Has search gotten worse?

[Colon capital V]

How is it any different than just going to ChatGPT, CoPilot, or Perplexity like we've all been doing for the past 2 years?

ChatGPT is based on how "updated" the model is for the latest knowledge (idk if search enabled is free or not given how much OAI nickels and dimes god damn everything + other models are better).
Bing is already decent enough as a search engine to find what you're looking for, and I haven't heard whether they use the latest models to find results for you (last I heard they used a tweaked version of GPT-3.5 before splitting off from OpenAI) while Google currently uses Gemini 2.5 and will presumably upgrade when new models come out.
Perplexity is pretty much on par with AI Mode, however you are limited to 3 searches per day with their "pro mode" that allows you to use different models, after that you're delegated to the standard perplexity search model which isn't quite as indepth with its searches.

AI Mode is fine, even great for the convenience and getting the normies to ask more specific questions for their answers. If you're looking for "Deep Research" or more options, the Gemini app/webpage has that available or you can go onto AI Studio which allows for more customizable options for its output. Otherwise probably just stick to Perplexity or Deepseek if you're only using AI search sparringly to get your answers.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

What's the software called/what's it do?

FormTool 7. It's for designing paper forms.

As an aside/follow-up, I've since learned LibreOffice Draw can be used to design paper forms.

Thread tax: Today, I was trying to look up information about something I saw online only to forget to note the name of it for later. I tried to search for what I thought was the name or the type of software it was only to have the search results consist largely of useless listicles using similarly-phrased titles of "The X best programs to use for (task) in 2025!"

 

[They were once men]

Found this extension for gayming related wikis to actually redirect your search to official non fandom wikis, makes searching for shit a tiny bit better.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/indie-wiki-buddy/

 

[Merton J. Dingle]

Found this extension for gayming related wikis to actually redirect your search to official non fandom wikis, makes searching for shit a tiny bit better.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/indie-wiki-buddy/

Fantastic browser extension. Also gives you pages that aren't bloated with trash whenever you do have to use Fandom.

 

[They were once men]

Fantastic browser extension. Also gives you pages that aren't bloated with trash whenever you do have to use Fandom.

yeah fandom is beyond dogshit, and there's basically not way for ppl to change it per wiki. Baffles me why people spend their time basically making free content for fandom instead of self hosting wikis.

 

[Susanna]

yeah fandom is beyond dogshit, and there's basically not way for ppl to change it per wiki. Baffles me why people spend their time basically making free content for fandom instead of self hosting wikis.

World of Warcraft Wiki, one of the largest and most active wiki communities, have now fled not only wikia but also Curse because they're all just unreasonable about layouts and ads. It's baffling business strategy really, hosting these communities costs next to nothing because they are fundamentally not particularly demanding sites (almost all users are only there to view a page and then bugger off), so "Okay, you can customise your wiki to not use our retarded new layout, but we require you to keep our ads on the side" would have earned them a lot more money than "No, we're putting autoplay Twitch streams in the middle of your actual content and any attempt to use the search bar will return results from all our wikis rather than just the wiki the user is already on (and definitely only wants results from), and if you don't like it you can just leave", because in the end WoWWiki did end up just leaving. Twice.

Fandom doesn't even have search engine optimisation to drag in views any more, if I google "Arathi Highlands" (a region in WoW), the top result is WoWhead (automatic content aggregator with basic stuff like map pins for quests and whose most useful content is the comments people post on pages for NPCs and items), and the second result is the very new wiki.gg site the WoWWiki users migrated to last year. Those are good results and useful sites. The old WoW Wiki on Fandom is the fifth result listed (even though they still occupy the wowwiki.com domain).

 

[YouDoNotHaveTheRight]

I am glad I got to experience google before the obama presidency. If you have only known google since that earlier shit would blow your fucking mind.

 

[Merton J. Dingle]

World of Warcraft Wiki, one of the largest and most active wiki communities, have now fled not only wikia but also Curse because they're all just unreasonable about layouts and ads. It's baffling business strategy really, hosting these communities costs next to nothing because they are fundamentally not particularly demanding sites (almost all users are only there to view a page and then bugger off), so "Okay, you can customise your wiki to not use our retarded new layout, but we require you to keep our ads on the side" would have earned them a lot more money than "No, we're putting autoplay Twitch streams in the middle of your actual content and any attempt to use the search bar will return results from all our wikis rather than just the wiki the user is already on (and definitely only wants results from), and if you don't like it you can just leave", because in the end WoWWiki did end up just leaving. Twice.

That would have actually required them to think for the long term. Also, I'm pretty sure that many of them are autogynephiles and we know the extent to which they can be reasonable...

Also, while trying to find info on Fandom being run by autogynephiles, Bing produced this:



And no, the link in question does not actually have a soyjak.

 

[Caddo Cobgang]

the answer is obvious when you look something up on Jewgle and 90% of the results are some faggots being soy on Reddit

 

[Critical Raxx Theory]

I am glad I got to experience google before the obama presidency. If you have only known google since that earlier shit would blow your fucking mind.

Memba Dogpile!?

 

[agent_donkey]

Its not all bad.

 

[YouDoNotHaveTheRight]

Memba Dogpile!?

I do not please enlighten me. I fuccin miss my warez sites and how music sites were easy and plentiful.

 

[Critical Raxx Theory]

Dogpile came out a couple of years before google search, it wasn't really a search engine in itself, but an aggregator of all the majoy search engines at the time. I think you could pick and choose which ones it used too

Heres a quote from wikipedia

Dogpile began operation in November 1996.[4] The site was created and developed by Aaron Flin, who was frustrated with the varying results of existing indexes and intending on making Dogpile query multiple indexes for the best search results

Sound familiar?
It still exists in some capacity apparently, i havent thought about it since 1999

 

[visara]

If anyone still needed confirmation that DDG is worthless, like actually literally worthless, just look at this shit:



Fucking no results? Even though you found the wikipedia page?

(also god damn, webp took a bite out of that image)

 

[They were once men]

Recently ddg is really pushing their AI helper in search results, even when you turn it off in the settings it'll still show up. It's really annoying because if i wanted to ask an AI something there are specific website chat-gpt perplexity e.g. that I can go to which will give me better results that ddg bootleg AI.

 

[Hellwalker]

Recently ddg is really pushing their AI helper in search results, even when you turn it off in the settings it'll still show up. It's really annoying because if i wanted to ask an AI something there are specific website chat-gpt perplexity e.g. that I can go to which will give me better results that ddg bootleg AI.

Good thing that AI answers in search engines are no match for the power of uBlock Origin!

 

[jeff7989]

I love top result to a technical question being AI equivalent of Ranjeet pretending to know what I'm talking about and suggesting to run "sfc /scannow", ie unrelated bullshit.

 

[boustrophedon]

There's instructions on how to disable that stupid AI-generated "answer" from Google, but it says to "open Chrome", go to Google, and "look for a beaker icon" or something. I don't see it at all in Firefox, so I guess I have to see those derping "answers" whenever I search for something. And turning off JavaScript is not a solution either: now Google now no longer works JS-free at all now. If one has a major issue with Google BS, it's safe bet to assume there is no help available. Especially not customer service.

Try adding &udm=14 to the url.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Try adding &udm=14 to the url.

Thanks. Any way to automate that somehow like in uBlock? Though it seems to work if you add "&udm=14" at the end of a search.

 

[boustrophedon]

Thanks. Any way to automate that somehow like in uBlock? Though it seems to work if you add "&udm=14" at the end of a search.

There's a search engine for Firefox here. Because of course we need to have downloadable "search engines" which are just a json with an url with params instead of configuring the search url string directly on the settings interface as we used to. Can't have people getting confused and "breaking google".

As for Chrome, there's probably one too, but I didn't look for that.