• 1984@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    What is funny is that its not even better now compared to then. It used to be super fast and found everything on the web in an instant.

    And today, well, you know how Google search is…

    • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      A former high-up at Google has stated that they intentionally made the search engine worse a few years ago so that people would see more ads and click on more sponsored links. Now, the best result is #15 in the list, on average.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I don’t remember his name, but he got moved to the education department.

        Someone else had the link.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      “Here’s ads, misleading ai slop we generated from stolen content, and forty links to AI generated content that’s probably even worse. You might find something human on page 7 of the results. Oops it’s a dead link lmao.”

    • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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      2 days ago

      Google once stated that their primary goal was to get you off of Google property as quickly as possible- IE deliver your search result and get you where you want to go. That was the exact opposite of every other major website at the time (search engines, ‘portals’, etc) which wanted to keep you in.

      It’s what made Google great. They were laser focused on the best search experience.

      Now their search kinda sucks, it’s all AI and fuzzy logic and whatnot and even with quotes and Verbatim it STILL doesn’t just search for what I typed in not what you thought I wanted

        • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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          14 hours ago

          I think the problem goes farther back than that. That might be when it got worse, but the place where Google search started to lose its way (IMHO) was when they removed + as an operator so it wouldn’t screw up searches for Google+ (their social network at the time). That was the first time they truly put something else ahead of search.

          It was also before 2019 that Google search stopped doing what you told it- trying to infer what it thought you meant rather than what you typed in. Verbatim mode makes that better but it’s still not perfect.

          I don’t think anyone’s made a better search though. And to be honest I don’t think it’s possible anymore without MEGA resources.