My observation with Google is that an astonishing high percentage of their users stopped clicking organic search results around 2010 or so. They exclusively choose from amongst the top two or three ads, which they don’t even realize are ads since the indication of “what’s an ad” has gotten more and more subtle and the position of the first organic result has gotten lower and lower on the page to the point where today you generally would have to scroll a bit to find the first organic research result. The same users who only clicked the sponsored links before now don’t click any links, usually preferring to simply read the AI generated summary of some random spam results (which notably is far worse in accuracy than what you would get if you simply asked an LLM directly).

I think as a result, Google doesn’t really care about the quality of their organic search results since on the scale Google cares about, “nobody” clicks them anyway.

My conspiracy theory is that Google has been deliberately making its search results worse to subtly train users into engaging with ads and the AI assistant.

There is little reason why the AI Assistant can be a summary of the exact page you want, while that page is buried 8 deep in the search results behind a bunch of spam.

I like how the AI summary has had a 50% rate of directly contradicting itself between the first and last paragraphs in my recent searches.

It’s like an overly confident bullshitter with no shame and the memory of a fruit fly. And I’m sure many people trust it.

Google just changes and ignores your search terms and then serves you the results to whatever it wants instead.

Recently I've had Google return results lacking search terms I've put in quotes (and then clicked "Show results for xxx instead" when it tries to 'correct' me). I have no idea how I'm supposed to make my desire any clearer.

It has been a long time since double quotes worked reliably for me on Google.

It has also been a long time since Google showed me any search results that weren't 100% ad-laden blogspam with wordy vague (and often incorrect) content with clickbait titles. I have basically given up on Google altogether.

I stopped using Google at work when they forced javascript. Since then I realized that I haven't missed it at all and I've stopped using it entirely. It's become trash.

What do you use instead?

Not GP but I have used Marginalia + DDG until 3 years ago and Kagi since then.

+1 for Kagi. If you want a search engine that works with you rather than against you, this is it right now.

An LLM (ChatGPT/"AI").

phone: * that circle in whatsapp * find a freebie chatgpt proxy in telegram

web * "copilot" in ms Edge browser * https://kagi.com/fastgpt * https://grok.com/ * https://claude.ai

I find the need for a "search engine" reduced very considerably with all these "answer this question (NOW!)" options so readily available. They're the modern day "I feel lucky" button.

Googles a little better about matching exact terms if you go to search tools -> all results and change it to Verbatim

Every single search. It’s funny to me that Google doesn’t let you default this setting and a sign they they are quite anti-user.

I wonder what employees of Google actually use. Is there a non-crappy version of Google that actually meets their needs and returns what they need?

This has been going on for over a decade for me now (I know because I blogged about it at the time).

For years I used DDG, not because it was better, but it wasn't worse and I wanted to support competition.

Then I started using Marginalia and shortly after I found Kagi.

Kagi works like Google used to do (and has a range of nice extra features) and in the very unusual situations were it doesn't work, when I posted it to the forums it was quickly acknowledged and dealt with.

Extremely refreshing to be on the customer side of a search engine the last three years instead of being some kind of livestock for Googles ad sales machine.

I just want a search engine that won’t return blogs with affiliate links or many results that are providing identical information.

When I click a result and see Amazon links, it’s instant back button.

Why can’t Google’s algorithm determine that any page with a list of Amazon affiliate links is 99.999% low quality, low effort blogspam?

Because those pages also make Google a lot of money via ads. "Show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome."

Try Marginalia :-)

Kagi.com

Allows you to customize results more than any I’ve used.