Technology

Let's just say that my use of the Wayback Machine is up by 1000% since the blackout started

It's really frustrating how much blatantly AI-written shit is at the top of every Google search nowadays.

Like, you Google "how to install a door" and you find an article that's like

"Here's how you install a door. Installing a door is really easy when you know how This guide will tell you how to install a door on ten easy steps. The first step in installing your door is to pick a door at the store." It repeats the title of the article everyother damn sentence, and takes FOREVER to get to a useful point. And sometimes they give flat out incorrect advice.

Then, you check the urland it's something like "techbuiz.com" and you've never even heard of this shit before, why the hellisit the top indexed result?

This isn't a problem to do with the reddit blackout at all, it's the enshittification of Google algorithm. They sell those top slots to the highest bidder, it's no longer about who actually has relevant information about the thing you searched for, it's about who had just enough matching keywords AND gave Google money to put up top.

Of course Google blames other sites, like reddit. It makes up all kinds of bullshit to obfuscate what they are doing, and sin e they have a proprietary algorithm nobody can prove that they are doing what I described above. But it's so blatantly obvious that they are that it's nearly insulting that they keep pretending they aren't.

I'm not shocked whatsoever. Especially as of a few months ago, I only get SEO spam around 80% of the time, unless I stick [r word] in front of my query. It's not even just Google or just [r word] going to shit, I can see the internet of just 10 years ago dying in front of my eyes.

I've started using DDG as defacto since the last 3 months. Use Google search only for sports updates because they've good widgets for those.

Current way to search on google for me is: Add reddit to search string, and set data to before may 1st 2023 Copy link suggested by google and change reddit to reveddit or any of the alternatives there

Results will go out of date but maybe this will tide me over until a good lemmy search is up and running.

My biggest concern with the downfall or even small proportional depopulation of Reddit is 100% going to be /r/sysadmin and /r/msp not being the best place to determine if there is an actual outage in progress for various cloud based IT services. I mean, it's a real, legit concern to worry over if you're in IT.

remember, when the execs of an evilcorp announce that their users are unhappy with something, it usually means that the execs are unhappy with something (and it's usually their profit margin)

Users weren't happy with the search results before the blackout either, and "quite" has no part in it. Google traded quality results for revenue over a decade ago... right about the time they changed their Don't Be Evil motto.

Why do they call stuff "Googling" as it was a real word, if Google is failing at being a search engine?

Yeah, no kidding. Google's been getting lazy with its search results. The first dozen hits on most Google searches are either YouTube or Reddit results.

Wow, one meaningless, entirely replaceable piece of shit brought two giant companies to their knees. Good job, capitalism. Such a fragile snowflake.

We've been not happy with google search for years(Because it is garbage now) and it has very little to do with Reddit.

That was one of the first things that I thought about. People can't affix "Reddit" to their Google searches in good faith anymore, so what is the next most reliable community?

I read half this article and just thought, “yeah no shit.” I swear Google conditioned everyone to just settle for dumb answers.

It’s amazing how few people understand how SEM works or the fact that Google makes services for freely available in order to build a profile on you and sell targeted ad space. The algorithm is tuned to for clicks. The amount of sponsored results and crappy listicles you need to scroll through is unreal. “Reddit” was the shortcut to opinions outside of sponsored influencers with affiliate links… but I’m sure TikTok and YouTube will fill that void just fine.

@L4s What I'm frustrated with Google search engine, is how it prevent to be smart and kept suggesting keywords that are not relevant to what in searching, the suggested result is totally irrelevant except for one common letter.