What was the last time you had useful search results with Google?

kjs3 3 years ago |

Google is bad and obviously being gamed and Google clearly doesn't care. But it's still better than Bing. One example: if I search for a part #, like an IC, Google at least tries to show me some actual information about the part (datasheet, manufacturer web site, etc) on the first results page. Bing shows me nothing but SEO spam from people trying to sell the part for pages. In my experience, if advertising exists for a search term, Bing wants to show me every bit of it before giving me any useful information. Unfortunately, DuckDuckGo seems only mildly better, but to be fair I've only been using it casually.

dxs 3 years ago |

Is Google Getting Worse? https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/

By Stephen J. Dubner, Nov 16, 2022, audio+transcript, runtime: 60:32

Sources:

> Marissa Mayer, co-founder of Sunshine; former C.E.O. of Yahoo! and vice president at Google

> Ryan McDevitt; professor of economics at Duke University

> Tim Hwang, media researcher and author; former Google employee

> Sridhar Ramaswamy, C.E.O. and co-founder of Neeva; former senior vice president for advertising and commerce at Google

> Elizabeth Reid, vice president of Search at Google

> Jeremy Stoppelman, C.E.O. and co-founder of Yelp

zteppenwolf 3 years ago |

I don't remember the last time I had something that was actually useful...

mintaka5 3 years ago |

google is awful now. i'd say the last time i had a relevant search result that wasn't some copy/pasted edit from another uncited source was probably 2007

zteppenwolf 3 years ago | |

Do you know of alternative services? I tried a couple of them, including duckduckgo, and no success :/

mintaka5 3 years ago | | |

nope sorry. most sites are indexed based on crap algos. we are at the mercy of content providers who are not responsible with producing well managed and authoritative information. search engines are like reference librarians that have no idea how their libraries are organized.

kjs3 3 years ago | | |

I have a number of librarian acquaintances who seem to cope with the gradual disappearance/destruction of their careers by telling themselves "one day, they'll get sick of current state, and they'll be back". I hope it's true.

mintaka5 3 years ago | | |

i hope so too, i have a $25k degree in MLIS that promised me a fruitful career. now i teach arts & crafts too Wall Street fuck kids.

all that aside, i taught myself to program, because i could read the writing on the wall in that career. that was a wash too. now i have to compete with AI?! one day? i'm done. i'd rather commit suicide than have to keep chasing a nowhere goal.

zteppenwolf 3 years ago | | |

I don't know about that, but maybe they will try to create a new platform with their own expertise? There is clearly some public for that.

kjs3 3 years ago | | |

I think implicit in the hope is that maybe not everything should be delt with via 'algorithm', and perhaps there's a place left in this brave new automated world for actual people helping people.

mintaka5 3 years ago | | |

i have an idea for that, but i think things like GPT will thwart it. machine learning is great, but it's not connected to human understanding. that is what librarians did was take non-human information and bridge it with a shortcut to human understanding on a broad basis. software can manage the information really well, but no one has designed a thing that bridges genuine human "knowing" with machine "knowing".