Memes

Yeah honestly. The Google ad-based search system created a set of incentives that just destroyed the internet! I miss the days when people created their own fun little quirky websites like Ian's Shoelace Site. That used to be every site on the internet!

I don’t need a 27-page novel to know the temperature and time to cook something.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/recipe-filter/

Try Brave Search, Duckduckgo, Startpage, or Searxng. For more detail on these recommendation (that I definitely did not just steal), check out the Privacy Guides page, or The New Oil for a different, albeit overlapping, set of recommendations and take on search engines.

The Google habit is hit the third link, scroll to fourth paragraph, your answer should be around there somewhere.

I remember in the early days of the internet Alta Vista search worked quite well. It was easy to find what you wanted, and find new things relevant to your interests - and so it became very popular. Unfortunately, Alta Vista only worked well if people made their websites in good faith. It was searching meta-tags and text on the page; and so when greedy people wanted to get more traffic on their website, they found it easy to exploit Alta Vista's search. As more and more people started exploiting the system, the search got worse and worse.

I remember the day I switched to using Google. I was searching for some C programming stuff on Alta Vista with technical words - and the results had more porn sites than programming sites. Like, wtf. Obviously that search doesn't work anymore. It stopped working because arseholes were exploiting it.

And now, pretty much the same thing is happening to Google. Their algorithm worked better for longer than what Alta Vista was doing, but it seems that self-interested people have kind of cracked the system, and now the results are mostly just junk instead of useful stuff. (Note, I stopped using Google several years ago. I've been using Duck Duck Go. But you're right that the problem is more widespread than just Google.)

Yep the whole Internet feels like a dying mall. There are still some places I go for specific needs, but I'd say my casual browsing of any kind just keeps getting smaller.

Keep your links, I'm going back to askjeeves

I worked very briefly for a company that was hirable to push websites for SEO. It was basically all young underpaid contractors and interns even the HR team except for upper management who was all the same people from their previous big company running telemarketing bullshit.

So yeah just want to add the usual suspects definitely had a hand in the enshitification of the search engine as you might think.

Torrents, modded apk's,...

Check out my results for some chinese download service called "Content Plaza" for example:

Google:

Yandex:

Like, 2? On the 'entire' internet? 2? Right...

Let's say I want to find an aftermarket built-in air jack kit for a car. Nevermind why, but let's say it's what I want to find.

So I look up car air lift jack. Google spits back a grid of floor air bag jacks for sale, a stack of videos of floor air bag jacks by people trying to sell them, Another grid of floor air bag jacks for sale, then finally a couple of the kind that go on a car, and godammnit another grid of floor air bag jacks for sale, finally sponsored posts for floor jacks or the wrong kind, Amazon ads for the same thing, ads for brands of the floor jacks, and more, more, more, makers of the wrong thing, lowes, home depot, walmart...it's all wrong.

So the very next words out of your mouth are "Well, you used the wrong search term!" No, not really, but let's try getting rid of "bag", because that seems to be a big incorrect return on the search. So in goes "-bag" to the search term. What does that get us?

The exact same fucking thing. "-" is meaningless anymore.

So that's google now.

Want help with a tech problem?

Wade through a stack of a dozen shitty youtube videos 10 minutes long each (because google pays more for ad space, longer videos have more space, so those get pushed to the top, and a problem that would take a paragraph of text to solve now becomes a shitty video with blather, subscribe, previous videos, like, other videos, and 2 minutes of actual help), a bunch of sponsored links to tech makers that have shit to do with your problem, and SEO sites like solveyourtechproblem.com or wefixitgood.com or whatever BS name for sites that consist of boilerplate help like "did you turn it off and on again?" Maybe after all that you'll get an out of date reddit or github list of posts that don't have anything to do with your exact issue. So you put it in quotes, that should work, right?

"It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search" says google.

Why? I dunno. Not enough returns on the search to cram ads, sponsored links, shit for sale in?

Google is shit. I've switched to DDG. It has it's own frustrations, but at least I don't have to put up with Google cramming every ad and sponsored link in front of me along with garbage SEO sites. Google's heyday has ended.

I've been doing a lot of searches lately about running, picking shoes, overpronation, training schedules, etc.

Straight google searches (ones that would have returned worthwhile results even ten years ago) are all trying to sell me something, or are AI generated content filler garbage.

I have to add "reddit" to every search in order to get real information from normal people.

And YouTube is completely unusable without paying or adblock. Letting literal scams market on their platform

Just wanted to chime in and say that I am super happy with my Pixel 7 so far. Easily one of the best phones out there, especially considering the price.

Teach me your ways

It's ads all the way down

What if these are primary places where user generated content lives now? Independent blogs are as good as dead, and social networks are walled gardens, sometimes populated by self regurgitating robots.