]

They've messed with Google Scholar as well. It worse than it was finding academic papers.

[@Theembodimentchannel]

It’s not about helping you find things, it’s about telling you what to find.

[@dustydesertdisciple6290]

Damn straight brother, its no mystery. This should wake people up to the fact we are all being lied to about almost everything.

[@rmac3217]

Someone telling the truth wants you to have access to all the info, only a liar will want information hidden.

[@theexace]

😳 damn ....

[@erikstorm8935]

Especially political stuff and businesses. Even if what we are searching for isn't even connected to that (except for a website technically being a business, obviously).

[@belowaverage7539]

snd selling you shit you don't need so you'll spend money you don't have.

[@BengVideo]

Finally someone has the same thought as me. I thought I was the only one who noticed that Google turned into a crap search engine, always ends up in poorly written articles written by AI, its horrifying

[@theverseshed]

The growing number of expressionless AI narrations for videos is a new curse. Some uploaders seem to write or program scripts for non-ending talk over videos.

[@monkey_gamer_001]

Yeah I’ve been getting poorly written AI articles too!

[@erenyeagerist7681]

​@Gabdoon2 true. The only problem in Yandex is that's in Russian language. It's a hassle to translate every time I search something and not everything is translated to English. Yandex must launch an English version for international users. It will be great if they do that. I don't wanna deal with google because it's absolute trash!

[@CKarmorr]

@Gabdoon2 Yandex is fantastic, it's what I mostly use now.

[@Taz247]

I have noticed it to and cant find info as i used to

[@gtaone1838]

Came to watch this cause It makes me mad how bad google search has gotten. It’s a lot more restricted now and works as a sort of broker for businesses rather than a knowledge information machine like it used to be

[@migovas1483]

yep, instead of a club on people with same interests in mind, now works similarly as a n HR department of the internet... where what you want is not important and you just need to follow THEIR rules... and your options are limited... f*ck these SEO structures, really...

[@dslylsd]

Use another search engine simple

[@FATMAN_tactical]

@@dslylsd you get the same results from duck duck go, or yahoo, and bing

[@dslylsd]

@@FATMAN_tactical u mean all of them suck?

[@rumfordc]

@@dslylsd most search engines are using google behind the scenes

[@unlokia]

I have never and WILL NEVER feel any guilt about people blocking googles ads on ANY of their appalling, greed-fuelled, clumsy “products”. I laugh in their greasy, greedy faces - they ain’t wasting my time, not EVER.

[@clintmatthews3500]

The end user should always have final say about what is displayed on their screen.

[@oeeveemkittygfreak]

I remember googling pictures and having a never ending supply. A few years ago, they put a cap on it. Now, it feels like millions of pieces of art have been lost to time.

[@LifefulLife]

ugh yes!! google image searching is almost useless to me now. I used to be able to deep dive and find a specific object by just clicking through layers of google images. Today, I type in something simple or even currently trending and instead of quickly grabbing a photo I end up sifting through pinterest for an hour trying to find a better image- that should've taken me a minute.

[@jaschabull2365]

Yeah, the result-capping is rubbish, I remember when it first started on KZbin search and was puzzled as to why I was suddenly being shown a small handful of videos when it seemed very likely that's not all there was.

[@cjay2]

Exactly. Google now limits the number of available pages of search results to about 5 max. What happened to the huge limitless internet? What happened to being able to search the 30th or 50th page of a search result, and finding really interesting stuff on smaller sites?

[@green_beard]

for me, I can't find more than 1 page of results, it says u reached the end. Back in the days I would go up to page 99 at pictures

[@jeffbrownstain]

Not only that, but some browsers prevent you from even downloading images off google now.

[@skittstuff]

The articles clearly written by AI are so frustrating. I was having literal DAILY blue screen crashes on my fairly new laptop and every time I wanted to look into the error code I would get one of those webpages written like "so what is crash? how can we fix crash? many people have wondered about crash. Start by downloading our software." It's so weird. These days, if you want an actual human answer from someone not trying to peddle you something, you almost always have to put 'reddit' after your search. :(

[@justinblackwood4241]

Yeah. There's just too much SEO and AI junk out there that adding Reddit to the end of my search is the only way to get close to the results I would get in the past.

[@lifeissoup_iamfork]

They always have these clearly fake profiles with super generic names, using stock photos, and their social accounts, if linked, are blank.

[@ericconnor8419]

@@justinblackwood4241 AI is eating everything and replacing it with a weird worse version, that is why I will not even look at a site that uses AI generated imagery.

[@traattatata7973]

It's not really an AI - it's the underpaid students making shitty SEO optimized website pages to drive up visits to their site and their position in the search engines for the client who doesn't wanna pay for ads and who thinks hes smarter than everyone else. The 2010-2020's were so swamped with this actual useless garbage information they might as well have made the search engines inoperable. Sure, these Google and all say that they are fighting this, but really, they are doing jack shit. It's still garbage and it gets worse every year because MORE AND MORE useless sites (and now with AI hoo boy) swamp the internet. I know that cause I was one of these underpaid students doing this work. I did one project like that for construction firm, felt that my IQ decreased by 10 points, and decided to seek anything to not do this kinda job again. Mind numbing can't begin to describe it.

[@kiwi_2_official]

SEO articles made it significantly worse

[@kroelable]

Another recent trend is automatically translating search terms based on your location or the device’s language settings, and returning localized results. As a translator, I’m often trying to find information on topics or products outside the country where I live, if only to see what things are called in English or read more about a particular subject in another country. The language used to search is now ignored in favor of the local language, and even when in English, the majority of results are from the country where I live. I have a few tricks to get around this (like forcing language settings), but for research I really want a search engine that will look for what I ask, rather than what it thinks I want or need.

[@olegtrushin6220]

Doesn't duckduckgo do this? It just basically reads the language, you can type in german and get German results, or in Finnish and get Finnish results

[@JotaInu]

Not to mention youtube translating video titles and channel names. The video titles are plain annoying. Why would I watch videos in another language if I don't speak said language? What's the point of translating the title if I can't understand the video anyways? And then channel names. Not only is it useless, but it's also impractical and I've only seen people abusing it to change other users' names and impersonate them. Or translating other people's bio to redirect to their channel. KZbin should seriously reconsider this.

[@tabby73]

I'm also annoyed with localized google results. I live in another country than where I was born and sometimes just want to see what's going on in my home country. The results are mostly just useless. 🙄

[@gunnarthegumbootguy7909]

@@JotaInu I think this isn't actually youtube itself, instead some videos are set to be able to be translated by viewers (until recently at least, now i think you have to have people designated to be allowed to make translations, some year ago anyone could add their own translations and subtitles too, many were pretty bad) and also some uploaders do this themselves because they think they're doing people a service... often it seems they just gave the title to someone who speaks the language who didn't know the context or to a machine translator and the result just sounds corny or out of place... it's perticularly weird when it's english videos for countries where anyone who understands how to use a computer already knows english, but still they translate the title... i see a lot of swedish titles... like any swedish person who was going to watch this video already knows english anyway

[@JotaInu]

@@gunnarthegumbootguy7909 Some translations still seem pretty poorly translated, lacking in context.

[@junaidgurmani]

I used to come on KZbin for finding solutions to problems, but now when I search anything I still see irrelevant videos. I really dont wanna but now I think I have to find better alternative to find solutions.

[@bruthermc]

The same also feels very true of KZbin. When you search for a video you get a few videos related to the search and then hundreds of videos with no context to the original search. It’s frustrating. @thatbandfranklin

[@floatcheese]

...and I still remember the days I found video after Video exactly related to my searchtext and not just Production-Video afer Production-Video. Edit: wow, I never had so many likes under a comment complimenting a comment... Wow guys, just wow... lets gooo!

[@zoy13]

They are trying to censorship and make us as their products

[@theysayivy]

Exactly. Once I was trying to find this specific video by entering the title almost word-for-word. Only a few results were related, then there was a stream of content not tied to my search. I kept scrolling but I couldn't find it, so I thought the video had been deleted. At some point, I did end up finding the video, but it wasn't through the search engine-IIRC, I had to go into my history to find it. Like seriously?

[@Leyichen-pe2wg]

Even worse when you are searching in other languages....often you'll just get shit that is barely not porn...but of course those are the ones that get the most views.

[@themodfather9382]

Feels true? Do you not realize there just isn't a KZbin search anymore? This is really fascinating stuff. They disabled search everywhere, and it took years for people to notice, finally may make videos about it, and I see 15,000 comments of people who still don't get it

[@BartSch1pper]

My thoughts exactly. I've felt that ever since somewhere between 2015 and 2018, Google search has become completely unusable. It is not only the fault of ai generated content and a wild growth of unsearchable platforms like Facebook and Twitter however. As the years progressed I've felt more and more that Google actively ignores part of my search words. When I search something that's three words or longer, I now only get generic results for one of the words I filled in. Some of the words are actively missing. Or I get a lot of store results where to buy something vaguely related to my search query. When searching something very specific, it's just not possible with Google anymore

[@Keggplant]

This resonates with me. It's like they want to keep you searching, like those dating platforms

[@OverRule1]

I was wondering what was up. Everything I search I can't find anything where as before the best results were on the first page and the videos use to be spot on too

[@drpenguin57]

I'm pretty sure they always show promoted results first, no matter what you're actually looking for

[@kosmosXcannon]

I think 2014 was when we got the first adpocalypse.

[@fideasu3690]

Same. Especially irritating if you're searching for help with some product - the words like "help", "troubleshoot" or "manual" get totally ignored, so that all you get is an endless list of stores.

[@DvorahDavida5778]

I told my family several years ago. "The Internet is broken." And since that statement, it has gotten progressively worse. It's a terrible loss for all of us.

[@amelialonelyfart8848]

I, for whatever reason, have a nearly photographic memory of an incident around 2015 where I was venting to my brother about how 'shitty and corporate' google and KZbin searches where. It was a very specific lecture about ancient African pottery and structures that randomly appeared for me in my recomendations someday, and I haven't been able to find it since. All the results I got were shitty SEO farming corporate crap and it made me so mad then, and it makes me so mad again. Algorithms have ruined the joy of discovery. Now I constantly find myself just searching the same stuff over and over, not expanding into something new unless a friend recommends it to me first.

[@robm8809]

You are so right.

[@robm8809]

@@amelialonelyfart8848 Also correct, Amelia.

[@StuffandThings_]

@@amelialonelyfart8848 Same, I feel like all the new stuff I learned/discovered was back in the early 2010's, now finding anything outside of the familiar is an absolute chore. The internet has become increasingly insufferable.

[@fullytokd]

Google isn't the ineternet

[@Fuerwahrhalunke]

03:48 Oh dude, the polar opposite happened to me. I'm looking for something very very specific, for example; Yesterday I was searching for certain settings on my printer and how to set them up. Very specific. What I got was pages full of articles written by journalists, that dance around the subject, like they are trying to avoid exactly what I was looking for. It's like they explained how the entire printer works, except for the small portion of it that I needed.

[@delfinenteddyson9865]

sounds like you are on a layer of hell or something

[@rocketPower047]

Hate those articles,

[@ahmataevo]

This is basically Microsoft support, at least when I tried using it years ago. Loads of technical information, but nothing that is actually relevant for the particular problem.

[@Fuerwahrhalunke]

@@ahmataevo True. It's like they try to hide the information as deep as possible, just so you stay a little longer, maybe get lost and forget what you were looking for in the first place. Almost as if it's planned...

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@ahmataevo Microsoft support is usually a joke as it exists just for the people who bought their software retail, they intend for most of the support to be done by the shop that sold you the computer. And they very much want you to buy a new computer rather than bothering them for fixes.

[@JayMaverick]

I used to work in the SEO field. Had to quit because I realized how unethical it is to essentially replace the internet with manipulated, targeted, often low quality content. Goes against everything the internet stood for in the beginning.

[@Koyii]

For the last couple years i have also adopted adding “reddit” to the end of my searches when nothing useful comes up. I never even realised that the problem was this big with Google search. This was an eye opening video. Thanks!

[@nataliejarosz9360]

Quora also isn't too shabby.

[@muhwyndham]

Yup. At least some relevant and actually human generated content is brought up. It's so useful.

[@senny-]

Same

[@bluepaint9923]

i find myself often having to add 'wiki' to search terms (when in the past wiki pages were most often than not the first results without me having to specify it)

[@H53.]

... Same here. I add 'Reddit' to my search queries. Can't find much that is useful otherwise.

[@douglasbennett1768]

It's pretty common in IT to periodically search for the same search terms every few months because you fix a problem that comes up infrequently, but repeatedly. After a while you get a feel for those searches. When Google alters the algorithm, you notice. My experience is that often after a major update searches are a bit skewed, but mostly they even out. It either corrects itself or you tweak your terms slightly, at which point you're back where you were. Google's last tweak in response to preventing misinformation for the US 2022 midterms seems to have materially altered search results. Smaller sites that I've used for years are not showing up in results or are coming in much further down. Older bits of info that used to require extra work to find are now almost undiscoverable. As a result, I've used alternative search engines, with varying degrees of success, more over the last three or four months than I have over, maybe, the previous 3 or 4 years. That can't possibly be good for their long-term bottom line.

[@kosmosXcannon]

I thought the tweak was prior to the 2022 midterms going back to the prepandemic years. Then again maybe I am thinking about KZbin, because I remember people talking about it on KZbin where they wanted to promote "authoritative sources". Maybe they tested it on KZbin first before pushing it on KZbin? I remember finding better variance of videos back then.

[@SrFrozen]

Which search engine have you found to be the best alternative?

[@zubbworks]

Stupid idea from a guy that dosn't know how to fix this problem. Make a list of websites with paper, and pencil? Why would they obfuscate search things, it's dumb.

[@mjt1517]

@@zubbworks And yet, they're doing it.

[@douglasbennett1768]

@@kosmosXcannon They did that during the pandemic for sure, but I never found it to interfere much with technical searches. In other words, all of my nerd stuff was mostly where I left it. After this last change, though, for the first time since I started routinely using Google, it seems to be materially worse.

[@rr2109]

Im so thankful that I got to experience early internet before it got ruined by businesses and influencers.

[@hlavco]

I'd say the Wild West era ended and the internet went full corporate sometime between 2008 and 2010.

[@Lee_303]

@@hlavco yep, if you want to buy something, like, now, on the high street, even in another town, good luck! You have to fight off Amazon, eBay & other online e-commerce with a stick. Wouldn't be so bad but the delivery firms are getting worse every - single - day, so I don't want to do online shopping anymore.

[@simon6071]

You forgot to mention radical left politicians.

[@WNActivist88]

It got ruined by a company trying to control the political narrative.

[@kosmosXcannon]

@@hlavco I think you can extend it to 2012. Then it started a slow decline towards 2014 and then it started going off the cliff with the adpocalypse.

[@ahabkapitany]

I'm in that early adopter group. I largely switched to Bing AI, ChatGPT, and Reddit. I use Google for super simple stuff ("weather", or to find a wikipedia page), plus as a calculator / unit converter.

[@chahineyalla4838]

Google Search has made my job so much more difficult. As a translator, I need to search for very specific terms that are often rare and niche. Google Search even ignores the quotation marks now, so I cannot force it to look for that specific weird thing that I need anymore.

[@tokyyoutube1287]

Can you give me an example of why you think Google ignores quotation marks or other advanced research tools used to give useful results in the past ?

[@jairo8746]

@@tokyyoutube1287 When instead of showing no results for your query it returns "did you mean ..." with utterly useless crap.

[@Person4649Person]

Yes I have the same problem. It wants to hamfist you into the most popular things, even if you are pretty specific in what you're searching for.

[@themodfather9382]

Are you joking? Or do you literally not understand that it doesn't work?@@tokyyoutube1287 a lot of people say this. "Mine isn't like that" etc. it only affects people with higher IQ, or people that actually rely on Google or the internet for something. Most of you can't really use the internet, which is why this isn't a trending topic worldwide. They literally shut off Google and almost nobody even noticed. And no 'youtubers' or any kind of experts are talking about it at all

[@flyingsquirrel4825]

yeah, that's what I hate most, the removal of exact phrases and AND and OR searches, back then you were able to combine those.

[@Scott.Silburn]

I've also noticed that Google doesn't give you more than about 10 pages of results... Everything just keeps repeating after that, despite their claims of millions of hits...

[@eveleene3613]

This....

[@raystaar]

When they began their venture, Google's creators had as their business motto "Don't be evil." They have failed miserably. They have become the very embodiment of iniquity.

[@keibrowse9329]

Sad….😢

[@Burneth_]

They have become the very thing they swore to destroy

[@user-iy6rm6pm4j]

But maybe Google's definition of 'Evil' is to crush resistance and force surrender. Is it evil to exploit the willingly exploited?

[@DagoSanDiego]

"Don't be evil" was changed in October of 2015, following Google's corporate restructuring, and given diminishing lip service thereafter.

[@pro-hz7kx]

This motto was removed, I wonder why would it happen and what potential consequences could follow

[@siskavard]

Using the internet went from a fun hobby to an absolute depressing chore.

[@TechSupportDave]

Yep but hopefully we can expect them to tone down on INCREASING the amount of ads now. And if not, well, people will simply go elsewhere as the video explains. Obviously it's not just the ads making browsing the internet a chore, all the popups and requests from the websites are also really annoying. Companies no longer care about their websites being USABLE, they just care about their stupid cookies and notifications and whatnot being enabled on our browsers, which in my opinion is really stupid because ultimately it draws away people from these websites. The amount of times I backed out of a website because of popups is crazy. I just hope that in the future we get extensions disabling these things, or I hope that companies start to understand how important good website design is. As an aspiring website designer myself, it pains me to see some of the atrocities being committed on the internet.

[@jaegrant6441]

​@@TechSupportDave I remember when the net started, cookies pop ups we're everywhere. Then they stopped. I was pretty young, but I remember something mentioned in computers class that cookies had been made illegal because of the tracking capabilities Now, they're everywhere again!

[@metallsnubben]

@@TechSupportDave To be fair, I don't know if it was better to have the exact same amount of cookies with 0 popups because they weren't legally required to ask first

[@hansjorgkunde3772]

@@TechSupportDave i never got adds on youtube. The sponsorship advertisement inside the video is the most annoying for me.

[@kasoffice9342]

and counted as a "skill" in requiments in some company

[@luvirini]

Getting fed up? No, most early adopter types got fed up a while back. For me personally it was when google started ignoring the + and - in search. Before that I could always specify things so that I could find what I needed when google returned wrong results, since that google just returns always wrong results.

[@AutisticMorty]

I use Brave search now. Google's intentions are apparent when you Image Search "happy white woman" vs. "happy black woman".

[@robsalvv5853]

I could have written the exact same words Luvirini, but I haven’t found a search alternative that doesn’t annoy me. What do you use instead?

[@Colortiniz]

Yeah they changed + to " " , annoying.

[@BonesMoses]

Ironically, they got rid of + because of Google Plus, which they abandoned a few years after launch anyway. As usual.

[@luvirini]

@@robsalvv5853 DuckDuckGo gives usually slightly better results, so I use it as primary. But unfortunately is has been getting worse and worse too trying to match Google in being bad I guess, but luckily still not succeeding.

[@Tranzisto]

Holy cow, I thought it was me being unable to use the search engines properly that led me to adding the word "reddit" to nearly every search in order to find a (seemingly) real person's answer, cause I hated clicking through all the listicles being thrown my way, and here it turns out that it's a widely known phenomenon.

[@kint5ugee]

i always add "reddit" to my searches too. i was pleasantly surprised to see many others do it.

[@mekannatarry1929]

Damn, didn't know that was an actual thing others do; I've started doing that for a few years now, myself.

[@whisperingoaks4841]

I do that too😂

[@twotruckslyrics]

i do too 😭 finally helped me with a lot of stuff related to autism and autism speaks wasn’t appearing each search 🥳

[@MichaelPohoreski]

Is there a way to “ban” Pinterest from showing up in search results? :-)

[@pisceanogre]

And in the last few months, I can no longer even find anything in my search history because they’ve broken it down into segments of a day and they are not connected, and they no longer make a cohesive record of your searches. I literally search for something for 15 minutes today that I had looked up two days ago and was completely unable to find it

[@Fatherlake]

Currently google isn't just filling the page with sponsored results, they are also very heavily prioritizing online stores. It's become extremely difficult to search for certain topics because sometimes you have to wade through hundreds of results of products (mostly t shirts in my experience for some reason) to find what you're looking for and even putting things like "-buy -shop -store" which would normally stop webpages with those words from showing up doesn't work anymore. And then when you finally find it it's most likely gonna be, like you said, some meaningless garbage meant to game the SEO system. I'm really looking forward to a new search engine that doesn't do any of this.

[@davideriva435]

Me too bro but it's hard

[@sagadoom2]

I like that idea, but how would a new search engine avoid SEO. Their algorithm will have to prioritize results somehow and when people figure out how, they will game it. Plus I doubt the current SEO methods wouldn't work on the new search engine

[@caleballen1330]

Imagine a search engine that actively disincentives things like online stores, SEO rigging and monopolies and that promotes independent sites

[@pakoti96]

This is even visible in the introduction of this video. Stores, Company websites and corporate sources are prioritized massively over forums and independent blogs. As a programmer I google stuff every day and sometimes the first 5 pages of Google are absolutely useless and show *identical* content. At the same time there are blog posts which have exactly what I need but are hidden away.

[@MushookieMan]

@@pakoti96 Bring back forums. Normalize forums.

[@guymartin6514]

As a librarian I will state categorically that GOOGLE IS NO LONGER A SEARCH ENGINE ... I don't know what it is but it isn't a search engine 🖤

[@oliverroedel1111]

propaganda ministry of nwo

[@Morpheus-pt3wq]

Yep, it is now a platform to only promote stuff from paying customers...

[@BlueberryDragon13]

A sale engine?

[@christendenise220]

Just spits out Ads at this point 😒

[@XenZenSen]

Sounds scary when you put it that way for some reason

[@comradelulz7455]

I always get a bit sad and nostalgic whenever I see the old internet, they were such good times. A landscape of rabbit holes. The kind of of things I read were amazing.

[@emanuel_soundtrack]

the feeling that really everything new could still be starting from zero

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

Yeah, I miss web rings too. They were awesome and often would have some sort of restrictions about membership, so there was usually some sort of a connection between the topics covered by one ring or another and you could go from site to site to site.

[@emmanueloverrated]

Same. It was less efficient, but something more human and alive... Internet is dying, its a very boring place now, the GAFAMs disrupt it progressively and took all the place.

[@Izelor]

@@emmanueloverrated I've been saying for the past 5 years that we will soon need a new kind of "Internet" to escape from what the Internet has become. It's sad actually. It feels like there is no exploration and discovery anymore. Just plain, old corporate greed.

[@xXx_Regulus_xXx]

@@Izelor if you have a desktop computer and a willingness to try new things there's kind of an underground internet. neocities is centralized but does have interesting sites, and there are so-called overlay networks like i2p that aren't part of the normal internet that have interesting things on them

[@Raptorman0909]

Google search has always had ads pop up for search results but it used to be more relevant and there were fewer ads. You'd enter a search term and Google would push some ads that appear relevant and then flowing that you'd get pages of actual search results. Today it outputs more ads and ads that are less relevant. Then, after those ads, you'd get a few legit search results followed by "you might also be interested in". I used to get pages of useful search results and now I get a few on the first page followed by stuff they think you'll click on to keep you engaged. If Google Search was a 90 out of 100 ten years ago it's now closer to 20.

[@EvilLordCanas]

Their reverse image search feature has gotten a lot worse, too. It's like they're intentionally reducing the quality of search results.

[@SurfbyShootin]

Probably having something to do with responding to ai image competitors

[@s2000.]

Just today I tried reverse searching a simple logo of a website to get its name. Completely useless, only shows similar 2d vector stuff that is not related in any way.

[@coolfer2]

This. I think it tries too hard to "understand" what the image is about, and it gives all kind of "similar" crap, but most of the times, I just want to find the original source of the exact image. And now I almost couldn't do it anymore. It used to be so easy to do. It gets even worse if the image contains some text or some pop references. Google will give crap related to those instead of just giving me the damn original source of the image. :(

[@toynbeetile]

doesnt even let me reverse image search anymore. just takes me to lens. its annoying

[@JasonEllins]

Its started showing more products you can buy instead of relevant results

[@jaedaens]

The problem is that people learned how to monetize the internet. Back in the day, it feels like a thousand years ago now, you put up a webpage about something because you were a passionate nerd that was obsessed with subject X. The internet was not primarily about making money. It was all about the free exchange of knowledge and you shared as much as you knew about your area of expertise to everyone and always without restriction, like not having to make a fucking account for the most trivial of things. It was the 'spirit of the internet' as my dad called it. You can still find an abundance of excellent information if you know where to look, far more than then even, but there are so many damn landmines you have to avoid nowadays.

[@jordanphilipperris]

The good ol' 90 and early 2000s of the internet were quite something, but I sure don't miss having to sacrifice the phone when being online, lolz :)

[@Sammie1053]

Was thinking about this last night... As a side note, sometimes it feels less like people "figured out how" to monetize the internet and more that they shoehorned in monetization at every possible turn. There are so many sites (like Google) that have kneecapped their core functionality in order to monetize as much as possible, or even content aggregation sites that exist _solely_ to make ad revenue. The former is the most disgusting to me. Google would _still_ be extremely profitable if it had just stuck with sidebar ads, a handful of sponsored links at the top of the page, and their cloud services, but capitalism demands infinite exponential growth, so now we have half pages of practically hidden sponsored links in search, ads covering Maps, and KZbin on the verge of charging people for higher resolution content.

[@willoughby1888]

@@jordanphilipperris That modem tone-song was futuristically good though, if it picked up, that is.

[@jordanphilipperris]

@@willoughby1888 True enough :)

[@MiggySmalls714]

"The internet was not primarily about making money. It was all about the free exchange of knowledge and you shared as much as you knew about your area of expertise to everyone and always without restriction", this is probably the oddest thing I felt nostalgia for. I remember as a pre-teen/teenager (when I had an abundance of time), all I did was research things and read wikipedia for the hell of it. I would research artists (music, comic,manga, historical etc.) and their history, how to do certain things on my computer i.e. emulators/piracy, ebaumsworld browsing/newgrounds. Such a different time back then, felt like the wild west especially with all the free stuff you can get.

[@iau]

While everything mentioned in the video is true, I've also noticed a change in how the search itself works to try to be "too smart". It tries to _interpret_ what it thinks you meant more and more every day to try to nudge your search into _easier_ or more popular searches. It will change your keywords or ignore them entirely, even if you use the advanced search tools. Search in KZbin is especially bad at this. Putting blatantly unrelated results right there because it wants you to click them and then giving up after 3 o 4 relevant results. Trying to find some videos with even the exact title spelled out is impossible, and I've had to stumble upon them via other sources.

[@AutPen38]

Yes, this is one of the issues with Google's AI and algorithms. Since most users are stupid (they type in stupid search terms with spelling errors etc while looking for the most basic/popular things), the AI treats every user as if they are stupid. Hence, when you search for something more niche/specific, it thinks "You probably meant this other thing that everyone else clicked on, so I'll give you that instead." And then it shows you a bunch of recommendations and you click on the one with the most attractive bait, and the AI thinks "I was right again. No matter what people type in the search box, they really just want to see the same thing as everyone else, so I'll recommend the latest trending thing even more often".

[@The-jy3yq]

Literally yesterday spent an entire hour looking for some basic Python shit Didn't find anything lmao

[@annieothername]

Excellent point!

[@SarahSkinnyJeans]

Yes!!

[@pgc6290]

@@AutPen38 .

[@jmalmsten]

As someone who finds Reddit completely incomprehensible, I really wish I could visit and use the same Reddit that everyone else seem to love.

[@JamesTaylor-je6es]

Yeah it's a minefield and everyone seems to have issues...and I've got issues.

[@TalkingWeirdStuff24]

In my experience, Redditors are some of the most viciously conformist groupthinkers I have ever encountered. Adding 'Reddit' to a search usually isn't much good unless you already agree with the Reddit Hivemind, in which case adding that phrase is basically just an exercise in confirmation bias. Just my experience: I, like you, wonder where this supposed Font-of-Information Reddit is hiding...

[@pro-hz7kx]

It got the most oppressive system ever. You say something out of echo chamber? Banned sitewide! That’s also why Redditors usually have unhinged views that most people in real life would be shocked at, because everyone who disagreed is already banned and long gone from Reddit. If you don’t believe me, go on any controversial post from 3-5 years ago, scroll the thread and count how many accounts are suspended 😂 and don’t forget the time when the most Reddit addicted city was… Eglin air force base 💀 so keep in mind the person you’re talking to may not be average Joe ☠️ but i’m happy to hear that people finally wake up to Reddit being a nightmare, now i feel more sane and less of tin foil hat guy

[@pro-hz7kx]

It got the most oppressive system ever. You say something out of echo chamber? Banned sitewide! That’s also why Redditors usually have unhinged views that most people in real life would be shocked at, because everyone who disagreed is already banned and long gone from Reddit. If you don’t believe me, go on any controversial post from 3-5 years ago, scroll the thread and count how many accounts are suspended 😂 and don’t forget the time when the most Reddit addicted city was… Eglin air force base 💀 so keep in mind the person you’re talking to may not be average Joe ☠️ but i’m happy to hear that people finally wake up to Reddit being a nightmare, now i feel more sane and less of a tin foil hat guy.

[@pro-hz7kx]

KZbin removes my comments but i agree with you

[@JBJHJM]

Absolutely agree. googling is not fun anymore (an neither YT search). On one side there're all those auto-generated buzzword sites drowning all the sites with truely helpful content. On the other side there's Google that seems not to be interested in showing neutral results anymore. As soon as you start searching for pretty specialized websites it is hard to find anything at all. We really need your second video on search engine wars... maybe there's a more viable alternative to check out?

[@mistergenius2600]

in terms of having fun i would suggest wiby, not sure if it's actually that useful though, i haven't tested it very much

[@dontbothertoreply9755]

I haven't seen blogs in ages.

[@juanrodriguez9971]

Searching in KZbin is so useless, because there are people with soul who simply want to search for info and in order to help them to get what they need they deactivate the ads, which to Google/KZbin means "Oh, I won't make a dime out of this video, do not recommend it ever again", there is a video I would have lost long time ago if I didn't have it on my favorite list because even searching the exact same title between " " doesn't help to find it, and that video has no ads as you can expect.

[@sgmvideos5175]

it's been few years and so far I'm ok with duckduckgo :D there are no adds, it's not stalking you, so it won't happen that it would show somethign relevant to what you were talking an hour ago instead of what you are seaching...

[@Zanthum]

I think it was summer-fall 2022 that I noticed KZbin changed their search to show you the first 10ish algorithmically selected results that are tangentially related to your search terms and then everything beyond that is just your normal suggested video feed completely unrelated to your search. It has become impossible to find anything on KZbin anymore.

[@Yorick257]

It seems Google also introduced some bias into the search. A recent example, I was looking to buy a GPS in Brazil. But all the results were local to my area (Northern Europe). Also, Google really likes to assume things now. I'm pretty sure it ignores special characters, like quotes. So, I say, it's definitely the algorithm Edit: yes, I ended up changing my location in google's preferences. But as far as I can tell, there's no way to "ignore location" in google. A friend suggested to use duck duck go in the future because it is possible to search globally

[@lordpengz16]

Have you tried this with location off?

[@annalee5751]

Hahaha. You want to see bias? Google anything about slavery. When it started, who, where, how etc and Google always misdirects you to "the Atlantic Slave Trade" so they can blame it on the US. In reality it was Brazil, Portugal, the Arabs etc. Hell, theres more slaves today than back then. When I say "then", Im talking thousands of years all the way up to the Atlantic that the British Navy and Sir William Wilberforce ended.

[@AndrewBlucher]

I didn't know you could buy a Global Positioning Satellite in Brazil.

[@candychip2557]

@@lordpengz16 they can easily get your general location even with location off, unless you're using a VPN. I like using duckduckgo because you can choose which country's search results you want (although thb the results are still pretty bad even then)

[@Actualhumanlive]

Exactly, it assumes a lot. It thinks it knows me but it does not. I'm a weird cat and I look for weird stuff. I don't want your processed crap!

[@adrnin-naxx]

There's also a niche problem not addressed in the video, being that the search engine thinks it's smarter than the user. If you search something with what Google considered a "typo", the search engine will automatically correct the word, sometimes after you encasing the "word" with quotation mark. This makes searching something with a unique name or some special strings very frustrating. To rub salt into your wound, the search result is often accompanied with this condescending message "There seem to be not many result from your search. Try searching for 'cake recipe' instead of 'how to bake a cake'" (or something like that). Way to annoy the hell out of your user.

[@RunyaEithelNar]

Yeah, searching in different languanges became pain in the back because of it.

[@musaran2]

And if your words are used by several domains, you will get only the most popular. You have to workaround by using specific, obscure vocabulary. Which sometimes does not exist.

[@oooohapenny4707]

I agree. My frustrations with Google and KZbin has brought me here.

[@impact0078]

After using Google for a long time you understand that it just wants you to have the "Out of 7 billion people on Earth, am i really the only one to have this problem?" feeling. You literally can't find the most basic stuff unless you go to like 5th page.

[@weldonyoung1013]

Wait til AI gets hold of this. Nothing is going to exist for HUMANS. And AI is going to go on its merry way !

[@TheBlacktom]

8 billion.

[@Termiic]

IF there even is a page 5. More often than not there just isn't.

[@weldonyoung1013]

@@Termiic then you have to find more technical terms for the subject you are interested in, and try several of them.

[@Termiic]

@@weldonyoung1013 strange, since in the past by using the same keywords there would have been much, much more matching results, certainly not ending at page 5, maybe only less relevant, while now everything technical seems to end in aliexpress, except if i search within a specific company website, that tends to have results. Sometimes.

[@torni69]

Besides you are absolutely right, and the results get more and more inaccurate, the most annoying thing I experienced in the last couple of months (maybe years???), ist that there is NO difference between the "pictures" and the "shopping"-tab anymore. you mainly get shopping-results only anymore, even if you type a search, that should obviously result in non-commercial content.

[@grangrill9714]

You click to see the images tab and almost all of them are linked to a price or shop, just the design change between these two tabs

[@Blackhawk19892]

I need a picture of some flowers to reference (Google's for an image). Oh, there's 500 results to buy the dvd of some obscure series......

[@vaiyt]

What about google constantly swapping the tab order so you click on where you think images should be by muscle memory and go to maps or shopping instead?

[@monicarenee7949]

There’s a Spanish poem I found in high school (early 2000s) that I literally memorized word for word. I wanted to Google who the writer of the poem was because I wanted to credit them. I can type entire lines of the poem in quotes and I’ll never find that poem again. It’s weird because I remember being able to look the poem up on Google in high school, which was how I studied it to memorize and translate it.

[@Zodroo_Tint]

In the old time you could type a lyric sentences to the google and you could find the music, today it just takes few word from you sentence and gives you the most popular musican as result.

[@jaschabull2365]

@@Zodroo_Tint Yep. I remember recalling hearing Bryan Adams' 'Cloud Number Nine' and Nelly Furtado's 'Explode' on the radio, and not knowing the name or artist and trying to look it up, only to find nothing but references to Clean Bandit's 'Rather Be' (which shares the only lyrics I remembered from Cloud Number Nine) and OneRepublic's 'Counting Stars (which shares the only lyrics I remembered from Explode). I recall trying multiple times to articulate to Google that 'No, these songs are not the ones I was looking for' by putting the titles I kept getting behind a minus sign and they were still all I got. I think I ended up having to comb through 90s pop charts to find the Bryan Adams song, as there was no way Google could be convinced I wasn't actually thinking of the Clean Bandit song.

[@eferrari96]

That is where Chatgpt helps and will be a competition to Google. You can find stuff like that much better there

[@enricobianchi4499]

it still works if you use quotation marks doesn't it?

[@nadeen6968]

You'll never find it again? Is there no way to type out the lyrics on a forum, so maybe somebody else recognises it?

[@jimfurlough8586]

Google is a great way to inundated with advertising while being blocked from your desired answer. Reddit is a great way to get an opinion from a 11 year old enthusiast when you are looking for your desired answer.

[@brodie3088]

Holy shit lol. I literally append Reddit to my searches all the time when I am trying to avoid blog articles of companies recommending their own product. Looks like I'm not alone

[@BellXllebMusic]

Yea I was kinda surprised how common it is but it makes sense XD

[@kuyadavid1]

Adding reddit at the end started to be the only way to get some proper information on an issue 😂

[@David-iq1kd]

I've been doing this too, super interesting!

[@JulieCheung]

I've also been doing this for a while now, had no idea but it all makes sense after watching this video

[@orirune3079]

OMG literally any time I want to figure out how to do something in Excel. All it gives you is companies telling you to buy their excel add-ons.

[@iminthatweirdpartofyoutube2687]

I have been watching Google decay in real time. At my work, I often need to pull up obscure webpages from over a decade ago. This past month, I needed this guy's blog post on the architecture of an ancient device from the 90s. The second time I tried searching for it using Google, it was just completely gone. Google doesn't support proper exact text matches either anymore which has led to so much of my life being wasted.

[@MatthijsvanDuin]

for proper exact text matches it helps to enable verbatim search (click Tools and then change "All Results" to "Verbatim")

[@Milark]

If you want exact matches use quotes “like this”

[@LHCB6]

@@Milark Unfortunately, when they said Google doesn't support exact text matches either anymore, what they meant is that doesn't work anymore.

[@jorionedwards]

"Google doesn't support proper exact text matches either anymore..."

[@effsixteenblock50]

I've noticed the exact same things that he's talking about in this video. The percentage of times that I end up on reddit after doing a search is growing rapidly. I also was not aware of how much google pays to apple for them to use chrome as the default browser in their products. That, in particular, is a pretty big sword hanging over their heads.

[@tasoli]

I think he misspoke in this part of the video. Apple's default browser is safari. I believe he meant to say Apple's default *search engine* is Google.

[@InfernosReaper]

@@tasoli which is all that really matters anyway, defaulting people to an advertising platform that calls itself a search engine

[@InventorZahran]

Google also pays Mozilla millions of dollars every year to be listed as Firefox's default search engine. I used to think Google was made the default search engine in so many places because it was popular and almost everyone wanted it, but I later learned that Google literally pays huge money to web browsers for this exposure. #AlwaysChangeDefaults

[@celestepalm6949]

@@InfernosReaper Nailed it! God, it seems I do better automatically skipping the first 7-10 pages to find the real/alternative information I need.

[@yinoveryang4246]

A year later, and it’s even WORSE than when this video was made.. Google and KZbin are like vampires sucking more of your time, which is now spent 30% watching ads and ploughing through advertising. Great opportunity for startups.