Omg I can't believe they used AI to write this article π‘
this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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I really need to go through my old files and find The Screenshot from around 1999-2000. Basically, I searched for something in AltaVista and got back a page that was super chock full of ads and "portal crud". ...and a tiny little text that you really had to squint for, somewhere in the middle, that said there were no search results, actually. I got the strong impression that this search engine was fucked.
Sometimes Google's results are kind of starting to look like the same, except the crud is in the actual results. Which is something Google could do something about. I mean, they used to care about SEO spam.
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Strange how Google became the default search engine back in the day because they were so good at filtering out the dumb websites that just spam search terms all over the page.
They've regressed and become Yahoo
Except there isn't much of a Google stealing their thunder. Bing isn't better. DDG isn't better.
Reddit used to be better, but now any time you search for advice on good _____ to buy, the only answers you can find are "use the search function, this question has been answered already"
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chatGPT and in apps integrated AI search is stealing it.
Personally really like ddg over it though. Only gotta be more precise with keywording for finding what you need.
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I think it takes a while for that kind of competitor to emerge and gain enough traction to become a genuine alternative option. The primary option everyone long since adopted kinda has to suck for a while :/
DDG has been around for quite a while. Now it was a few years ago I used it last time, but the reason I switched back to Google was because I was clearly less productive with DDG.
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It also is going to take another leap in algorithm.
It was a hard problem to solve when Google's founders cracked it, but it's an even harder problem to solve now that you have state of the art spam bots filling the Internet full of shit that looks like it was composed by humans.
If someone cracks how to figure out whether something is ai or not (for real, not the fake solutions we have now) and adds that to a good search algorithm and filters the fake shit by default, they will have a hell of a product on their hands.
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Missing the days of Consumer Reports. I think the velocity of new products is too high for them to be relevant for more than a few months once they release a report anymore.
I still sign up with them when Iβm researching bigger, or long-lasting, purchases. Cars, washing machine, and that sort of thing. Iβm always a little annoyed at the price, but the content is SO MUCH better than any other online review source that Iβm always happy with my decision in the end. Reddit comments are probably second, but Iβve found those to be littered with what seem to me to be suspiciously positive reviews for items that are not significantly better than their competition. I feel like I need to dial up my critical nature to 10 to fight against the echo chamber and/or the covert advertising.
I saw a website that was selling Reddit bot services to companies that want to review their products. They would just send a swarm of bad accounts in there and make nice comments. Even replying to their own comments.
After that I stopped trusting almost every Reddit review (β β―β Β°β β‘β Β°β οΌβ β―β οΈ΅β Β β β»β ββ β»
*Edit: meant to say bot accounts but leaving it
I was shopping printers earlier, and reddit-based results had clear paid comments.
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Reddit posts could always be company astroturfing as well.
I get Consumer Reports free through my library. You may too!
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Give SearxNG a try. There are browser plugins available for it. I was using Librey but I'm finding SearxNG to be better.
Why?
SearxNG, much like original SearX, pulls data from a variety of search engines, reducing their bias, and also has great filtering options, including filters for academic/IT/social/etc.
Aside from that, it is decentralized and private. Everyone can kickstart their own SearX server, though it might need some minimal juice to work quickly.
And yes, it can be integrated to search from URL bar much like any other search engine. Some instances offer addons that set their one to default, tho you don't have to install anything, just add your preferred instance to the list of search engines, Firefox will prompt you on that, for example.
Because google is a turd sandwich? When alternatives are out there, people need to use them. Everybody was using yahoo or infoseek, or in case of somewhat intelligent people, altavista back in 1999. Every now and then you'd hear someone say something about google, and lo and behold, it was way better than those search engines. Now google sucks. A replacement will eventually arise.
google controls the portals through which many people search. Defaults will always be google when people are using android and or chrome. Yahoo, infoseek or altavista never had anywhere near a grip on people like google does today. It takes effort to change now, while in the olden days you just had to change your 1 start page on the browser, things are a lot more embedded and thus customers locked in. Thinking it will switch over to a better alternative like it did back then, purely because it is a lot better, is a bit naive I think, unfortunately.
Youβre giving no information other than βswitchβ, Iβm trying to prompt you to give an actual critique, and what you like about it that would get people to switch.
Aha. Well, so far I'm finding that it gives better results than I've been getting from google in years. I mostly search programming or linux related questions. It's another metasearch engine which goes through multiple search engines and presents you with the results it thinks are relevant. It will show you which search engine(s) it pulled each result from as well. Seems to almost completely get rid of blogspam and advertisements and just return real information.
Edit: Also, it brings back the cached feature
Much Later Edit: It is, in fact, very good at hiding advertising/shopping sites. I had to switch to google for a search the other day when I was looking to order something online because searxng had filtered out all of the etail sites in its results.
and Google is a turd sandwich.
Google used to list sites with backlinks highly, it was their first ever search algorithm iirc. Once people learned you could game that by planting useless backlinks, Google realised it was a bad idea.
Somehow, they've reinvented this all over again with parasite SEO that fundamentally works the same way. All they did was add some "domain ranking". Now, unreliable-but-popular sites coughredditcough will always score highly regardless of quality, because Google deemed them superior.
reddit is a very good search resource though because it has 15 years of real people giving real information. I imagine reddit from here on out will be going hard on the enshitification train so it's value as a search resource will rapidly decline.
Anything post-2022, and probably post-2020, is suspect on Reddit because it became abundantly clear how steerable it was and how easy to generate sales as long as you didn't do anything too "suspicious". Current 'ad guides' tell advertisers not to link things because just saying the name reads as more authentic.
Before that it was legitimately people discussing, e.g., the best flashlight for x-y-z purposes. But a decent amount of old stuff has been gutted by people deleting their posts/accounts.
After January 2015 it was a downhill slalom.
With the prevalence of reddit google was of the most useful tools I've seen in my 40 years on earth. Only to go to absolute shit in the last 2-3 years.