this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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The signal to noise ratio has seemed particularly out of wack with Google lately. The amount of blog spam SEO nonsense that crops up into the top 4 results has been pretty noticeable.
I’m not sure it’s entirely a Google thing. Reddit’s decline has made it harder to find quick answers for, “My washing machine’s making this weird string of beeps?” Niche hobbies moving from forums to Discord chats means, “How do I safely remove a keycap without damaging the switch?” is becoming a pinned message in a server you have to hear about via word of mouth. Basically any technology troubleshooting topic has moved from a blog post / forum to a YouTube video. And a 10 minute long one at that. Gotta hit those higher ad tiers.
For what it’s worth, I’m starting the new year off giving Kagi a try. It’s a startup trying to make a paid search engine work. You get 100 free searches to give it a try. After that it’s $5/mo for 300 searches, or $10/mo for unlimited. I’m not sure I’ll sign up for it just yet, but it seems pretty nice. No ads, custom components for things like Stack Overflow and Reddit, and some other nice touches for people who care about search. Their image search actually has a “View Image” link in addition to the “View Page” link. It’s hard to quantify how “good” a search result is, but I’ve been pretty impressed with it so far.
The last part of your comment sounds like an ad straight out of those overlong YT videos.
Have Brands™ started astroturfing Lemmy yet?
I’m not completely sold on Kagi yet. I’m still in the trial period right now. But paid services can be a tough sell online. I figured I’d be up front about the costs rather than wait for the inevitable “$10 a month for search!?” comment.
I haven’t seen any obvious astroturfing yet, but your last paragraph really did have the vibe of a smoothly transitioned paid promotion. Not saying it was, but even the comments that you haven’t fully bought into it made it feel even more like one of the more honest paid promotions.
Yes, they have
I read this same sentiment two days ago; Google doesn’t work for me.
Not sure what they are on about. I can find things I‘m looking for on Google in under a Minute 9 out of 10 times and I tend to use it quite heavily tbh…
if you're searching for something general, like, i dunno "dishwasher cleaner" or something, it spits out usable results.
but as soon as a query becomes technical in nature, like troubleshooting IT problems, it's a straight up nightmare.
the reason it's so bad at searching for anything very specific is their attempt to "figure out what you really mean":
and google does that by... ignoring what you typed and changing your search prompt behind the scenes without telling you and without any options to change it.
and putting it in quotes rarely improves searches anymore, only spits out more garbage.
point is: google is basically dead for any specific searches and only really works for searches that amount to "i want to buy thing. show me thing."
I had this weird hardware issue with my desktop and I could not find results for it on Google about a year ago, and I had searched for it a bunch of times previously as well and couldn't find anything relevant. My boyfriend searched for it on Google on his computer and found a result with the information we needed and i immediately fixed it.
Guessing my "custom" results were poisoned by something at some time, but it prevented me from finding the answer I needed, and I didn't think to log out at the time.
Super done with Google tbh
I signed up for Kagi after the trial. I'm very subscription adverse, but this one was something I don't mind paying for.
It's great that DDG doesn't track a users searches. It really is.
But at the end of the day, it's still just another ad platform profiting off of companies trying to sell you things.
And here you are complaining it seems like an ad, when someone's explaining an alternative ad-free search.
Just think about that for a moment.
Also, if we're being frank, DDG's results are damn near useless half the time.
It's like the opposite end of the SEO spectrum. Whereas Google just anchors onto certain keywords to regurgitate the same 4 listacles, DDG just sees your input for "my lawnmower won't start" and responds with "lawnmower huh? I dunno here's the history of John Deere or some shit, fuck off".
I tried using DDG but had even worse results than Google is having right now. I wish it was good, but my multi month trial of it was not impressive.
It was especially bad for programming. At least Google still finds what I need for that
Hard disagree with that, DDG searches are accurate about 90% of the time that I use it (which as a web dev is quite a lot) if they aren’t hitting Google with the same term rarely wields any better results.
I've had the same experience as you. The vast majority of the time, I can get the results that I want.
It also doesn't allow you to actually exclude keywords. Which can be utterly infuriating if you're looking for a specific entry in a franchise or a lesser used definition of something.
It's just handing your search off to Bing, and Microsoft just does what it does.
DDG pays Bing to use their API. DDG makes money by placing ads in the results. They do it kind of circularly using Microsoft's ad system, but they are separate.
Kagi is very good and I'm happy to be paying for it, but you were right in your second paragraph. It's not all google. Signal to noise in the web has gone way off. We need to throw out this Internet, it's gone bad
It's a machine learning epidemic. Now that blogspam can be automated in a way that Google can't even look for without penalizing a ton of sites because people write in a similar style to ML tools, search is basically fucked in its current form. Back to human hand curated webrings.
Also Kagi sucks worse than Google and DDG for a lot of things. I still pay for it, hoping it gets better, plus they have a lot of useful tools.
Yandex.com is where you'll find movies.
And porn. Google has recently became completely useless on that.
Rare Google W
Yeah but it's owned by Russia
And?
I don't want the KGB knowing what I'm doing any more than Google
Use tor browser then.
They do have a shitty custom CAPTCHA and it makes tor users do it a few times. You can also just use a decent VPN. Mullvad, Perfect Privacy, OVPN, I'm connected to multiple VPNs like 99% of the time I'm on my computer. On my phone I use tor when I need it.
Oh I got this. You have to put it into diagnostic mode, and then it will flash lights at you, giving you the error codes in binary. I'm not kidding!
For more info you can lift up the top of the machine by unscrewing some screws on the back. There are lots of screws on the back, but only three or four of them attach the top. If you lift the top up you can push the drum back and then slide your hand into the space between the drum and the frame. There's a ziplock bag in there with the service manual, and it'll tell you how to spin the knob to enter diagnostic mode. On my Maytag I have to spin the knob R, R, L, R, not to quick, not too slow.
I was blown away when I learned this all. I was having a problem with my clothes not drying, but still the components seemed to be working. I was getting a specific error about one component, but when I tested it it was fine. In my case the problem was where the wires from that component plugged into the control board--it was just slightly loose! So I pushed it in and everything is nominal.
You’re my new favorite person in this comment section.
And this post, being on Lemmy, will be indexable by search engines!
A literal ad. Goddamn. I'm blocking your ass.
Could their comment be a highly thoughtful and extrapolation on the current state of affairs regarding search engines and the rise of free to use products where the consumer is the product? Or is the comment just an ad because obviously anything mentioning a brand is immediately an ad with no other thought put into it.
Buddy, companies trying to build up user base aren’t exactly going to push for it in comment sections of a small pocket of the internet. They’ll spend their ad dollars on targeted FB and Reddit ads or buy airtime on new shows to talk about the dangers of data privacy and how Google is selling you out.
Try Brawndo next time you’re looking to water your plants. Brawndo, it’s what plants crave.
This is tough.
1: Kagi is getting some play in Lemmy comments recently.
2: Lemmings are often technology evangelists, making Lemmy a good place to astroturf for very specific products.
3: Companies are better than ever at properly seeding account comment histories to prevent suspicion.
We should all be appropriately skeptical, though somewhat polite can’t hurt either since there’s never proof of anything and I’ve sounded like an ad before.
who honestly pays for a fucking search engine
reads hard like astro turfing
Yeah.
If Google released Google Premium - where teams of offshore workers deranked SEO spam junk - would you give them 99 cents a year to Stop The Madness?
This is that, except it’s a no name, and the cost is far more. But I’d consider the $0.99/yr.*
If that seems more sane… imagine you have plenty of disposable income so whatever the no-name charges is practically free for you. There has to be a market for it. But the resistance will certainly be immense.
*
—
Back to astroturfing…
Anytime Kagi is mentioned I suppose I’ll jump in and say they’re an oft-mentioned brand suspected by at least a handful of users to be astroturfing, although there’s no proof, and SearXNG is a popular non-commercial alternative. I wanted to throw Grasp in to give a commercial competitor a shout but they’ve “paused”.
I do. I use search basically every day and when I'm working I don't want to waste a bunch of time digging through bullshit if I can help it. Google sucks, $10 a month for a better experience that both saves me time and helps get Google more out of my life is worth it to me.
that reads like an ad so hard lol
I pay for Kagi and it works better than Google. Nobody is astroturfing for them, you’re just paranoid.
sure bro sure
Welcome to Costco. I love you
I just ordered a giant thing of cologne from Costco the other day and when it came in I opened the box and said “I love you Costco” as I did it. I looked at my wife and told her Idiocracy was right. I mean, it always has been, but I’m glad Costco loves me too.
For reference, this is not an ad for Costco, or Idiocracy. Although you should totally watch the movie and membership does have its perks. Plus $1.50 hotdogs.
So far I am really like kagi. Makes sense to pay for something you use every day, without which the extensive resources on the internet would be basically useless.
I have a feeling it’s not unrelated to the billions-in-false-charges-for-ads-slash-youtube-ad-debacle.
Tl;dr: google made a billion dollars charging for ads no one saw and then discovered that happened. To avoid being sued they panicked and ensured ads were seen, which had lovely knock-on effects for most of the interwebz.
Remember “anti-trust” laws? Yeah me neither.
Having to join an entire discord server to just find out or download one thing is really, really painful
I started using Kagi a few months ago and have been really happy with it. It's completely replaced Google search for me. I think it's saved me a lot of time and helped me avoid a bunch of advertising I otherwise would have been exposed to. Not being incentivized by advertising money like Google is really makes a difference I think. With Kagi you are the actual customer and search is the actual product, with Google search you are the product and the customer is whoever paid Google to insert advertising into your search results.
That's because everyone thinks they need to post all of their information to discord to get validation instead of maintaining open web accessible blogs that can be archived
Maybe paid search engines was the end goal all along...
Someone has to pay for it one way or another. It's just a matter if you want to pay with money or your personal data being supplied to advertisers.
Yep. If something is "free" for the user, then the user is the product
Well, if it's from a for profit corporation, anyways, that's typically the case. Either that or they're trying to onboard you for an upsell down the line.
are you Kagi seeder ?