General enshittification of searching

[Ming]

In trying to see what could be found about Herbert James Draper (T-H-L), Ming ran across what is now a huge presenting problem these days: Google's search results are heavily laden with crap. The book searches were particularly bad: it only took a page or so before none of the results mentioned Draper (or anyone else by that name) at all. It's not the least bit clear to Ming why the results that did appear were included.

[AndyTheGrump]

If you search for 'google search getting worse' on Google, you'll find lots of links blaming the general enshittification of the internet. But then you would, wouldn't you...

[tarantino]

Some people try to get around how bad Google search has become by adding site:reddit.com, which provides a higher percentage of relevant results. Reddit is now threatening to block Google and Bing crawlers, so that might not work soon.

‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google

[Meanderingbartender]

Google Books seems to get shitter every time I use it and I use it just about every day. Even out-of-copyright books seem unsearchable sometimes. No chance of ever finding an open-access book or paper.

[Giraffe Stapler]

Last week when I searched for something in quotes, Google didn't respect that and gave me results as if I had made a typo. No "did you mean...", just results for something I wasn't searching for. I don't recall what it was exactly but it was a username like "rainricket" and it gave me results for (let's say) train tickets. I wasn't signed into a Google account and intended to run a test to see if being signed in made a difference, but I never did.

I fear that they are monkeying with it while trying to shoehorn some AI chat function in there. They greatly reduced the usefulness of news searches for me some months ago when they decided that if your search term was in quotes they would show you more than just news sources (which looks just like a general search).

I'm actually finding myself using Bing sometimes now. I think Google has a more complete index of sites, but what good is that if I can't limit the search?

[rnu]

Last week when I searched for something in quotes, Google didn't respect that and gave me results as if I had made a typo. No "did you mean...", just results for something I wasn't searching for. I don't recall what it was exactly but it was a username like "rainricket" and it gave me results for (let's say) train tickets. I wasn't signed into a Google account and intended to run a test to see if being signed in made a difference, but I never did.

I fear that they are monkeying with it while trying to shoehorn some AI chat function in there. They greatly reduced the usefulness of news searches for me some months ago when they decided that if your search term was in quotes they would show you more than just news sources (which looks just like a general search).

I'm actually finding myself using Bing sometimes now. I think Google has a more complete index of sites, but what good is that if I can't limit the search?

I rarely use google (I prefer duckduckgo), but it's been my experience for some time now that google ignores quotes.

[tarantino]

I searched for "Jimmy Wales" in the last 24 hours.

Google's first page of results includes Wickapedia on kanabidiol.eu and infantojuvenil.eu, Wiki pedia on luis-mobile-hundepflege.de, the Korean Journal of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wikipewdia on weilandbagage.de, symptoms of bleeding on warfarin on barbaris.eu, etc etc etc.

Duckduckgo gives just two results. List_of_Wikipedia_controversies (T-H-L) and tanki online at bpand.sjr.ma.gov.br, which redirects to v37870.com, some weird gaming or gambling site in Portuguese.

Bing also leads with List of Wikipedia controversies, with tanki online second, then videos and images of Jimmy. So duckduckgo appears to be using bing.

They all suck.

[rnu]

I searched for "Jimmy Wales" in the last 24 hours.

Google's first page of results includes Wickapedia on kanabidiol.eu and infantojuvenil.eu, Wiki pedia on luis-mobile-hundepflege.de, the Korean Journal of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wikipewdia on weilandbagage.de, symptoms of bleeding on warfarin on barbaris.eu, etc etc etc.

Duckduckgo gives just two results. List_of_Wikipedia_controversies (T-H-L) and tanki online at bpand.sjr.ma.gov.br, which redirects to v37870.com, some weird gaming or gambling site in Portuguese.

Bing also leads with List of Wikipedia controversies, with tanki online second, then videos and images of Jimmy. So duckduckgo appears to be using bing.

They all suck.

duckduckgo uses a number of sources including bing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo#Search_results
I mostly use it for privacy reasons.