[HN Gopher] Is Google getting worse? Why critics say ads, spam s...
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Is Google getting worse? Why critics say ads, spam sites are
killing search
Author : paulpauper
Score : 25 points
Date : 2022-11-01 20:53 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nypost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nypost.com)
| pcurve wrote:
| 90 percent of my Google search now has "Reddit" appended.
| Otherwise the result utterly useless especially on mobile phone
| where there's no Adblock
| constantcrying wrote:
| Brave supports addblocking on both android and iOS. Firefox
| does at least on Android.
| iszomer wrote:
| Unfortunately, Brave's search results are less impressive and
| often chock full of politics and cryptocurrencies. Google
| just makes you work for it more amidst the irrelevant
| results.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Yes. Recent example was searching some old card mechanic wrapped
| in spooky tale.
|
| Resorted to searching a Subreddit.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| Depending on the topic and search query it at least has become
| harder to find information written by actual human beings, and
| not some garbage sites 100% created and designed for SEO. These
| sites typically contain lots of generated (or at least mindlessly
| typed) filler text. Sometimes they have some information
| inbetween this gibberish, sometimes they completely look like
| they came out of a markov chain generator.
|
| Because of this it is often necessary to append something like
| "reddit", "forum", "wiki", or "news" to my search, lest I only
| encounter SEO trash.
|
| I believe I can estimate with confidence that Bing and DuckDuckGo
| are nowadays better than Google during half of my searches. And
| that was certainly not the case 2 years ago.
| fetus8 wrote:
| I switched to DDG a few years back, but whenever I accidentally
| search via Google, every result feels like an ad. Not sure how
| anyone actually uses it anymore.
|
| I've converted most of my coworkers away from Google and they've
| all mentioned how much different results are on DDG, Bing or even
| Alta, and how much better the results are. Bye Google!
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| "Hey, maybe _this_ is the year Google starts to improve! " /s
|
| Web search plays a relatively important role in everyday life
| today. Personally I'm averse to using products or services, even
| if they are currently 'okay', once I see they are on the downward
| trajectory.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Shopping in particular seems iffy for me. I used to use Google
| shopping to find deals, but increasingly the results are full of
| scams. I bought a baratta encore grinder new for what looked like
| MSRP with free shipping off a site highly ranked in Google
| shopping. It never arrived, I had to dispute the charge with my
| credit card company, and the site disappeared a couple of months
| later.
|
| Now if I search "nvidia 4090" on shopping, the top organic result
| is a card at "Orvamini" that claims to still be in stock at
| MSRP.[0] I don't believe it after clicking around the site, they
| have all kinds of high end electronics that are sold out
| everywhere, at or below MSRP and I have never heard of the brand.
| For example, they could easily sell this card for over $2k, or
| 50% more than the below-msrp price they have currently listed, on
| eBay or stockx.[1]
|
| [0]
| https://www.google.com/shopping/product/5873870201295230510?...
|
| [1] https://orvamini.com/product/nvidia-geforce-
| rtx-4090-founder...
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(page generated 2022-11-01 23:02 UTC)