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Features I actually want from Google Search:
* The ability to get results for the terms I actually searched for. Even adding quotes around specific terms hasn't worked reliably for years.
* Less clutter and junk on the results page. Some of the SERPs can be jarringly noisy and bad, especially on mobile.
* Less SEO spam in the results. The norm for any remotely monetizable search query is to get a page where every result is a long and terribly written article with the same handful of basic facts. Google seems to love automated or poorly written articles that copy from the same source as 100 similar sites.
Instead we get... whatever this stuff is.
* The ability to get results for the terms I actually searched for. Even adding quotes around specific terms hasn't worked reliably for years.
* Less clutter and junk on the results page. Some of the SERPs can be jarringly noisy and bad, especially on mobile.
* Less SEO spam in the results. The norm for any remotely monetizable search query is to get a page where every result is a long and terribly written article with the same handful of basic facts. Google seems to love automated or poorly written articles that copy from the same source as 100 similar sites.
Instead we get... whatever this stuff is.
I like that Google is adding new things to try to make their search more personal, though these changes seem mostly superficial and I am unsure many will use them. I certainly don’t and won’t install the Google app on my phone to follow things, if it doesn’t work on web.
> more personal
They have and are nothing if not excessively personal(ized)
They have and are nothing if not excessively personal(ized)
They’re personal to the extent that they track you and try to predict what you want so that they can make more money off of you, but giving you the active ability to select and follow content is different.
Shoulda been more explicit in that. Kagi is super personal(ized) as well, just polar opposite intention and implications
I use Kagi too. I guess it's a different kind of personal because Google will always angle it in a way that they can collect the most info about you to be used to sell more ads, while Kagi doesn't.
It will be interesting to see how Kagi responds to their first subpeona
I used to be able to "find what I need on Search" by typing it into Google and clicking on the results. This worked very well for me, but apparently not for Google.
I was hoping for more modifiers to limit to sites, authors, proper names, and titles. Should've known better.
I think the ship has sailed on this one, not sure how Google can be denial of the more intuitive search trend that is available today.
Google should just bite the bullet and do ChatGPT styled search by intuitively asking questions with RAG capability.
The thing is can they provide this service for free without the subscription fee unlike ChatGPT? Perhaps they could and should, and the cost will be much lower than buying OpenAI. Imagine GoogleGPT with backends of Google Search (not Bing), with Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Patent, Gmail, etc.
Google should just bite the bullet and do ChatGPT styled search by intuitively asking questions with RAG capability.
The thing is can they provide this service for free without the subscription fee unlike ChatGPT? Perhaps they could and should, and the cost will be much lower than buying OpenAI. Imagine GoogleGPT with backends of Google Search (not Bing), with Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Patent, Gmail, etc.
They have it. It's called Bard. It's just not as good as one might expect from them.
Good news, it seems Google is launching a new powerful AI model that's called Gemini, and it can be and will be integrated with Bard [1].
Perhaps now we can see some proper competition to ChatGPT from Google, interesting time indeed!
Can't wait to get my hands on Bard Advanced with Gemini Ultra integration early next year, but the released video demos of their capabilities are very impressive.
[1] Gemini: A Family of Highly Capable Multimodal Models:
https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/gemini/gemini_...
Perhaps now we can see some proper competition to ChatGPT from Google, interesting time indeed!
Can't wait to get my hands on Bard Advanced with Gemini Ultra integration early next year, but the released video demos of their capabilities are very impressive.
[1] Gemini: A Family of Highly Capable Multimodal Models:
https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/gemini/gemini_...
I haven't used Google Search for about a year now.
What do you use in its place? Are your alternatives meeting your needs?
Duckduckgo for navigating around the web (bangs, searching docs, etc.) i.e. I know where I want to end up. Kagi for the rest.
Google pretty much only for image search and maps, and even those have better alternatives now.
Google pretty much only for image search and maps, and even those have better alternatives now.
Same. Kagi here.
The odd times I end up on a Google search it's just jarring how terrible it is in comparison.
The odd times I end up on a Google search it's just jarring how terrible it is in comparison.
I've been using Kagi for a few months and agree it's a great product, especially the lenses.
When I can't use Kagi, now, it's a very "wow, this is what it's like to browse without an adblocker" kind of moment
https://www.webcrawler.com
Better than the majority of search engines out there. No, it ain't Kagi, but it's free, and doesn't have that asshole-bar flashing auto-complete trash -- which AFAIC is the most important feature I look for in any tool I use on a daily basis.
Better than the majority of search engines out there. No, it ain't Kagi, but it's free, and doesn't have that asshole-bar flashing auto-complete trash -- which AFAIC is the most important feature I look for in any tool I use on a daily basis.
Not OP but I use DDG daily and only revert to !g once a week or less these days.
Google simply isn’t special anymore. Even when I do add !g, about half the time I go back to DDG because googles results are worse.
I no longer recommend Google anything to anyone for any reason where I used to be a huge promoter.
Google simply isn’t special anymore. Even when I do add !g, about half the time I go back to DDG because googles results are worse.
I no longer recommend Google anything to anyone for any reason where I used to be a huge promoter.
Here's why I find it funny: following topics/tags is something Google on android had ten years ago. It's also the type of info I have no doubt they have been keeping in the background forever and are only now exposing. They have known if you like mountain climbing, now they are letting you say it yourself.
The only reason I can think for this is because their search algorithm has gone so off the rails making guesses about people's habits, now they need to pin it down with actual user input. That or you get more ad dollars if the user said they like mountain climbing than if you guessed they do.