Technology

Honestly I don’t think it’s just Google, DDG has been getting worse as well, not quite as bad as Google but still similar issues where the thing I’m looking for is buried under spam sites built to a generic standard with shitty content but spectacular search engine optimization.

And pumping out sites and pages like that is optimal in the current market as it is the best way to get clicks, as supposed to investing in skilled writing, investigation and research.

The problem is that the major search engines have all kind of sat on their behinds about this and actively sold these bad websites assistance in gaming their search engine. The search engines would have to rebuild their search functions to find signs of bad sites and deprioritize them in the list, not just show things that seem relevant. They’ll probably never do this because then they’d hurt the part of their business that is helping shitty sites game the engine.

It’s gotten so hard to find authentic, useful results that people have started adding the word “Reddit” to search terms

I have definitely done that multiple times.

I'm using Kagi for quite some time now and it's awesome. But recently I was using a different machine and did not have my login credentials at hand so I used Google and holy shit I didn't remember Google giving such aweful results. I was not able to find what I was looking for. Then searched the same thing on my phone through Kagi and the solution was in the first three results. So yes I also feel that Google search is getting worse.

The dangers of a monopoly. No matter how bad Google gets people will still use it because, in many people's minds, there is no other search engine.