Has search gotten worse?

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Is the quality of web search results getting worse?

  • Yes

    Votes: 1,238 94.6%

  • No

    Votes: 19 1.5%

  • IDK

    Votes: 52 4.0%
  • Total voters
    1,309
Jones McCann said:
Does anyone know how much space is required to index a large part of the web for searching?
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A lot, we're talking gigabytes.

I don't think we could get back to the glory days just by returning to index-based searching though. Pre-Google search engines pushed that approach about as far as it could go and the results were mediocre. PageRank was revolutionary at the time for actually improving on the state of things.
 
Soundcloud (a site that's to sound like YouTube is to vids) has a terrible search engine. It always returns "related" stuff, even if no real matches are found.

Also it sucks when a search engine has "results for [x]" from another site in one of the results, and on the other site, there's no results (because of course).
 
Agent Abe Caprine said:
Looked up black metal on Soundcloud and most of the results are some guy named Denzel. Sadly, no Living Colour.

The related results on Youtube can be pretty amusing. According to Youtube, William Shatner's covers are related to Muddy Waters.
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If you're looking for black metal on the internet, try bandcamp or myspace. Soundcloud is pretty much exclusively rap.
 
I can't fucking stand how Youtube search puts so much unrelated shit in my search results, like how the 4th search result is something vaguely related to a channel I subscribed to, and above it it says, "Based on your viewing history..." or "Other users watched..."

Bitch, what the fuck? I type in "Angry Video Game Nerd Sega Genesis" into Youtube search, and after a few relevant results it shows me a bunch of random videos for RealLifeLore or Technology Connections for whatever the fuck reason, because I've watched their videos in the recent past. And when you're on mobile, they throw in random astroturfed videos for COVID-19 or Black Lives Matter in the search query, no matter what for.

Did I ask for irrelevant stuff? Did I ask to see resources on vaccine or Dr. Faucet talking on CNN when I just wanted some AVGN clips? Did I ask to get results of some B-list comedian making fun of Trump on Stephen Colbert when I specifically searched for video game reviews? Seriously, suck my dick, Youtube.
 
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Dick Justice said:
This is mostly a strawpoll. I've noticed that over the last decade or so the quality of web search results has gradually deteriorated for me. It seems like searches are less useful than they've ever been, but you can't really draw conclusions from a sample of one. What do fellow kiwis think? Are the quality of search results getting worse?
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I'm autistic in that i get very specific with my searches so i haven't had problems with either browser
 
Oh fuck yes, When I was searching for historical hyperinflations like the ones that happened in Zimbabwe 13 years ago, I instead end up in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.
 
Michael Jacks0n said:
I can't fucking stand how Youtube search puts so much unrelated shit in my search results, like how the 4th search result is something vaguely related to a channel I subscribed to, and above it it says, "Based on your viewing history..." or "Other users watched..."

Bitch, what the fuck? I type in "Angry Video Game Nerd Sega Genesis" into Youtube search, and after a few relevant results it shows me a bunch of random videos for RealLifeLore or Technology Connections for whatever the fuck reason, because I've watched their videos in the recent past. And when you're on mobile, they throw in random astroturfed videos for COVID-19 or Black Lives Matter in the search query, no matter what for.

Did I ask for irrelevant stuff? Did I ask to see resources on vaccine or Dr. Faucet talking on CNN when I just wanted some AVGN clips? Did I ask to get results of some B-list comedian making fun of Trump on Stephen Colbert when I specifically searched for video game reviews? Seriously, suck my dick, Youtube.
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chrome.google.com

Unhook - Remove YouTube Recommended Videos

Hide YouTube related videos, comments, video suggestions wall, homepage recommendations, trending tab, and other distractions.
chrome.google.com chrome.google.com
is a plugin that removes that shit. "Hide Inapt Search Results" is the toggle, to remove any subsections for searches that aren't your search.
 
Michael Jacks0n said:
I can't fucking stand how Youtube search puts so much unrelated shit in my search results, like how the 4th search result is something vaguely related to a channel I subscribed to, and above it it says, "Based on your viewing history..." or "Other users watched..."

Bitch, what the fuck? I type in "Angry Video Game Nerd Sega Genesis" into Youtube search, and after a few relevant results it shows me a bunch of random videos for RealLifeLore or Technology Connections for whatever the fuck reason, because I've watched their videos in the recent past. And when you're on mobile, they throw in random astroturfed videos for COVID-19 or Black Lives Matter in the search query, no matter what for.

Did I ask for irrelevant stuff? Did I ask to see resources on vaccine or Dr. Faucet talking on CNN when I just wanted some AVGN clips? Did I ask to get results of some B-list comedian making fun of Trump on Stephen Colbert when I specifically searched for video game reviews? Seriously, suck my dick, Youtube.
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Why tf are you even using yt in the first place? Just use Freetube or Invidious + mpv/vlc/youtube-dl.
 
An anecdote from daily life. I was at the Dr's office last week and there was a woman waiting with her father. She appeared around 50ish and was using her phone to search for pictures of a rain style shower she was having installed. They were both looking at her phone and he asked her what website she was using and she said DuckDuckGo. I was floored because it sounds like some story that /g/ would make up, but it happened right in front of me. I don't know how an upper-middle class normie like that not only came across it, but actually uses it for an image search, but it was certainly refreshing to hear, even if it was only one random person.
 
BootlegPopeye said:
It's one thing if its just a glorified RSS feed, but so far as I can see it is not yet customizable, The 'source' choices are nothing but MSM glorified propaganda outlets and tech sites for the most part. Will it allow wrongthink or 'hate' sites? At the top of it reads: "Brave Today matches your interests on your device so your personal information never leaves your browser. New content updated throughout the day." Oh, so they are still tracking my 'interests', but they swear it's not leaving my browser. Swear.
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That's like a perfect summary of what I hate about the modern internet: The mentality that you obviously don't know what you want to look at, you dumb meat sack, the algorithm knows what you want to look at.

I want technology to be a tool for me to use, not the AI version of an annoying retail store greeter who keeps trying to offer me a basket and tell me about sales and get me to sign up for their coupon spam mailing list.
 
greengrilledcheese said:
An anecdote from daily life. I was at the Dr's office last week and there was a woman waiting with her father. She appeared around 50ish and was using her phone to search for pictures of a rain style shower she was having installed. They were both looking at her phone and he asked her what website she was using and she said DuckDuckGo. I was floored because it sounds like some story that /g/ would make up, but it happened right in front of me. I don't know how an upper-middle class normie like that not only came across it, but actually uses it for an image search, but it was certainly refreshing to hear, even if it was only one random person.
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And then everyone quacked
 
greengrilledcheese said:
An anecdote from daily life. I was at the Dr's office last week and there was a woman waiting with her father. She appeared around 50ish and was using her phone to search for pictures of a rain style shower she was having installed. They were both looking at her phone and he asked her what website she was using and she said DuckDuckGo. I was floored because it sounds like some story that /g/ would make up, but it happened right in front of me. I don't know how an upper-middle class normie like that not only came across it, but actually uses it for an image search, but it was certainly refreshing to hear, even if it was only one random person.
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That is refreshing. Some 50-60 year olds are internet veterans and might even work in tech, perhaps she was one? The average 50 something woman is facebooking and giving her info to Google all the time though.
 
Is there some website where I can search and get results from X amount of search engines at the same time?
 
talk sh1t said:
Yup same here, I'm always very aware of which account I'm using whenever I search for something, and of the words I use as well. I wonder if autism will ultimately win against big-tech? I mean yeah there's a huge amount of autists in big tech itself of course, but they're all going to get disgruntled and leave at some point, and join the anti-big-tech ranks.
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It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.
 
I've noted this over the last few years, but I swear it's gotten significantly worse in the last six months to a year. I can't find anything anymore. Even the most mundane searches bring up endless "top 10 x" pages and clickbait articles.

I was trying to search up something very specific photography related just now and it's just endless ads and articles that pretend to have the answer, but are near empty when you click on them.

This is with Google of course. I actually got an answer after searching on Yandex, the results there weren't great, but the top two or three were actually relevant.
 
Finder said:
I've noted this over the last few years, but I swear it's gotten significantly worse in the last six months to a year. I can't find anything anymore. Even the most mundane searches bring up endless "top 10 x" pages and clickbait articles.
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It's gotten noticeably worse in the past 2 months for me. DDG has actually gotten slightly worse as well, but nowhere near the degree that google has.

As a side note, I've been giving Bing a try as well. It works decently. I still don't think it's quite as good for tech searches but it could be a viable replacement for google. That said, giving all your info to MS isn't much better than giving it to Google. Everyone saying "Bing isn't as pozzed as Google" is cope.
 
I love how no one ever mentions that this is being done on purpose and one of those reasons is because of their Arab spring 2.0 paranoia.
Those uprisings were orchestrated online despite being instigated, by of course, the average Glownigger.

In reality, nothing like that is ever going to happen. Slacktivism at the very worst.
 
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