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submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

Google executives acknowledged this month they need to do a better job surfacing user-generated content after the recent Reddit blackouts.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Google search is a pain from a year ago.

When searching for something on Google, you should include terms like “Reddit”, “superuser”, “Stack Overflow”, etc., to get better results. Because if you don't include them, the first page of Google looks like a bot-generated page. Of course, Google are ‘not quite happy’.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

It's pretty incredible how often I put “Reddit” in a Google search. It really is the quickest way to get a good answer to most questions, from how to fix an Excel error to which robot vacuum is most reliable.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I still remember the vacuum dude. There was a legendary post probably a decade ago made by the world's most knowledgeable vacuum salesman. He laid out all the secrets of the industry, and went into detail I didn't know I needed regarding how they all work.

To this day I remember his advice: get a bagged vacuum if you want a clean carpet.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Not a vacuum salesman but repair man. Still active on reddit, but that's the last AMA he did.

I doubt vacuums have changed that much in 4 years.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

While we are fixing things Google, can we also not have the first 20 results be YouTube videos that are 30 minutes long, when the answer I want is typically a sentence or two....?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

im adding "-youtube" to searches for a long time. The amount of Clickbaitvideos, no matter what you are searching for, is just crazy.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Honestly Google Search in general seems to get worse every year, for work any kind of niche issue involving errors returns no results on Google (literally no results), tried plugging the same search into Bing and the first 5 results were actual answers on solving the error

It amazes me how a search engine once considered a massive joke is able to outperform Google

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

What is even more surprising is the Bing ChatGPT diagnosed the PC problem I was having when I never would have guessed the correct search terms for it.

It even gives me citations. So, I can go to those websites and read the whole answers

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[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

Google search has been pretty weak for awhile now. I/O spoke a lot of big talk about bring generative AI into search, but from my part of the world it still seems the same.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Ai isn't going to fix the first page being all ads, that's a business decision.

If they wanted to return actual content they could do that without AI.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

that's not even close to the issue, though – Google Search fell because of SEO pushing irrelevant auto-generated garbage towards the top.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think it's both - the SEO fight as well as the explosion of ads on Page 1. Throw in a dash of average-user search optimization (vs a flatter term-based search) and you've got Googles downfall in a nutshell.

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

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.

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[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

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?

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

Whats bothering me the most about it is that Reddit is still a valuable source of information for so many things, can't get around a boss fight in a certain older videogame? Yep, there are about 10 threads about it on reddit from years ago.

The amount information on there is big enough that often times many of the top useful search results are in reddit, I hope Lemmy can fill the gap, at least partially but I'm aware that it could years and that's only if the fediverse picks up well enough.

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[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

Super interesting the trick we all thought was a secret, stopped working, and now executives from one of the worlds biggest companies are having trouble as a result lol

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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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