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A storefront for robots: The SEO arms race has left Google and the web drowning in garbage text, with customers and businesses flailing to find each other. (www.theverge.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M] to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 23 points 3 years ago (9 children)

The thing that upsets me most about this article is that when I try other search engines, I still find myself needing to use Google to find certain things. Usually that's information or questions and not products, but if it's this bad for Google I can't imagine it's any easier on the others.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I tried for a long time to use DuckDuckGo, but honestly the results are worse than Google, even given the present day enshittified state of Google search. And it eventually just became too annoying.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    I use DDG and what solved the problem for me are the "bangs". Not satisfied with the results? Add !g or !b to try another search engine.

    Want to look at up at wikipedia? add !wiki? google scholar? !gsc . Super convenient, so I don't really care that much anymore how crap the search engine is because I can use ddg as a searching "hub".

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    I just use chatgpt 4. Much better at answering questions.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    ChatGPT has no concept of truth or sources. It will straight up lie to you.
    It's nice for "creative" stuff but never, ever take its responses at face value.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    It's generative so it will generate plausible answers with no consistency of truthfulness.

    We have common(-enough) sense to be able to pick up on whether it's being sensible or not, after which we take to search engines. Search engines are now the fallback; a friend of mine and I have nearly totally replaced search engines with ChatGPT as the primary way of quickly, initially getting info now. If you stay aware of its limitations, it can be life-changing in a positive way.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Relying on common sense for critical information is a trap. You're "googling" because you don't know. The incorrect answer might be just plausible enough for you to believe it. This is why credible sources are important, to act as a sort of fallback to authority (I trust "source X" to provide correct information).

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Don't worry, eventually Google's current project to replace all their own search results with their own "AI" sludge will make using them impossible to get credible information from too. :(

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    I would urge people.to reconsider this or atleast try out GPT4. I recognize that's a normal viewpoint but from my usage and with back checking it, it was gotten profoundly good. To the point where I take recipe recommendations that it creates because it tastes delicious.

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