AI Has Made Google Search So Bad People Are Moving to TikTok and Reddit(medium.com)
medium.com
AI Has Made Google Search So Bad People Are Moving to TikTok and Reddit
https://medium.com/bouncin-and-behavin-blogs/ai-has-made-google-search-so-bad-people-are-moving-to-tiktok-reddit-6ac0b4801d2e
39 comments
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated"
* Google is declared dying, because SEO is invented
* Google is declared dying, because users add site:stackoverflow.com
* Google is declared dying, because users add site:reddit.com
* Google is declared dying, because an ambitious paid search engine is emerging
* Google is declared dying, because Bing adds AI, and Google does not
* Google is declared dying, because websites add AI-generated content
* Google is declared dying, because Google actually adds AI
<- you are here
* Google is declared dying, because SEO is invented
* Google is declared dying, because users add site:stackoverflow.com
* Google is declared dying, because users add site:reddit.com
* Google is declared dying, because an ambitious paid search engine is emerging
* Google is declared dying, because Bing adds AI, and Google does not
* Google is declared dying, because websites add AI-generated content
* Google is declared dying, because Google actually adds AI
<- you are here
I was going to say on any HN thread about Google search the top comments are usually that it's all broken but it seems to work mostly fine for my purposes. OK it's not perfect but nothing is. Also if it's broken why does it have 90%+ share? I occasionally try other ones and they are worse in some ways. Even the sainted Kagi - I wanted to know something trivial and it wouldn't tell me without creating an account with name and email so I thought sod that and googled it.
It actually has some remarkably good features that it didn't in the early days. If you are looking for a physical place you can get reviews of it, a street view of the outside, travel directions and so on pretty easily.
I can recall being thwarted once in the last year or so when I was trying to figure what brand of tooth fillings I'd had and the search was filled with general dental info rather than filling brands which is more of a dental trade thing. ChatGPT was way better on that (was sonicfill). Apart from that mostly good.
It actually has some remarkably good features that it didn't in the early days. If you are looking for a physical place you can get reviews of it, a street view of the outside, travel directions and so on pretty easily.
I can recall being thwarted once in the last year or so when I was trying to figure what brand of tooth fillings I'd had and the search was filled with general dental info rather than filling brands which is more of a dental trade thing. ChatGPT was way better on that (was sonicfill). Apart from that mostly good.
[deleted]
AI didn't make Google search bad. That's way, way off the mark. Google made Google search bad.
on the other hand, LLMs are often better then Google.
IMO, Google Search is a dead product. Not immediately maybe, but at least for 90% of my work, it has been replaced by Bing CoPilot and similar solutions.
I don't go look for images anymore, I just create new ones with ComfyUI. I don't query for Stackoverflow, I do code analysis with Starcoder. I don't check for lyrics or similar, I just use vanilla chatgpt it.
I don't go look for images anymore, I just create new ones with ComfyUI. I don't query for Stackoverflow, I do code analysis with Starcoder. I don't check for lyrics or similar, I just use vanilla chatgpt it.
I still use (duck duck go) search and ofc documentation to find what I need - in my kind of field (c++) AIs are terrible because the problems are pretty much never trivial.
Its not a dead product just because companies are selling you a solution that works better for you - it becomes a dead product once there is a better solution nearly everyone uses.
Its not a dead product just because companies are selling you a solution that works better for you - it becomes a dead product once there is a better solution nearly everyone uses.
I see this sentiment a lot on here, always with a vague intimation that it's a widespread thing. But it is just so far out of sync with the way I use search I just can't wrap my head around it.
You say 90% of you usage, but then describe the sorts of things that make up only a tiny fraction of mine. 90% of mine, maybe more, is just very quickly looking up basic facts. Was this the same actress from that other show? How many Xs to a Y? What was the exact wording of that quote and who said it? Where's that one store? I do this, I dunno, probably dozens? of times a day.
Are you saying you use it for that kind of purpose? I don't think I would trust any LLM's answers to those kinds of questions -- at least, not to exclusively handle all of them, on an ongoing basis. Even if it's only making up bullshit 5% of the time, after long enough that means I have no idea which 5% of my knowledge is wrong. Unless I'm double checking the information elsewhere, in which case what's the point?
Meanwhile Google still supplies the right answer for those simple, basic facts immediately like 99% of the time. A lot of the time right there in a snippet where I also instantly know the attribution. Even if we perfectly solved hallucination, the friction to get it from one of these chatbots is still so much higher. Harder to get to, so much slower.
You say 90% of you usage, but then describe the sorts of things that make up only a tiny fraction of mine. 90% of mine, maybe more, is just very quickly looking up basic facts. Was this the same actress from that other show? How many Xs to a Y? What was the exact wording of that quote and who said it? Where's that one store? I do this, I dunno, probably dozens? of times a day.
Are you saying you use it for that kind of purpose? I don't think I would trust any LLM's answers to those kinds of questions -- at least, not to exclusively handle all of them, on an ongoing basis. Even if it's only making up bullshit 5% of the time, after long enough that means I have no idea which 5% of my knowledge is wrong. Unless I'm double checking the information elsewhere, in which case what's the point?
Meanwhile Google still supplies the right answer for those simple, basic facts immediately like 99% of the time. A lot of the time right there in a snippet where I also instantly know the attribution. Even if we perfectly solved hallucination, the friction to get it from one of these chatbots is still so much higher. Harder to get to, so much slower.
What do you use for a ComfyUI config?
I got out of imagegen a while ago but it does seem pretty advanced compared to AUTOMATIC's original UI (and cloud imagegen is just derivative and inflexible..)
I got out of imagegen a while ago but it does seem pretty advanced compared to AUTOMATIC's original UI (and cloud imagegen is just derivative and inflexible..)
I like it for the workflow, easy configuration, and the drag-and-drop workflow rebuilding.
While this might be true to some extend, Google screwed the pooch long before AI by selling out to their marketing team over user interests and satisfaction.
This might be something of a technicality but I doubt it was their marketing team who is at fault. If it’s over-monetization of search results that you have a problem with as I do, it’s more likely to have been product leaders with aggressive monetization targets.
Yup, just like Boeing ditched the leadership steeped in engineering for leadership steeped in Excel.
Racing over each other to win the Jack Welch Corporate Destruction Award.
The people saying LLMs are better than google: Say you turn off your internet, is a local LLM better than having a few MB of files (all of wikipedia, all of your language's and all packages' documentation, etc.) downloaded? Why is that not an approach youre taking?
Solving complex problems often means piecing together parts of a research to obtain an understanding of the issue. This any AI can't do. Chatbots are ok for trivial stuff.
There's no reason why people are down voting your comment. Excellent software like Dash makes finding code documentation offline easy. You'll still need online search for things you're not regularly looking up, but offline resources would save a lot of time for people who habitually put everything into Google.
zeal is a good app for local documentation in times of no internet. it's not very good if you're not just looking up something you know the name of, though
I'd really use an LLM where you kinda explain a concept and it gives you back all of the names and jargon linked to it.
The current crop of them were great at this for a few months. For some reason, they are not good anymore.
The current crop of them were great at this for a few months. For some reason, they are not good anymore.
Oh yeah, I love Zeal. Also manpages can be nice, and ripgrep and fzf are good for searching local files
Who said it’s not. I’m trying to go in that direction
It wasn't AI that made google search bad. It was SEO and google's acceptance paywalled sites like linkedin showing google one document and visitors another document.
Exactly. There's been a lot of easy to identify trash on Google for a very long time that they haven't bothered to deal with. I bet it's partly because they rely too much on metrics. "Oooo lots of people clicked on the clickbait! They must want more!"
That was definitely a major factor in making things suck, but I don't think it (nor LLMs) were required for the rise of annoying content-farm sites.
SEO was/is a good thing because it made search a lot better for many years. The real problem are the individuals gaming/abusing the hell out of the system. Add AI content to the mix and I do fear it's a problem that can't be sorted out by Google Search, at least as how we know it now.
It still has its uses and I personally still turn to it (well DuckDuckGo usually) to find specific things. But like all things, it's one tool that serves a certain purpose.
It still has its uses and I personally still turn to it (well DuckDuckGo usually) to find specific things. But like all things, it's one tool that serves a certain purpose.
I don't remember SEO ever making search better.
[deleted]
[Recycled from related submission] For your amusement, a relevant music-video titled "The current state of search engines" [0]
Yes, I know about the quotes
I know about the dash and OR
It's all ass
Google doesn't work... Anymore
I have to add the word "Reddit"
To every goddamn search to read
Content made by humans
Google doesn't work... Anymore
Article from February 2024. Thanks OP
Clump it in with the twenty other posts about the same thing.
Clump it in with the twenty other posts about the same thing.
Some more discussion then:
Ask HN: Why is Google search unusable lately?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39337118
Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067949
Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search [pdf]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39013497
Ask HN: Why is Google search unusable lately?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39337118
Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39067949
Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search [pdf]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39013497
[deleted]
For many searches I'm using Chat GPT now. No ads, cleaner, text only, I can ask follow up questions.
I can't ask (yet) what's the weather today or Champions League matches today. Also I know it might has errors, but Google Search first results are doubtful this days.
I look up some searches that I did on Chat GPT lately:
- Types of leucemia
- Miles davis discography
- Hour difference between Buenos Aires and Bogotá
- What's Romeo and Juliet is about
It is great to me. Besides TikTok and Reddit I will add Chat GPT to the Google Search list of current threats.
I can't ask (yet) what's the weather today or Champions League matches today. Also I know it might has errors, but Google Search first results are doubtful this days.
I look up some searches that I did on Chat GPT lately:
- Types of leucemia
- Miles davis discography
- Hour difference between Buenos Aires and Bogotá
- What's Romeo and Juliet is about
It is great to me. Besides TikTok and Reddit I will add Chat GPT to the Google Search list of current threats.
Search results are endlessly optimized for a mean, but everyone has some tail-end subject they want to search more specifically which google's search-AI just seems to get worse and worse with. (Here on HN it's coding/engineering/tech)