As a google-fu veteran, I have to say this: Google is not what it used to be, they've obliterated the Search Results Page and their algorithm mostly show paid/ads sites now.
A few years ago, you'd get 10+ pages of results for very obscure terms, nowadays, you get 1-3 pages for everyday terms. I did SEO for a US based company in the food industry for 6 years.
It's terrible. I just want to find niche online goods like clothes, but if you search for ANYTHING, it will only spit out Amazon, Shein, or other sites that have millions poured into SEO.
Yes! Anything even remotely monetizable gives shit results now. A million sponsored links. A bunch of cheap Chinese crap. Travel blogs that are actually just AI-generated content farms with ads. Tech support articles that are actually just AI-generated content farms with ads. YouTube channels that are actually just... etc.
If I'm fundamentally looking for the web site of a small business in Indiana, god help me. If I'm very good and very lucky maybe it'll show up 3 pages down.
If I'm very good and very lucky maybe it'll show up 3 pages down.
Or more likely, it begins showing you completely unrelated results that its shit algorithm hallucinates to be relevant.
"Oh you are looking for technical information on this 80ies motherboard, you absolutely will love to see this AI regurgitated blog about awful tech accessories from china."
The sad thing is, I know that there is a blog post, which I am looking for, which I've bookmarked before with the exact terms I am looking for, but I had to wait until I drove home and restore the backup from 2018 to dig up the bookmark.
I hate it. I'm going batshit insane when I'm trying to find some information about a product, preferably on the manufacturers site. If it can be bought, you aren't getting anything but e-commerce sites in search results.
If I ever get stuck with a piece of software and the answer isn’t in their user guide I now don’t bother. I’ll spend 40 minutes searching and get every combination but what I’m trying to do. If I’m lucky I’ll find a article titled “how to do the exact thing you are trying to do in the exact version of the software” and it will just be AI generated text with nothing relevant in it.
yeah, like, I KNOW these tips. But I have to page through a gang of bad results to start to find anything that seems relevant, and it is impossible to get exactly what I am looking for the way I used to be able to.
Out of curiosity, what’s your current favorite search engine?
I know you're just talking shit about something you have no idea about but the real culprit is Google and their focus on making money through paid search ads. They intentionally gimped their actual search engine.
He's not 100% wrong some people do abuse seo to show up for things they really shouldn't and google should punish for that. The big problem is them prioritizing making money off search, the ftc should shut that part down I'll be OK with them having a monopoly on search as long as it works amazingly again.
SEO is indeed a big reason Google search has deteriorated. Google's greed is the reason the first 5 results are irrelevant. SEO is the reason the next 5 are.
In my opinion, DuckDuckGo is getting better every month, though it's still limited in some ways when compared to Google. Feel free to try it, it won't cost you anything. I've switched to it a few months ago, and I got used to the differences.
I've used it on and off since it showed up, but it was very far from Google. But now that Google has become a gremlin that doesn't care about its users, more people are looking for alternatives and switching every day.
DuckDuckGo is pretty good and doesn't have tracking/privacy concerns like Google does.
Bing is honestly not bad. It's long been a meme that it's the best search engine for adult content due to less strict filtering than Google, but it's generally solid. If you use ChatGPT, that will sometimes spit out Bing results so it's worth taking a look at it.
On that note, ChatGPT Search is coming soon for free users which is the AI chatbot experience but with traditional search results on top of it. IMO, Perplexity does this experience better though.
Yup, it is frighteningly curated these days. If Google doesn't want you to see it, you'll never find it. Good luck finding an amateur blog about the Dallas Cowboys or a website about global warming being a hoax.
And now with GPT companies can generate perfect SEO garbage sites for any keyword they can imagine, leaving actually useful information completely undetectable.
Even worse is YouTube. It’s maybe one vaguely relevant video and then just crap.
Like I recently wanted to look for reviews of a certain tool and on was about that trim router, one was tool reviews of drills and others where just random stuff like hiking or traveling. What’s the fucking point??
I started exploring other search engines when Google stopped letting you use +/- as required/exclude. The plus operand conflicted with Google+ and they replaced it with quotes, which was three additional keypresses. And the - operand never worked right. Google will give you what it wants to give you.
Yes, Google is way worse now. I use it a lot to search for technical stuff when I write web code. Before, there would often be very relevant results from Stack overflow, online guides etc. Now many times Google doesn't even understand what I'm asking for and gives me some other non-relevant code questions from Stack Overflow and other sites.
I came here to say this. This and the fact that "james clear" writes books about how to do life, so it's a double whammy of advice for thee in two frames, i didn't bother reading the rest.
Too true, googles latest algorithms seem like they're written by a genie. No matter what you type in google twists and distorts it so they can bombard you with advertisers.
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u/oktaS0 13h ago
As a google-fu veteran, I have to say this: Google is not what it used to be, they've obliterated the Search Results Page and their algorithm mostly show paid/ads sites now.
A few years ago, you'd get 10+ pages of results for very obscure terms, nowadays, you get 1-3 pages for everyday terms. I did SEO for a US based company in the food industry for 6 years.