Has Google Search gotten so much worse in the last couple of weeks?

TheBeesKnees@lemmy.sdf.org to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 302 points –

I know it's been getting worse over time, but I could still find what I needed after some digging.

Recently it's been like 10 minutes of adjusting search terms, still getting completely useless or irrelevant results, and me just giving up afterwards. Other search engines seem just as bad.

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*years? Yes. It used to be the bleeding edge of search and now it's just profit driven enshittification like the rest of ai-ridden garbage tech wallstreet bullshit.

Don't forget your glue on your pizza! Can't have a pizza without glue....

It’s not just glue it‘s Elmer‘s Glue. They still have some standard.

Elmer can go Fudd himself. Store brand non-toxic craft paste is just as flavorful an half the price.

We’re talking about glue not craft paste. One can be launched across the room at an unsuspecting teacher, the other taste fantastic.

And don't forget to check if your bread is baked by inserting your dick in it. You're Welcome.

The other day I asked google what season we were in. The AI got it wrong, and that's like the simplest question ever.

It has definitely been getting worse over years, but I specifically meant the last couple of weeks. I could still find what I needed between all the garbage.. now I can't even find it after adjusting the search multiple times.

If we could roll back the internet 10-15 years, everything would be much better.

If you use Firefox you can add a Search Engine that removes the google cruft.

In about:config browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh Boolean, hit the plus sign to add. Exit out of that screen. Then go to Search engines in Settings and “Add” [ whatever name you want to call it ] as a new search engine. And paste this URL and save it. https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

You will see that it deletes everything but search when you use it. You can also just use the url but you must replace the %s with your search term, like red+espresso. Example: https://www.google.com/search?q=red+espresso&udm=14

I'm sure this works for other browsers, I just use Firefox.

I've already added a new search engine like this, but what does the about:config setting do?

Returns the add custom search engine button. Which for some reason, has been hidden by default.

Oh my god, thank you for this. You solved a year long sufferfest for this internet stranger because of that greyed out button. Every god-damned guide online points you towards that button and I could not find the solution for it. What the fuck Mozilla

You can right click the URL bar for sites that support the OpenSearch XML standard. Which I guess is what they wanted to replace it with. But I don't really know why they removed the button to a about: config setting. Could at least be a checkbox or something to enable.

Hm interesting. I guess that is part of why tenbluelinks.org even needs to exist. Because a custom one is now a PITA. Thanks.

Ooo I haven't heard of this, thank you! The amount of garbage they've added is absurd.

I have tried many times to do exactly what you said, and I still am not getting the option to add a custom search engine.

Any advice you have is appreciated.

This is correct (your screen). Now go to your Firefox Settings, click on Search on the left side, scroll down to the Search Shortcuts section and below that box is a button labeled Add. You will get a box to add a search engine, the Alias field is optional. Make sure after you add it, there is a blue check in front of it on the list in the box or it's invisible.

I was honestly getting so frustrated the other day at work when searching for something very specific and coming up empty handed. Tried DuckDuckGo and even fucking Bing and found what I needed in a matter of seconds. Google search is trash now. I have to go to the second page or further just to find something that isn't an ad, AI response, or reddit. None of which are helpful.

I've been swapping around search engines too, but they still seem bad. I always end up back at Google just because I know how to manipulate the search terms better.

The results are usually the most clicked, not necessarily the factual links. Others have recommended kagi. I haven’t tried it yet. I remember when the internet started and you had to use them all!

I'll have to try kagi some time

EDIT: subscription based... Idk, definite maybe on that one.

Is that the one that costs money? You can't have a true incognito search if that's the case.

True, but worth reading their about page and privacy page. Not saying it'll stay this way, but the way they are running is something that makes more sense then being sold as a product to Google. And you aren't getting much of an incognito these days with all the fingerprinting they are doing.

I will admit kagi search isn't the highest performer, but it's viable. DDG, Start page, etc. Might give you more privacy, or not (hard to tell with DDG these days), but it might be worth trying a different model for a while.

I miss the days when the internet was truly free, but in lieu of that we have to have something better. Kagi is a start.

Incognito is on your client side browser in that the browser doesn't retain any trace of the current session once you close the tab. The search engine still knows what you whacked off to.

You can't have? Or you can't be sure?
Because you certainly can have. Just because you pay, doesn't mean they will log your searches. In fact Kagi claim they don't. And since their only income comes from paying users. If anyone ever found out they're lying about that, they'd quickly loose a big chink of subscribers and income. As well as get sued for fraud. So it's rather unlikely they do.

Unlike every other search provider, Kagi is the only one with a business model that ensures it's users are the customer, not the product. When actually using it every day, that's quite obvious in the results. Even when you search for a company directly, it's Wikipedia entry is usually the first result. The the company site is the second.

I wouldn't be so sure of Kagi doing the right thing...

Not being sure was part of my point. We can't be sure. But all their incentives are aligned in the right way. That's the best we can hope for. And better than any alternative right now.

I understand the sunk cost fallacy, but I truly think you should read that entire page, friend... That's all I'll say though! :)

True Incognito mode is a myth, it only stops keeping a history in the tab of that browser. Everytime you use a browser to go to any site ever, the browser logs you went there. So does your ISP and the site your connecting to. No matter which mode or browser you use, if you go to Google, then Google knows you went there and logs your searches.

The closest you can come to browsing the web anonymously would be with a mix of dedicated privacy OS like Tails and either a VPN or Tor as a middile man, but that assumes those proxys are not corrupted. Free VPNs make money by selling your "secret browsing" habits.

The internet is nothing more than wires, if you connect your wire to someone elses, every intermediatary knows.

You can use uBlock Origin and other privacy add-ons to block tracking and a VPN to hide your IP address but if you're logged in to a search engine's account then everything you search is tied to you no matter what you do.

If you're logged in a vpn that's also true of the vpn, and all these measures are not stopping FAANGS

Not if you used Dogpile. Also it still exists somehow.

I've used Kagi's free trial. I'd turn to it when nothing else was helping and it did really well, but recently it hasn't been helping either. It's probably still fine for most things, but I'm often searching niche developer/programming things that are too burried under SEO/AI spam to find anymore.

FWIW, the default "programming" lens works quite well in Kagi, you can also create your own lens if you have a set of websites from which you routinely search info, and there are tons of bangs already (which can also be mapped to lenses BTW). In addition, you can downrank AI/SEO stuff when you find it (it is downranked by default in kagi), so that over time your results are quite clean.

I recommend Kagi, I've been using it for about six months now and results - especially small web results like blogs - are so much better. I also have a pretty good time image searching compared to when I was on Google.

Yes it's paid, but that to me is the price of resisting enshittification. Find a company that isn't a publicly traded for-profit world-burner and pay them for their service. Is the idea of paying for email and search an alien concept to me? Yes. But I'm either paying Google whatever €120 a year in eyeballs on ads and an increasingly worse experience, or I'm paying €80 a year and getting a markedly better experience.

Now it's up to Kagi and Proton to not turn into shitty companies while other competitors catch up and we have a thriving ecosystem again.

Kagi is amazing. I absolutely love its' filtering features and I use that forums toggle all the time. It feels like such a more relevant experience for me. I tried it out with the 300 searches limit, but that wasn't even close to enough, turns out I easily use 4 times that in a month and even though it's not cheap it feels like it's worth it.

I second kagi. Have been using it for almost a year now and I will stick with it. I switched from google to ddg some years ago to ddg before, but kagi is simply better.

A colleague also uses it and is also very satisfied with it.

Got some bad news about Kagi...

I've read it, I read the discussion around it, idk man. One guy's thoughts on a company and it's founder isn't enough to move me off of something without better proof, better alternatives, and worse crimes than maybe having a bad long term vision.

Hopefully every company outgrows it's founder and becomes a system. We'll have to see, right now I'm satisfied and that gets me off Google and signals to others I'm willing to pay.

It’s okay if you don’t care, that’s on you and the others who don’t care.

I was about to pay for the thing, and stumbled upon that website that provides quite a bit of substantial “what the fuck?” Reactions from me.

Just throwing the knowledge out there for people like me who do care. :)

SEO became too well known and is now filled with bullshit.

yes. use any of the following, in no particular order:

  • ecosia.org - A non-profit certified B corp that plants trees by serving ads in your search results. Bing search underneath.
  • duckduckgo.com - A privacy friendly search engine. Primarily sourced from Bing but mixes in a few other sources.
  • any SearXNG instance - A self-hostable search front-end to various search engines.
  • marginalia.nu - specifically 'random' - An independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.

Aside from DDG, these are all new to me. I'll take a look this week, thank you.

Google Maps is utter crap lately too. It seems to be making up locations, and several times in the past month, it’s taken me to the wrong place. It’s getting almost as bad as Apple Maps

My favorite one recently is constantly telling me to keep straight to remain on a highway like 7 times before I need to actually get off the highway. Glad I turned off the sound a long time ago otherwise I would have lost my fucking mind.

We have express (toll) lanes on some highways around me, and the navigation system loses its damn mind every time. "Keep going straight", "continue going straight", "proceed in a trajectory perpendicular to your current trajectory"; I fucking get it!

Perpendicular would actually have you make a 90 degree turn, you are thinking of parallel.

I went to a low data plan and learned that Google Maps consumes a vast amount of data (relative to my plan limit), and I download all my maps and had location off. 1 single bus route between two pinned locations was 30Mb. Maps and search could be so simple but they are insanely bloated.

Hey now, Apple Maps is more accurate, provides better directions where I am, has more up to date satellites imagery, and has been this way for years. I only use Google Maps to search because Yelp is god awful. I live in a rapidly expanding area and all of that matters.

Oh god, yes this too. All the sponsored location spam drives me crazy. I love when I zoom in to a location and it doesn't mark ANY of the shops besides STARBUCKS^tm^

Apple Maps is fantastic for navigation, but it doesn’t have enough locations on it. I use Gmaps for searching locations and apple for navigating.

I stopped using it last year it got so bad, I ended up using DDG but that’s gotten shit and I’ve found myself back on Google. To me it feels 10% better than it was when I stopped.

Although everyone’s experiences with Google are so different we’re probably all being A/B tested.

Yeah, last month I finally had enough and DDG has been alright

The problem with DDG is if it doesn't find results it just ignores your search terms and throws whatever shit it wants at you.

Oh my god, I feel this so much… Also, I think that recently got even worse, as I recently found myself switching between DDG/Google and finding both extremely bad for my query

Yes!

It think it got suddenly so much worse recently. Glad to see I’m not alone, something must’ve e changed.

I know it’s being overly recommended in here, but kagi pretty much gives you exactly what you want. I’ve had very few times it’s been unable to give me my search in the first few results. Others swear by SearXNG

Yeah, I’ve recently switched to SearXNG instances on some devices, definitely seem to be getting better results

apart from ne not having that much money laying around a the moment I’m not a fan of people having to pay for their search engine, as I’m of the opinion that such a fundamental tool to use the web should remain free

does it also straight up ignore special commands like -whatever i could swear you could use that on many sites and it worked as "exclude this "

I find that it often laughs at your excluded search terms and includes them anyway

it sometimes seem to, most advanced searching still works, at least on DDG

google does this as well, unless you switch on verbatim mode

unless you switch on verbatim mode

Which I'm just hearing about now. So clearly they don't wnst us using it.

They fucked it all up with that AI bullshit awhile ago and it hasn’t recovered. I use start page now and am much happier.

I used to a hater of Kagi but honestly its a damn good alternative search engine. They are doing some actual innovation and are very transparent. I still prefer a good searXNG instance but searxng is more for technical people who understand decentralized meta search instances. Here's my simple guide on search engine alternatives to help you get away from google best you can.

Google is finally collapsing under the weight of its own greed and lack of innovation. Now other companies are showing up to steal their lunch especial with the big monopoly case going on right now.

You might be interested in learning how opaque Kagi really is...

Thank you both, Smokeydope and LucidNightmare. That was an interesting read! I gave SearXNG (paulgo.io) a try and it was a refreshing experience, I'm going to start using it regularly to see how well it does.

Thank you for actually reading what was provided! SearXNG is pretty good, and I kinda want to give self hosting it a try! Good luck on the hunt!

Google makes money on ads. They make $300-$400 annually per user by displaying ads.

They are motivated to tarpit you in order to show you more ads.

Giving you your results quickly and efficiently costs them revenue.

Use kagi, or another search engine.

It is half okay, but only if they are not getting paid to screw up your results. It is a coup against democracy where freedom of information is freedom of the press and is an entire fundamental pillar of democracy. Google's entire business model has always been neo feudalism. A web crawler and search engine is like a library, it must be neutral, objective, and publicly funded as a non profit. Much the same with YT, it is our digital public commons and the most efficient form for information sharing in the primary form of human communication.

I've been using Kagi since ~February and it's changed my views on Search. Beforehand, if use a combination of Google, Bing, DDG, and Brave and rarely find what I needed in satisfactory time. Now I'm typically finding it in the top 5 without all the cruft + have access to a handful of LLM assistants to choose from for other tasks (when needed).

I've also heard good things about SearXNG.

Might want to give this a read on ol' Kagi...

I'm aware.

I hope you don't pay for it then, since Vlad himself said,

"people who really need anonymity are very rare. probably less than a 100 in the entire world. definitely not typical Kagi users unless they are criminals, in which case we don't care they don't have full anonymity (nor we want them as customers)"

Is this how you live your life? Going around telling people how to live theirs?

Jesus christ dude. I said I'm aware.

I have specific use cases that Kagi, and nothing else that I've found but feel free to try me, satisfies to a T with speed and value.

Unlike you, I'm aware enough to realize I'm not the average consumer and that not everyone might fall into my bucket, so it was merely a suggestion ALONG WITH ANOTHER SUGGESTION (SearXNG). I'll leave it up to the reader to do their own tests and see if it suits their needs.

I guarantee something you eat came from Nestle somehow and that something you own or wear was made on the backs of a sweatshop of some sort. Quit with your holier-than-thou bullshit.

LOL

Chill the fuck out, homie. It's not that fucking serious. I guarantee you will live a lot longer by getting rid of some of that anger in a healthy manner. Hope your day gets better, asshole. :)

I read on here (I think) a couple months ago that adding "before:2023" to your search terms improves results a lot. I've found it to be true. Unless I'm looking for something specifically from the last couple years.

Unfortunately, I'm usually searching software development issues and half the results are a decade old (and are no longer relevant for the language anymore). Assuming "after:xx" works too this night help, thank you!

There are many factors at play here, some of which including:

  • AI content is taking over the Web: with the popularization of LLM tools, there's an increasing number of AI-Generated content across the Web. Even press websites are using them for generating news and opinion articles.
  • Old sites/articles are vanishing from existence: for instance, old blogs and personal web pages, which contained a lot of useful information, are being deleted due to factors such as domain expiration, hosting expiration, insufficient web traffic for the host to keep it online, etc. To make things worse, few of these sites were archived with tools such as Internet Archive and Archive Today, meaning that, when they disappear, they really disappear.
  • Dominance of Reddit-owned contents and the Reddit issues: Reddit doesn't need introductions, most of the questions and content used to come from Reddit posts and comments. Things such as people (understandably) deleting their Reddit accounts make content to disappear as well.
  • SEO bs and marketing spam: Google kept changing "page ranking" algorithms, sorting results according to their own will. "Search Engine Optimization" is a just a facade that led many old sites to practically vanish from search result pages. Advertisement also did harm many sites as well, even the bigger ones.
  • Societal, economical and human changes: there were lots of changes upon society and humans by the last 5 years. These worldly factors also influence the digital landscape.

That said, it depends on what you're searching for. If you're searching for knowledge that used to be at old websites, you can use Marginalia to search this specific type of websites (considering that they're still online).

i've been manually curating your search results the past few weeks. Sorry boss, i'll do better.

If you can't do better, then at least add some cute cat pictures in it. At least then I'll feel a crumb of joy with every wasted effort!

People still use Google?

Lmao. Don't kid yourself, a vast majority do. Id bet 80-90%

This is what I call the linux bubble. People who use linux and are used to alternate solutions, which may offer better performance than the norm. Then they surround themselves with other like minded people. So much so that they begin to forget that they are using alternatives rather than the norm. Despite what benefits they gain from alternatives, some people can't grasp that they are, in fact, alternatives.

Twitter has 368 million monthly users. I find it to be a cesspool of hate, racism, and right wing agenda.

So you would think mastodon or bluesky would have equal or better numbers.

Bluesky has 9.7 million monthly users, which includes a huge recent boost because of brazil ceasing twitters ability to operate. I think that alone was 2 million users.

And mastodon has 975,000 monthly users.

So yes, despite it's flaws, twitter is still the default in microblogging. By a LOT. But I'm sure the feeling around here is "who still uses twitter???".

Everybody. Same way everybody uses google. Same way everybody uses instagram. And it's not even close to being close.

The fact I'm most flabbergasted about is that only a third of people use password managers by default. An independent American surveysource: bitwarden over 2000 "random" Internet users shows 34% use a password manager. The randomness of this survey is probably skewed, which would make the total percentage even lower in actuality.

Which is insane since they’ve mostly been using iOSs or Androids built in password manager for as long as that’s been a thing on both. Doubt they even realize that’s what it is though.

Probably 99%. This question was only meant to be taken as "I am above the common pleb, those idiots"

You honestly though the most used search engine has been abandoned by everyone? Maybe share what you're using instead of just being pretentious?

I totally honestly believed that. I’m just so naive, how do I get by in life? Thank goodness you’re here to set me straight. What would I do without you? How did you get so good at computers? You must be some kind of wizard.

Yes. Its AI generated slop. I use SearxNG, and I have it tuned to go to Startpage first, Google second.

I have fully switched to kagi, it's not perfect but for the average case it's better than google.

It took me. 12 minutes of clicking through websites yesterday to get the heat and time settings for making potato chips in the air fryer. I used to be able to just ask the Google Assistant.

I'm glad I saw this post cuz I was going to gaslighting myself over the whole thing. It really is getting way worse, isn't it....

What search engine alternatives do y'all use?

I tried Google again after a few weeks of DDG and gave up on the first search. DDG has some troubles with German but I can work around that

As a basic bitch that hasn't gone to page 2 of a google search in years I don't really notice a difference.

The ai answers, related questions, and ad results are not especially helpful but at the end of the day I will find what I'm looking for.

Ill add something I've never really seen anyone mention: it used to be a lot better at staying on topic without ME keeping it that way

For example: this weekend I was playing Blops 3 and googled shit like "Winslow accord bo3" and after 1-3 searches I could just type shit related to bo3 and even if it had relevant pages related to other shit, it'd remember my recent searches and keep them rather relevant even if it was on my phone or a new window rather than the same search bar

At least, it used to work that way. Now every 4-5 searches it suddenly forgets what tangent I was on and I have to start adding qualifiers again to get relevant searches

Try finding old band photos. Basically impossible

It is. It also is the best thing to find something on Reddit. And as much as I hate what it has become, it still is the best source of information. But this changes rapidly, sadly. I give it until 2027, then the information on Reddit is garbage too.

I've started to use Qwant a few months ago when bing and duckduckgo started to give me result I had filtered out in my search. But now it is way past this stage. When I look for something I find a lot of related topic but nothing about the topic I've searched for.
I notice it was suddently become much worst about 10~15 days ago

They all suck anymore. Google fell the furthest though.

And it seems like it completely disregards search modifiers like quotes or the minus sign at this point. The modifiers are overridden by the algorithms pushing preferred sites, or Google just gives few or no returns as if there are no sites featuring your search criteria, which is completely false because it’s perfectly happy to return paid sites with the same but incorrect search term.

I use Ecosia instead of Google, but I know that Google recently added a "forums" category to the top of their search. Have you tried that? Hopefully it will help bring back to life independent forums.

I always feel a sense of dissonance (I think that's the right word?) when I see posts like this. Everyone seems to be talking about this, but I haven't noticed a difference. Honestly, when I look up something, what I'm looking for is usually in the first few results. Not really sure how to feel about my experience being so different from others.

Are you pretty consumercentric, or do you have some niche interests as well? Google is great at basic tasks and delivering product results and promoted content, and if that's what you're usually looking for it probably works great for you. People have trouble these days trying to find the specific stuff. Google used to really excel at this in the past, but now it's buried under pages of promoted content or pages SEO gamed to the top but not being very helpful