Some research that backs up what I’ve personally felt: Google Search is rapidly declining in quality.
It’s also one of the drivers behind Just About. SEO (and social media) spam and AI content will lead to a future web that’s driven by trusted, verified real people… probably in ‘walled gardens’.
What’s your experience been, and what do you think?
Created at . Page last updated at .
I'm glad it's not just me! A recent example is when my partner Dr Kirboom asks me to look things up about Elden Ring (so she can avoid spoilers).
Looking locations up either shows you the zoomed in version of a tiny part of the map or the entire world map without any markers. Maybe nobody else is interested in finding where specific locations are relative to the entire world map, or maybe search just isn't surfacing helpful results (or my keywords are terrible).
Who knows!?🤷
Google search is appalling when you're trying to find something specific. You will find higher ranked sites come way up the list for the result you are looking for only to find the page doesn't even have what you need, or even a mention. It's pretty bad in the gaming community and it's been getting worse over the past 5 years. Knowing where to go and word of mouth has helped counter this problem but achieving that takes time, promotion, and community building.
It is bad at the moment. So many junk sites full of words saying nothing in the top results.
I'm actually in the middle of starting up an old school minimalist design, niche personal blog site for myself. Going to write it 100% human (pivot from faceless AI videos!). I feel the Google algorithm is going to go full circle at some point, back to the earlier www days and start giving much greater weight to that sort of site personal which isn't full of affiliate link junk.
In conclusion, this comment is a testament to....
I really hate google, I search "Astero Eve PvP" and all I get are NOT what I'm looking for, it's so frustrating
Probably not a popular opinion but has anyone given bing a go recently?
I recently switched to edge from chrome and I haven't felt the need to go in and change it from bing to Google as yet. Bing has some pretty good results and features now.
Edge also has a lot of nice features you don't get in chrome (like an ad blocker on mobile for a start). I know a lot of people don't like AI but the built in copilot is also really handy how it's so well integrated.
It does make me wonder what the future holds for a lot of commercial sites when so many people block ads and now for a lot of info you don't even need to visit the page as the little bit of info you actually want is pulled out of it and given to you up front.
I've also been using perplexity a bit lately. You can set it to use Reddit as it's datasource as one of the options. It then goes and checks about 20 different Reddit threads, summarises the opinions quite well and gives you the reference links. The closed shop nature of justabout Is very savvy in this regard with only certain articles being public. Services such as perplexity will then need to do deals to pay for ongoing access/use similar to streaming/subscription services competing for content if everyone goes down the closed platform/content route.
This is the kind of thing it does if you choose the focus as reddit. I would be surprised if they don't have some kind of agreement with Reddit to do it or you would think they would have blocked them by now.
It's very powerful for research when you want real opinions rather than random "reviews" that Google serves up that are nothing more than affiliate link sales pitches.
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