web Did search engines become useless again?

[Quinch 1,119]

I was going to have all rambly and long-winded intro to this topic, but it basically boils down to this -

Once upon a time, in the distant mid-nineties, in the internet before Google, there were search engines that pulled up pages people searched, but didn't sort them well.

Then, Google arrived on the scene with the novel idea of putting pages that were most linked to by other pages to the top, basically ranking them by popularity, and it was such a massive improvement over the current system that everyone and their mother started using it, once said mothers figured out how to get onto the internet in the first place.

And now, it seems like we came full circle, where the system has been thoroughly dissected, analyzed and gamed into oblivion that "search engine optimization" - i.e. gimmicking a site or page so it appears closer or at least near the top of the results - is something routinely done as a matter of designing a website to the point that it's not uncommon to have the search results saturated with pages that don't even contain the terms searched for, as long as they contain specific trigger words or phrases. It doesn't seem to be constrained to Google itself either as most, if not all, major search engines seem to suffer from subversion in sites' mad scramble to the first page of results.

Are we back to square one, only this time with chaotic, unsorted searches now replaced with results of an ongoing game for perceived relevance? Is there actually not a problem, and the system works just fine as it is? If there is, and searched-for information actually is being gated by chaff, what would the recourse be?

[MangoFoalix 24,898]

Interesting point you bring up here. I never really thought about that but I've had experieneces with how I search for something and it doesn't come up with what I wanted to search.

[Hardway Bet 96]

I usually don't have a problem with this, and I find that Google has only improved with time. While I'm sure search engine optimization can cause the sort of problems you describe, I feel like most top Google results don't get there by optimizing, but by paying Google directly.

The one thing that has been completely ruined in later years, though, is image search. Every image search is dominated by results from Pinterest, in which I am completely unpinterested. That site needs to go.

[Moony the Cat 3,695]

I never had any Problems with Google and while your Theory sounds interesting, i never noticed any said Issues.

If i search for something, Google often shows me the official websides of those things, where i get the most information from, so the system that google apparently uses is quite useful to me. But maybe i just search for different things than you, thats why i maybe dont have said problems.

[Kevin Tang 2,422]

You clearly have never seen the Roblox search engine

You will be frustrated with it even more

[Appley Hooves 136]

Mhm mhm, Google for me now is a joke, never find anything useful in the first two pages of results regardless of what I look up. I've also as of mid March become "one of those people" whose Youtube suggestions are entirely videos I watched ages ago, so now I barely use that site.

I miss the days of AltaVista and co. At least you'd usually find something neat if totally unrelated halfway down the first page 

[Merry Dashie 19]

I don’t really have a problem with search engines.

[碇 シンジン 27,427]

if you know how to search using the terms to your advantage i dont think the issue that is presented in this topic really exists, If i search something I find what i am looking for 95% of the time  and that number goes up even further if i really start putting effort into the terms i search with.

[Here No Longer 5,270]

I never have such issues... Usually when I look for something, it's one of the first few results... Just have to be as specific as necessary with it. If you've tried everything, either you're being picky or what you're looking for more than likely doesn't exist.

 

Image search, though, has been like this to me. It pulls up totally unrelated results before it pulls up what I'm actually looking for if it's more obscure, or more specific. It's a bit of a nuisance.

[Rainbow Dash 1,471]

On 12/14/2018 at 9:14 PM, Quinch said:

Are we back to square one, only this time with chaotic, unsorted searches now replaced with results of an ongoing game for perceived relevance? Is there actually not a problem, and the system works just fine as it is? If there is, and searched-for information actually is being gated by chaff, what would the recourse be? 

Yes. Search engines are becoming a joke. As of now, all appears fine. You go to google or bing, or yahoo and ask for a cookie recipe. No bigge, you get the results you expect. Then you get the hankering for some MLP merch. So you google MLP merch. AMAZON. TOP RESULT. Ok ok, its the biggest online shopping site, of course its gonna be top result. Search for something more niche like...idk...Rainbow Dash pony tail clip cosplay. I thought id get etsy, or a small online store. NOPE. Amazon again, but instead of Rainbow Dash pony tails, it was just regular hair ponytails. Etsy was 6 results down.

All of these search engines mine your data with the promises of not selling the data to others. However, they dont say they wont just loose the data on an unsecure server. Which is where they store OUR cookies and cache, which is why advertisers seem to target us so well. Yahoo was actually caught "loosing" data last year, yet they didnt have to pay anything or suffer any consequences.

I found that google runs in the background of firefox despite me not having a google tab open, and the fact firefox isnt google chrome.

[CypherHoof 26,479]

3 minutes ago, Rainbow Dash said:

Yes. Search engines are becoming a joke. As of now, all appears fine. You go to google or bing, or yahoo and ask for a cookie recipe. No bigge, you get the results you expect. Then you get the hankering for some MLP merch. So you google MLP merch. AMAZON. TOP RESULT. Ok ok, its the biggest online shopping site, of course its gonna be top result. Search for something more niche like...idk...Rainbow Dash pony tail clip cosplay. I thought id get etsy, or a small online store. NOPE. Amazon again, but instead of Rainbow Dash pony tails, it was just regular hair ponytails. Etsy was 6 results down.

All of these search engines mine your data with the promises of not selling the data to others. However, they dont say they wont just loose the data on an unsecure server. Which is where they store OUR cookies and cache, which is why advertisers seem to target us so well. Yahoo was actually caught "loosing" data last year, yet they didnt have to pay anything or suffer any consequences.

I found that google runs in the background of firefox despite me not having a google tab open, and the fact firefox isnt google chrome.

Could be a plugin - Google doesn't seem to do much on my firefox (although its mostly waterfox these days)

I note that the shopping issue on Google wasn't entirely their fault; apparently, Google was told to stop (and fined 2.7bn $) by the EU for being TOO good at shopping recommendations - because that "wasn't fair" to other shopping sites that aren't built into Google.

[Rainbow Dash 1,471]

4 minutes ago, CypherHoof said:

Could be a plugin - Google doesn't seem to do much on my firefox (although its mostly waterfox these days)

I note that the shopping issue on Google wasn't entirely their fault; apparently, Google was told to stop (and fined 2.7bn $) by the EU for being TOO good at shopping recommendations - because that "wasn't fair" to other shopping sites that aren't built into Google.

maybe, i do have one extension that is an adblocker so that could be it.
It still happens to me today, even on incognito mode, and with cleared cache. Could be that America doesnt care as much as the EU.

[CypherHoof 26,479]

31 minutes ago, Rainbow Dash said:

maybe, i do have one extension that is an adblocker so that could be it.

Could be an extension too, but I DO have one plugin from google (widevine protected content thingy; not sure what it does, as I didn't manually install it)

31 minutes ago, Rainbow Dash said:

It still happens to me today, even on incognito mode, and with cleared cache. Could be that America doesnt care as much as the EU.

that's true, but I don't see any traffic to google when I am capturing with wireshark - except when I use the search box

[EpicEnergy 22,054]

I don't see a problem with the usefulness of search engines today.

[Splashee 28,537]

On 12/15/2018 at 6:14 AM, Quinch said:

And now, it seems like we came full circle

It is worse than that now. In 2018, I could still find new and interesting things while searching.

Now, in 2020, I have to actively discard the first 2 pages since they were paid to Google to show first, and then ignore all the scam scripts that copies your search text word by word but doesn't know lower case is bad.

 

And that is not all. The Image search loads images in groups, with odd sizes, and when you scroll down, you get this weird pause, and then you are at the bottom or the middle of a new group of images, totally skipping over where you were. And this happens on Android as well, so no excuses!

 

Youtube also got to pay a lot for doing child advertising, and got caught by COPPA. They did it on purpose, and they do all the other things on purpose as well. Anything to get money for their company, not for the good of the internet, or the people, or whatever Internet is used for!

[Fluttershutter 2,106]

I don't know. I've searched some pretty exact stuff that I didn't even expect to work and gotten the answers I was looking for.

[ZiggWheelsManning 7,275]

Those search engines need to be careful so that we can search for the things we want and get solutions