Has google stopped working for finding anything?

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sighofannoyance@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e2cfab67-e639-4b8d-a309-1a0a99f311fa.jpeg

Google search failed to even find a hollywood movie, even after 1 hour of attempts. I don’t really care about the movie, but I am terrified by the prospect that google now ceased to function on this basic level. Why is this happening?

I understand the explanations of seo and other stuff like spam content. But why are there NO relevant results at all.

I wouldn’t mind having to start wading through results at page 2 or even 10 but now it utterly fails to find even the most basic things.

Things you found on the first attempt even just a year ago. Now they are effectively hidden.

To me functionally the entire internet has now vanished. I cannot access anything that I am searching for. Might as well not exist at all.

Has anybody found a way around this?

Is this on purpose? Is this an attack on the free internet, herding people to just the top 5 sites like facebook, youtube, tiktok, and so forth?

Are there search engines that still work?

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Comments

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HootinNHollerin@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Ad company serves ads over useful information, news at 11

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- TheInsane42@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That takes me back… I’m feeling ancient.
  
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d00ery@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I struggled finding reviews of Asgard’s Wrath 1 on the Quest 2 headset. Google just assumes I want the newest game.

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- Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Struggled? I just searched “Asgards Wrath 1 review” and that’s all it is, I had to scroll all the way down to see the “people also searched for” to even see Asgards Wrath 2
  
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  - d00ery@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Was the review specifically for the Quest 2 headset?
    
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banneryear1868@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve found it still works for oddly specific requests, if you make your search string more granular. Generic searches are garbage now, especially images.

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- sighofannoyance@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  do your search modifiers work? Mine seem to have no effect whatsoever.
  
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  - banneryear1868@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The only ones are really use are site: and -notthisstring and find they work. With granularity I mean adding things to the search string.
    
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southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Eh, for some things, it will work, and I’m amazed you couldn’t find info on a recent movie. But it really has gone to shit. You’ll end up with copy/pasted bot articles a few pages deep on most searches, unless it’s something on those huge sites you mentioned.

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Concave1142@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have also noticed it seems harder to find stuff on Google now. My pet theory is that it is the building in of AI to search (Bing Chat anyone?) that is affecting Google search results. Lately, I have been going to Bard & ChatGPT to do searches but treat it more as a jumping off point to help point the direction of where or how to search.

Not perfect, but just a method I’ve been playing with for the past month off & on.

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JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Share your search history. It’s impossible to know what advice to give you without knowing what you tried.

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lil@lemy.lol ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Google is great if you use Chrome and haven’t disabled tracking settings in your google account and browser

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Something_Complex@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Porn works kinda

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- BoastfulDaedra@lemmynsfw.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Hey man, I shouldn’t have to spend three hours to find an image of a seven-way orgy with two cucumbers, chocolate sauce, and everyone wearing eye masks.
  
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crsu@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you use the fediverse but don’t use SearXNG, you must be a cop

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- sighofannoyance@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  snitch jacketing?
  
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- bunkyprewster@startrek.website ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Server recommendations? Or does it matter which server you use?
  
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  - laverabe@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    it’s hit or miss. I’ve tried a few and each seem to have different ups and downs, but mainly just pick a server with the lowest ping.
    
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  - DJSpunTheDisc@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    searchengine.party
    
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Mikina@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve recently switched to Kagi and it has been an amazing experience so far. I definitely recommend that to anyone who can spare the 5-10$ a month. I like their business model, and the way I can customise results to I.e always ignore reddit posts, while still maintaining privacy because they are not in the ads business (yet?).

And the results are usually pretty on spot, while also avoiding the major ai/spam blog posts by default.

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Stern@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I dunno if its the stuff I’m searching for or what but I’m just not running into this issue.

FWIW my last few searches were- “Malta”, “war is a racket”, and “russias egg crisis”. None in quotes. The only one I had to poke around a bit for was the last and that was to change to the news tab. Maybe I just usually search for hard stuff to monetize? I dunno

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dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Too much data

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Pratai@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Companies pay to be the top result in searches.

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Varyk@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I like bings ai assistant for regular searches now since its answers have sources you can check for relevance.

It’s definitely better than Google at this point.

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doctorcrimson@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I use DuckDuckGo more and more often but that’s actually just because they support more syntax than they used to.

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Lemonparty@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“a Hollywood movie”

Wow that’s so specific. What were you searching for? What were your parameters? You tried for an hour? Sounds like you don’t know anything about the movie. If you don’t know anything about it how can you expect a search engine to? It searches what you tell it, and it sounds like you didn’t tell it anything helpful.

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Sotuanduso@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I keep hearing people complain about Google becoming unusable, but I never run into this issue. Anyone have specific examples of searches that should have worked in the past, but don’t work now?

I don’t use Google that often, but when I do, my search is specific enough to work. Some of my recent searches are “Skacket” (a specific Minecraft server plugin,) “Google Sheets newline in cell”, “Sedecordle”, and “Jeffrey Wright imdb”.

I’d never have expected it to work for such questions as “movie with smart guy who stretches”. Those kinds of questions are better suited for AIs like ChatGPT, in my opinion.

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rufus@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Well, YouTube shows me lots of videos about this…

“Warum du nichts mehr findest”: youtu.be/a9eKOU9paoA (German)

“What happened to Google Search?”: youtu.be/48AOOynnmqU

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- JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  And of course this music video:
  
  youtu.be/jrFv1O4dbqY
  
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WarmSoda@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t know man. I’ve never had that problem before.
What movie were you searching for?

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CaptainHowdy@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have a short story that perfectly exemplifies the problems with Google and the Internet in general.

I dropped a melatonin gummy on the floor near my dog, and then I couldn’t find it (he didn’t eat it, it rolled under the couch). So I did what anyone would do, and googled “my dog ate melatonin”.

The first result was an article that said “melatonin is perfectly safe for dogs to eat, no worries!”. Whew! Coast is clear! I wiped the nervous sweat from my brow and felt my panic melt away…

But just as I was about to close Google, I see that the second result states clearly “melatonin is toxic for dogs, your dog is gonna die and it’s your fault. Call the vet now!”. (I exaggerate, but it definitely said toxic and to call emergency vet services). Panic resumes, sweat returns.

Dude… What the fuck am I supposed to do in that situation? Both of the articles seemed like they were legit and yet had wildly different messages.

Thankfully I found the gummy a few minutes later and didn’t end up at the emergency vet, but it was a confusing and concerning situation.

This doesn’t even bring up the garbage AI generated content that is now 9 out of 10 top results from Google. If you don’t want that shit, and want something written by a human being, you basically have to put “Reddit” in your query… And I think I know how most of us here feel about Reddit…

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NostraDavid@programming.dev ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
i’ve got a subscription for ChatGPT and tend to use it over Google, unless I know Google has decent results.

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kool_newt@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My job as a Linux admin/automation engineer has become way more difficult now that a primary tool has become nearly useless. I didn’t go to college, I learned from 0 to computer automation engineer essentially googling my way, I don’t think that would be possible now.

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Substance_P@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Lately I’ve been using more AI-derived search engines, I often need a direct answer to a certain problem, and not looking for a date specific answer. I haven’t used Google search for years, DDG is my daily driver but engines derived from chat GPT work for me. This is when I have a specific problem like when say building a recipe, or trouble shooting a mechanical problem etc. I use ask.ai or phind.com

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penquin@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There are very good alternatives to Google nowadays actually. I haven’t used Google in a long time. I’ve been jumping between brave search and startpage. Mostly brave search. Only thing Google has going for it is maps when searching for a business. Brave only shows the business in a basic form and show when they open and close for the day, whereas Google shows a lot more, including directions that open Google maps when clicked. They also show business hours for the whole week, reveiews…blah. other than that, I’ve been very happy with brave search and startpage

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h3mlocke@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Imagine still using google

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Welt@lazysoci.al ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think what happened is that someone typed “google” into Google, and broke the internet.

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