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Re:Google Announces 12K Layoffs: A difficult decision to set... by thanhhaimai on Friday January 20, 2023 @12:09PM (#34456207)
> but search seems worse every day.

Search is a reflection of the internet.

The internet has had exponentially more content recently. There are good content, but there are also exponentially more spammy and downright bad content. It's actually incredible that search can still be functional in such an adversarial environment filled with garbage.

Re:Google Announces 12K Layoffs: A difficult decision to set... by JKCalhoun on Friday January 20, 2023 @12:38PM (#34456642)
What you and other's replying here are suggesting then is a downward spiral for Google's search.

Either Google needs to significantly shift gears or all of us need to look toward the next search paradigm that is not blighted by AI SEO crap.

Re:Google Announces 12K Layoffs: A difficult decision to set... by ipaddr on Friday January 20, 2023 @12:13PM (#34456281)
It is a reflection on how google views popularity over usefulness.
Re:Google Announces 12K Layoffs: A difficult decision to set... by lazide on Friday January 20, 2023 @12:35PM (#34456582)
Huh?
Re:Google Announces 12K Layoffs: A difficult decision to set... by dekhn on Friday January 20, 2023 @01:23PM (#34457387)
The biggest signal in Google's site ranking must be user clicks without returns (IE, user found something they wanted, clicked on it, and didn't come back to Google to search more). That would be good at filtering spammy pages, and shows things that are already known to be popular at the top. Rather than using link structure, use user clicks.
Re:Google Announces 12K Layoffs: A difficult decision to set... by mike_d on Friday January 20, 2023 @05:42PM (#34461126)
That is not the metric used to determine result quality. But if it were, you'd be correct.
Re:Google Announces 12K Layoffs: A difficult decision to set... by adamsb6 on Friday January 20, 2023 @01:00PM (#34457009)
It's happening more and more often that the first result doesn't even include all the words in my fairly short queries.

I'm thankful they have a warning on the result so that I don't waste my time.

They're also extremely liberal with synonyms. For example, yesterday I searched for "linear cohort survival model." The first result has bolded "general linear transformation model." I can't even tell what "general" and "transformational" are mapping to in my query.

Re:Google Announces 12K Layoffs: A difficult decision to set... by IAmNotACellist on Friday January 20, 2023 @02:07PM (#34458114)
>Search is a reflection of the internet.

Not sure I agree with that, as ChatGPT is pretty close to being a full-knowledge AI. I can ask it things Google fails to find and get a pretty damn good answer. Yesterday I asked it how Ethernet over Coax worked, what it was called, and specifically how it was able to get such high throughput while using only one conductor.

The top results on Google are for Amazon, zdnet (linking to Amazon referrals), screenbeam.com (shallow article trying to get sales), Newegg, Hitron Tech (same as screenbeam), and only then Wikipedia. And the Wikipedia article doesn't even mention CSMA/CA (still relevant for MoCA apparently)

Heaven help you if you have a specific problem with an emerging technology, like VR/SteamVR, specific 3D avatar issues in Blender or Unity, problems with a specific blueprint issue in Unreal Engine, etc.

Knowledge AI is the future, likely with "fine-tuning as a service" based on the collective sum of everything you do online and on your phone.