News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by acters on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @08:02PM (#36319415)
This is the biggest benefit reddit provided to the user base. Google search has been lackluster and appending the word reddit allowed me to see plenty of good anecdotal and informative focused discussions without fluffing up the content for SEO.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by bagacrap on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @08:40PM (#36319715)
Plenty of paid content on the mattress subs and I'm sure many others
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by ramraj07 on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @10:35PM (#36320724)
Yes but easier to navigate. It’s obviously the red queen hypothesis of a never ending game between marketers and users looking for unadulterated information.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by rchaud on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @12:10AM (#36321341)
Rule of thumb: if they advertise on podcasts, they're astroturfing on Reddit too.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by blovescoffee on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @12:28AM (#36321464)
Mattress subs?
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by luckman212 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @05:37AM (#36323525)
was going to ask the same question...
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by ekanes on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:13AM (#36324695)
Mattresses have ridiculous margins, so astroturfing is likely.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by bagacrap on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @12:28PM (#36328357)
All I know is I tried to use reddit for mattress recommendations and found it worse than useless.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by bloqs on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @04:16AM (#36322995)
Baby with the bathwater. The paid shills are typically obvious and do not survive proper cross-thread analysis
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by mrguyorama on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @11:36AM (#36327543)
It's hilarious that you think that
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by bloqs on Thursday June 22, 2023 @04:19AM (#36429366)
Friendly reminder that this isn't reddit, and responding like it is won't improve this sites health.

Refute the opinion, or add something of value, instead of simply sneering.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by ramraj07 on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @10:34PM (#36320715)
I actually started going directly to the Reddit app and finding the relevant subreddit and searching within it - hope Reddit realizes the gold mine it’s sitting on but I doubt it.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by DistractionRect on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @11:27PM (#36321073)
I've found reddit first party search to be pretty lack luster. More often than not, I'd have to fallback to Googling "site:reddit.com/r/subreddit-of-interest <terms>" and while better, that's about a 50/50 a lot of the time.

Reddit does this thing where it advertises other threads on the same page of whatever you're viewing. So sometimes the promoted content was the thing actually relevant to the search and not the current thread. And this would be fine except it's not static/deterministic. The promoted content usually changes between when it's indexed and when it's accessed at a later time - so the thing that made it relevant to the search often isn't there anymore. So you have to either view the cached paged if available, go back and try different results, or refine your search.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by klondike_klive on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:24AM (#36324801)
Thanks for the tip. I'll try this next time I'm about to spend ten minutes searching for some After Effects effect or shortcut.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by senttoschool on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @11:43PM (#36321162)
>hope Reddit realizes the gold mine it’s sitting on but I doubt it.

They do now and the first thing they want to do is to sell their content to AI labs for millions/year.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by deafpolygon on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @12:10AM (#36321334)
Don't worry - it knows. Reddit wants to extract the value asap. I'm pretty sure they're looking to liquidate Reddit and go big on AI.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by ideamotor on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @03:16AM (#36322559)
I think data harvesting for AI is the real reason Twitter and Reddit want to limit access. Even I was thinking how easy it would be to mine both sites. It sucks because that’s the end of the (quasi) open web.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by specproc on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @10:40AM (#36326726)
My hope is that the old are dying and the new cannot yet be born, and that whatever comes next is as, if not more programmatically accessible.

It's kinda on us to ensure that it's only in the interregnum that we have the morbid and dysfunctional symptoms.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by JohnFen on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @11:41AM (#36327643)
The data collection for use with training AI is causing an increasing number of smaller hobbyist websites to shut down or become member-only.

It's not a lot of sites (yet), but it's making the web get smaller, and worse, it's affecting the most useful and interesting parts of the web more than the commercial stuff.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by princevegeta89 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @03:47AM (#36322784)
Good idea, but Google does the indexing job way better than the very Reddit Search
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by ramraj07 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @05:50AM (#36323590)
The issue is the entire internet is out there to game Google so pretty much nothing in google is useful anymore.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by borg16 on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @11:39PM (#36321136)
I used to think I might be the only one who does this and was beginning to wonder if I am overly reliant on reddit for my search results. Looks like I was not the only one.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by paulddraper on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @12:03AM (#36321289)
I find myself doing that.

Reddit

GitHub

Stackoverflow

Even Hacker News

Quality goes way way up depending on topic.

I kinda wish Google would apply some more personalized ML to my searches

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by hedora on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @12:20AM (#36321418)
I use duck duck go, and haven’t had to resort to that.

Anyway, I can’t think of any searches where appending stuff like that wouldn’t be universally beneficial (or detrimental), so I don’t see the personalization angle.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by Osiris on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @12:28AM (#36321463)
They just use Bing user the hood and the results are awful. I use some browsers that default to Bing/DuckDuckGo and every time I can’t find something I switch to Google and find the answer right away.

Bing seems to surface a lot more unrelated or spam my websites at the top of the results.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by 8organicbits on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @05:06AM (#36323321)
What searches are you seeing that with? I default to DDG and when I can't find something I'll try Google, but usually struggle there too. Google also has ads (for people without ad block...) so "unrelated spam at the top" is baked in.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by reportgunner on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @06:10AM (#36323713)
Sounds like a layer 8 issue, I have been using ddg as my main search engine and I always find what I need on the first page.

Every time I stumble in to google I am appalled at how bad the UX is.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by carlmr on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:59AM (#36325218)
I'd suggest a different explanation.

Think about what OP said here for a second:

>every time I can’t find something I switch to Google and find the answer right away

If you assume both Google and Bing to be similarly good but not the same, then you would expect this to happen.

Say there are two sets of websites, the ones that Bing finds (B+) and some that it doesn't (B-).

The same would hold for Google, there would be G+ and G-.

Now if you search on Bing first, and find what you need, you stop. This is a result in B+.

If you don't find it, your result is in B-. Then you search in Google and maybe get a G+ result, since they have different sets of websites they find.

You might also not find it (G-) but in the end both search engines aren't that bad, so this rarely happens.

Now you might find the same result if you start on Google instead, and aren't lucky in the first go, and then try Bing.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by poidos on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @09:24AM (#36325554)
> layer 8

TIL[0]:

> Layer 8 is a term used to refer to user or political layer on top of the 7-layer OSI model of computer networking.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_8

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by Eisenstein on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @09:51AM (#36325936)
Same as PEBKAC.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by mdekkers on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @05:28AM (#36323459)
Have a look at kagi
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by pcurve on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @01:54AM (#36321942)
yup. Without the 'reddit' suffix, the search quality is borderline garbage.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by badrabbit on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @01:56AM (#36321960)
I see people say this all the time, can you give me an example of your search queries? I never had to search reddit specific stuff but I do add 'github' all the time.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by Zircom on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:44AM (#36322291)
Whenever my partner and I watch a movie we enjoyed we'll search up threads for it on Reddit because there's always people discussing recommendations of similar films, or at least movies that people who enjoyed the other film liked as well, to add to our backlog.

Works especially great for horror movies, for us at least. I don't always quite understand why I may have vibed so well with a particular horror film since they can be so hit-or-miss between individuals, but other people who are more genre-savvy will be in the comments to explain it to me and have some great recommendations :)

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by cartermatic on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @09:36AM (#36325701)
I've been searching for a new camera to buy. Rather than reading general reviews from blogs where I don't know if they're sponsored or not through a Google search, I was searching "Fujifilm x-h2s review reddit" or "best camera under $2000 reddit" on Google instead. I've found a lot of the time, it can be hard to tell if a blog post from a Google search has actually used the product, or is just keyword spamming and hoping for a referral fee. Especially if I'm looking to buy something in an area I'm not familiar with and don't know the trusted review sites yet. Granted this can still happen on Reddit but I assume it is rarer.

I've also found that if I search for something directly on Reddit, I get all sorts of results. Some related, some tangential. And a lot of the time there's porn or NSFW content mixed in.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by badpun on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @10:31AM (#36326607)
If I see a referral link in any kind of advisory/review article, I immediately assume the whole website is a low-effort, no-ethics attempt at making money, and not much else. There are very few exceptions to that rule, where it's fairly obvious that the site is doing fairly extensive testing or research and not just spamming with chatGPT-like platitutes.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by kendalf89 on Thursday June 15, 2023 @12:48AM (#36336508)
Whenever I need an opinion about a product or a service or comparing 2 similar things reddit is the only place I can consistently get real people with honest takes. Sometimes there are paid comments but it's usually pretty obvious and the experience is still miles better than a SEO fluff affiliate marketing blog that makes up 99% of Google searches.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by klyonrad on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @06:06AM (#36323691)
so basically (cheap) human content moderation helps against SEO
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by harimau777 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @06:53AM (#36323989)
Unless you happen to already know of a specialized forum for a topic, it increasingly feels like Reddit and Wikipedia are the only parts of the internet that are still valuable; everything else is content farms or SEO spam.

Even then I'm finding that Wikipedia's quality has dropped dramatically in recent years. As they become more zealous about only including "encyclopedic information", I'm increasingly finding pages that have had all of their useful information sucked out of them.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by bbarnett on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @07:31AM (#36324275)
everything else is content farms or SEO spam.

No! The rest of the content is still there, loads of it. Google simple has stopped caring, no it is not "too hard", they just don't care enough.

Case in point, Google even aids in crappy results, by aliasing your search terms, preventing precision, putting monetization above all else.

Google sucks. SEO/spam is not worse, Google is, they know it, they do not care, because so far it has no affected profit negatively.

Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by harimau777 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @07:46AM (#36324404)
Good point. Do you find that other search engines like Kagi resolve the issue?
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by bbarnett on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:47AM (#36325074)
I tried Kagi and liked it. I also find using 'verbatim' searches on Google helps, although that seems to be broken more and more often.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by Eisenstein on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @09:48AM (#36325890)
Brave search is better than Google or bing or duckduckgo, I find. About equivalent to kagi.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by ColinHayhurst on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @01:27PM (#36329345)
For alternatives to Google here is a graphical network of web search engines and proxies: https://www.searchenginemap.com/ (desktop display only)
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by malfist on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @11:14AM (#36327212)
I feel like everything has turned into the blogospam that recipe blogs are known for. I searched the other day for how to use github's personal access tokens. The first 4 results are all unhelpful blogspam. Pages and pages of text talking about personal access tokens. No details on how to use it. Not a single snippet of command line, nothing.
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by morkalork on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @11:33AM (#36327511)
Ugh, I can see it now: How to use virtual environments with jupyter lab. Before going into the details of this tutorial, let me tell you about the first time I ever used a computer. My father was working as a travelling shoe salesmen at the time...
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by Ancalagon on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @11:21AM (#36327330)
Not to mention half the first page results are sponsored ads
Re:Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit black... by deprecative on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @08:08PM (#36334693)
If the content is there but is not accessible (findable) then it may as well not be there. The Internet is content farms and SEO spam strictly because that's what can be found and accessed by the overwhelming majority of people. A non-indexed blog or site, or one that is sufficiently low on the results list, may as well not exist. It's like farting when you're home alone. You farted but nobody but you gets to enjoy the intestinal perfume.