searching a specific problem, on what search engine it is…
no satisfactory answer. what else is there? other than just asking questions on lemmy?
If you use Google, try moving away from that! Half of its results are sponsored and the other half SEO optimised crap nowadays, and there are better search engine alternatives. I would push you towards Qwant and Ecosia, because they are working together to develop a search index independent from Google and Bing (which is being trialled in France and Germany!), and they both have much stronger privacy policies, being hosted in the EU after all. They are both as easy to use as Google, no excuses for something being too “different” (it’s just a search box and your results)
Between Qwant (blue and glowy) and Ecosia (green and flat), the difference is mostly whether you prefer the look of one over the other. Ecosia is also a non-profit that uses some of its revenue to plant trees, which is pretty awesome! If you want to look at their reports, they’re easily accessible on their website. Qwant is still great though, and you will get good results from either!
Avoid Startpage (owned by an advertising company as far as I understand) and Brave (involved in weird crypto stuff, replacing affiliate links, etc.). DuckDuckGo has become a lot closer to Google in terms of the number of sponsored results now, plus they are based in the U.S.
And of course, SearXNG is awesome too, there are lots of public instances (see searx.space for a list), and you can self-host it too. It basically aggregates results from the search engines of your choosing!
I subscribed to Kagi over a year ago. Once and a while I’ll try another engine and they’re all terrible by comparison.
Highly recommended if you can swing it.
+1 to Kagi. I still have to use Google for some local searchs, tho, but less than in DDG.
well just make a post with the wrong answer and somebody will come to correct you
Yup, good ol’ Betteridge’s Law
nope its Poe’s Law
That used to be the case. Now, LLMs slurp up the wrong answer and regurgitate it until it’s just what everyone believes.
If you look closely, you just created a liar’s paradox with parent comment.
Tonyn’s Conjecture
Yeah, search engines are shit these days. I make posts on help forums if I can’t get an answer. Or am in various Matrix rooms where I might ask as well.
Search has gotten progressively worse over the past 10 years, and 5ish years ago it got so bad that it was a problem.
I gave up on Google as a search engine as the results nowadays seem like filler content tailored towards page rankings.
I started using Kagi about a year ago, and searching feels useful again. Highly recommended.
Or just stores. God forbid I just want a user manual for something but instead it’s 3 pages of marketplaces and then ads for the damn thing for a couple weeks.
Search has grown worse IMO to push you to use ai more. Ai reviews, ai sites, they need to give the appearance of it working better so you’ll use it. To do this they dumbed it way down.
Use something other than Google or Bing, like Ecosia, Qwant, or Mojeek.
Search has been worse for over a decade, SEO optimization race killed it plus advertising.
Yes but it got exponentially worse to promote AI!
Idk I just use 4get and serxng mainly. Sometimes that Google AI overview is helpful at work tho
Initially they made it worse so you’d have you do multiple searches so that you see more ads, now they just want to show that thier ai has more users for investors…
it’s literally a skill issue
It’s gotten terrible over the last 5 years. AI slop is infecting everything and causing so much noise, it’s impossible to find real info anymore.
Best I can suggest is searches across Starpage, DDG, Qwant and Brave. When one fails, try the next one.
tenbluelinks.org gets you to have the web api for google. Can install it in your browser. I’ve been using it fr a year, even managed to build a shortcut (I named it “Google no AI”) in Safari on iOS and searches are tolerable on google again.
Yeah, I have a Searxng and 4get instance and I could add the Google API and have that option as well, but it seems like a minimal amount of effort barely proportional to what Google can go these days.
Maybe I’ll give it a shot.
Good suggestions except for Brave.
I would also add Kagi - I usually save this one for when other searches fail.
Edit: Oh, and Ecosia is another you could use.
Well, you can just use a Searxng or 4get instance and get the Brave results without needing to trust them that much. Depends on your threat model.
Since Kagi is paid, demands a login, and is private, it’s hard to fully trust without an audit trail. Which they don’t have enough for Privacy Guides to OK it to recommend. People can be politically aligned to you and still sell your data.
Still not the best, but it searches the web in the old school way, so it’s more reliable.
I mean that just gets rid if the AI summary box. All the results returned are the same… right?
No, it also gets rid of the ai search suggestions. So it actually looks at what you searched for not what it thinks you want.
I stubbornly clung to Google despite years of increasing problems out of habit and convenience. I just switched to DuckDuckGo a few weeks ago because I was finally fed up.
The turning point was trying to remember a song with only a few words in my head. I searched multiple variations of it, with and without quotes. The AI response (because I hadn’t turned it off) basically said, “nah mate, there aren’t any songs that say anything like that,” and search contained less than 10 total results, none of which were helpful.
Finally I remembered a few more words and searched again, and found the exact song. And it included, verbatim, a line I’d previously searched in quotes.
I also searched it on Kagi and didn’t get any results, sadly (I really love the concept of Kagi).
Since switching to DDG has been like going back 8 years in search quality—way better.
That’s my go to as well. I just wish the default page was the noai one and if you wanted slop you had to go to ai.duckduckgo.com
You can set it as the default.
Just add it to the list of available search engines, and then make it the default?
What I mean it is just be default for everyone without extra steps. GenAi should be opt in, not opt out.
Search is not an easy service. The non-AI search relied on server farms, indexing what is on the internet, and pointing you at what just likely is the answer. There was a sweet spot somewhere between maybe 2005 and 2015 when Google search was fantastic. With the data it knows about you it got you there maybe 19 out 20 searches.
And then things started happening. Google realised that they could sell more ads if their results were a little more shit and they required you to do more searches or click thru more results pages. At the same time, the content of stuff on the internet may have also reached a point where the idea of indexing everything started reaching its practical limits. And the longer time has elapsed since the graphical internet came about, the more deadwood has accumulated. Websites built in ancient days, now unmaintained, services that ended, expired licenses and certificates, etc. The answer you’re looking for may have been out there but for one reason or another can no longer be retrieved.
That’s all before the slop tsunami hit. And this food of content makes it harder still.
So-called AI is technology that’s being beta tested on everybody. I’m sure it’s getting better. At the same time there are plenty of valid reasons to look at it with suspicion. The bullshit it has made up, the additional environmental impact, the stealing of training data, etc. There is every chance that sAIrch will be better in the future than the sweet spot search of the recent past. But we’re not there yet in my opinion. We’re in the in-between time and we just have to muddle thru.
Google is betting big on this prospect. It’s self serving for them because they can downgrade their massive indexing operation and/or free up computing resources for other tasks. So I’m not sure if they’re more driven by financial motivations or conviction in the idea. Too early to tell. Nobody in the late 90s saw Google coming and eating everybody’s lunch in the search market. There is also a chance that a new company we haven’t heard from yet is waiting in the wings.
Ya I agree. It def went to shit even before AI. Sponsored results pushed more and more, and SEO slop abusing googles mechanics took over. Adding forum to the search became the only way to get anything because websites were trying to maximize time on page without even offering an answer. Eventually as the internet shrank and forums started dying out ‘Reddit’ was a good addition to a search, but that has since gone to shit too. It’s like a library of Alexandria has become a library of babel. Information is being gated and incredibly difficult to search for. I downloaded Wikipedia the other day because it’s starting to feel more inportant to have local access to information, but it only goes so far.
I think what your seeing is search engines don’t work like they used to. They give you what they think you want not what you asked for. Google might have been the first to make there search worse. They want you to use AI instead now. It also sucks. I usually try other search engines other than the main ones. Also indexing the entire web is not easy and would take a large amount of resources to do so some of the smaller ones seem incomplete.
my favorite searches are for a problem and you get plenty of forums and such with people who saw the problem but no solution.
I often times use the time filters to filter out content after 2020. (Of course only for timeless topics)
I also use uBlacklist to filter out obvious AI Slop especially those just reposting human stuff, like grokipedia. (there are also ready made lists for that) as well as highlighting great sources like wikipedia, mdn and what not.Well, IMHO it depends on what kind of answer you expect and what question do you ask.
Maybe you’re not good in asking. Maybe the question is to open ended. Maybe you’re the first person asking.
Maybe search engines have turned to shit for a combination of reasons, most of which are malicious.
Yesterday I searched “open source CRM” and the top result was “Definition of Open” Miriam Webster’s Dictionary.
Google and ai slop have made search engines shit
I use Kagi for search. Between it and my self-hosted copy of Wikipedia, I’m pretty happy.
How much space does Wikipedia take? Do you host a full copy?
I host a full English copy.
Full (all articles with images) is 120gb at the moment. I refresh monthly and keep the three latest copies, just in case someone fucks with it.
Honestly, saving the entirety of Wikipedia onto a tablet sounds like it should say, in large friendly letters, “Don’t Panic” on the front
I’ve been thinking about doing the same with stackoverflow for the few programming languages I know.
