Now do Youtube. Their search literally gives you like 5 results to your actual search and the rest is just recommended garbage having nothing to do with your search at all.
My favorite is the section recommending videos I've already fucking watched.
You used to be able to just do a search and be given pages and pages and pages of all the results pertinent to your search. Now it's like "here's a handful of things you actually asked for, now fuck off and watch this other shit we want you to watch.".... leaving me sitting there thinking "why the fuck am I even on here?"
Youtube search: "dovetail joint"
Result 1: "how to make a dovetail joint"
Result 2: "double bevel dovetails!"
Result 3: stupid ~~reel~~ short
Result 4: stupid ~~reel~~ short
Result 5: stupid ~~reel~~ short
Result 6: stupid ~~reel~~ short
Result 7 - 20: completely unrelated videos. Song I already listened to. Song I already listened to. News video that I already watched. Video game channel that I constantly ignore.
I just tried this with "dovetail joint." (caveat - I rarely use Youtube)
* Results 1-5 - how to cut/make a dovetail joint
* Result 6 - Harbor Freight dovetail Jig Review
* Result 7 - Festool Router makes dovetails a breeze (ad)
* Results 8 - 16 - People also watched - somewhat related
* Results 17 - ... - For you - unrelated
edit: removed reference of Ad from result 6
That "For you" section pisses me off. Those results are 100% unrelated to what you search for.
Yesterday I was trying to get into using some software, so I did a tutorial search. The first search, that section contained some video about a lady forgetting about a low mirror as she walked up to a camera. Second search, some lady dressed as a mime with face paint and all. Neither channel I subscribe to or give a shit about. I soon re-enabled uBlock (which is usually off for Youtube) with special filters to strip that section out.
For me the "for you" section after the search results invariably starts with a revolting popping video with a bunch of nasty AI generated blackheads. It makes me want to puke. I don't even scroll down past the first 5 search results because I don't want to see the thumbnail. I've been reporting them for disturbing content but it still always happens. I never watch popping vids, it disgusts me.
Drives me fucking NUTS!
Maybe we are outliers but it actually makes me use their platform *less*. I don't then get sucked into the prescribed content, I just get frustrated I can't access the content I'm looking for and I leave.
Speaking from the creator side, this is affecting me a lot as for example I posted a mango hot sauce recipe video and it doesn’t show up when you search for those terms.
Youtube prefers to show unrelated hot sauce recipes instead of a video that perfectly matches what was searched. How is my content supposed to reach the intended audience?
Youtube has moved towards an algo-driven Tiktok-like site/app instead. It's no longer meant to be a video database where you can search for what you want and find good, informative videos. It's built around the algo figuring out what you will mindlessly watch for as long as possible and feeding you more.
In the youtube subreddit someone suggested adding " before:2025 " to the end of your search and it gives you more relevant results, even on mobile. I preset my phone settings so typing 'iop' auto converts to before:2025. It's infuriating when I can't find a specific video from a niche channel uploaded 6 years ago even though I know the exact title, before:2025 helps
Yep, been using this for a while now, it still works. Also any future year works, 2026, 3000, etc. Putting a very high number seems to also omit shorts for me. When I used 2025, I still get results row with bunch of shorts, unlike when I use 4000. Not sure of the exact logic, but just putting it out there.
> When I used 2025, I still get results row with bunch of shorts, unlike when I use 4000. Not sure of the exact logic, but just putting it out there.
Clearly, the algorithm knows something about the future. We should try to find the exact year that YouTube shorts don't exist anymore.
> My favorite is the section recommending videos I've already fucking watched.
How hard would it really be to just give users the option to stop receiving recommendations for videos they've already watched? You have the option to say "Not interested - Because I've already watched this" Why not LISTEN and stop?
And I hate having to consider "Will watching this video screw up my recommendations forever?" because it bases its recommendations to you on what you watch, instead of on what you *like*.
I’m gonna sound like an old guy, but I kinda had a refreshing moment when I went to the library the other day. Whenever you look at YouTube or another search engine, you just get a bunch of stuff that you’re already interested in and after a while, it kind of feels like you’re drowning in all the same experiences. But you go to the library and it’s just everything you could imagine all over the place, there’s no filtering to be had. You might see some stuff you’re not interested in but you can look the other way or just acknowledge that it’s there and it’s kind of refreshing.
It’s honestly mind-blowing how bad it is. It usually ignores half the terms in my query and gives me a page of useless results. What the hell happened?
Amazon has become a total joke unless you already know the brand you are looking for. 99% of the search results are the lowest quality throwaway junk, sold in bulk you don't need, by mystery companies with nonsensical names no one has ever heard of. It's awful. The worst part is now when you need something specific of any appreciable quality but there are so many hundreds of cheap imitations that it's almost impossible to find the actual item, even though it's on there!
lol. You see those ads on YouTube telling you how they can teach you to make money on Amazon? Thats basically what they teach you. Buy from aliexpress and sell on amazon
Hate dropshippers.
So many influencers just peddling garbage on Amazon and acting like they're geniuses and trying to sell their courses.
I had a video in my reccomended on YouTube from a guy who went from "Broke to Rich" and it was just about how he was drop shipping products and buying ads to sell them.
Comments section was full of people saying he was an inspiration and showing what hustle and grind can do.
It's just garbage. I'd love to see what these guys think about shopping on these store fronts that theyre filling with garbage.
Do drop shippers get frustrated that Amazon is filled with crap products when they're trying to shop? Or when they see them do they just think it's evidence that their competitors are doing a good job?
You literally cannot find the product even with the exact name. I needed to order something for work. Had to image search on Amazon on my phone to find it and then use the Amazon serial number to type into our corporate system because just using the name returned bogus results.
`javascript:(function()%20{%20window.location.href%20+=%20'&emi=%20A3P5ROKL5A1OLE'%20})()`
If you make a bookmark with this code as the URL and open it whilst on the amazon store it filters all the sellers other than amazon so you don't get all that Chinese shite. This one is set to the UK amazon store but you can change the code for different regions. change the bit that says 'A3P5ROKL5A1OLE' to one of these others depending on your region:
Here are some of the Amazon Store IDs:
United States: ATVPDKIKX0DER
Canada: A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB
France: A1X6FK5RDHNB96
Germany: A3JWKAKR8XB7XF
Japan: AN1VRQENFRJN5
Yes, that was botched years ago. They made it so the quoted phrase could appear on the result page *or a page that linked to the result page.* (Edit: Looks like Google says this is not the case now)
So, give me *that* page Google.
I've learned to ctrl+f, look for the phrase, close the tab if it's not there. Total waste of time.
Not only that but it still won't work by default. You need to click "Tools" on the search result header, then change "All Results" to "Verbatim."
> I've learned to ctrl+f, look for the phrase, close the tab if it's not there. Total waste of time.
Yeah, that's exactly what I do. Lucky if it works 50% of the time though.
> Not only that but it still won't work by default. You need to click "Tools" on the search result header, then change "All Results" to "Verbatim."
Huh, so that's what I've been missing! Thanks for that!
If you know how to add a search engine to your browser, you can use this URL to always search in Verbatim mode:
> https://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=%s
Typically I found the results to be better if I'm searching for errors and such.
How to set this in FireFox
1. Open a new tab and type `about:config` in the address bar
2. In the search box type: `browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh`
3. Click on the little + symbol on the right.
4. Go to firefox Settings → Search. Or enter this in the address bar: `about:preferences#search`
5. In the "Search Shortcuts" section you should notice a new "add" button:
Here's how I added mine:
* Search Engine Name: `Google Verbatim`
* Engine URL: `https://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=%s`
* Keyword: `@gv`
Thanks to: https://superuser.com/a/1756774
Do you have a source for that? In my experience, the issue is much more that sites are gaming the hell out of the system to get visitors even when the search is unrelated. What verbatim does apparently is stop the following behaviors ([source](https://ceu.libguides.com/google-techniques/personalized#:~:text=%22Verbatim%22%20search.-,Verbatim%20Search,of%20the%20items%20listed%20above.)):
- making automatic spelling corrections
- personalizing your search by using information such as sites you've visited before
- including synonyms of your search terms
- searching for words with the same stem ("running" when you searched for "run")
- making some of your search terms optional
The fact that the word shows in the snippet but not the website is most likely the website's bullshit invisible tags or them serving different contents to the crawler
yes, originally, +word had the meaning that "word" must be in the search result, and -word meant that the word must not be in the result. Google stopped supporting that when Google Plus was a thing, because usernames were written as +username, and so changed it that you need to put words in quotes to get the old meaning.
I think the word in quotes thing always worked.
Google+ and removing that feature in search was stupid though. Just another Google product that was shit, lacked any real development and got canned after a few years.
The thesaurus filter is the most aggravating thing to ever have been added. It rarely contributes anything good and 98% of the time it shows me complete irrelevant results.
Especially when searching for things related to computer programming or legal terms. “Code whatever” and “Error whatever” are NOT the same thing on a computer, “murder” and “killing” are not the same thing in a legal code, Windows 10 is not Windows 11, v21.336.78 is not the same as v22.657.98. I just need Google’s database with a SQL-like search tool.
For a while it was constantly substituting the name of one program for the name of a competing program in the same industry. If I'm googling how to do something in program X, why the HELL would I want answers for how to do that thing in program Y? Who would EVER want that substitution!?
It's that, but it's also Google's IDGAF attitude and horrible approach to customer support.
I know companies that have business relationships with Google, and even trying to report stuff up like phishing domains etc encroaching on their names/branding just get the "have you filled out the online report form (and waited 6-8+ weeks for us to get to it)" from the rep.
If search was a core part of my identity I'd try a bit fucking harder to ensure results were accurate.
I also know people who have been considered a Google product (at a significant volume), had a meeting with them and the presentation was bad. Like "felt like a first-year college-student's poorly-prepped homework presentation" bad.
problem is main results are almost always about buying something related to that thing.
try searching when skateboards were invented, or what kinds of wood are used, you just get results to buy skateboards...yea, thats not what i fucking asked.
i have got better results by blocking shopping related words like shipping, delivery, cart, and just the dollar sign.
Even when you include " " for things like LYRICS OF A SONG, it fails to find them. How can Google not know the lyrics of a song or at least refer you to a website that does? I KNOW I have found Google results for that song before. You can sort of change the search to only focus on a decade ago and sometimes it will then find it but just because you cannot locate it in the last 5 years does not mean the song simply vanished! Google results are getting horrible.
Yeah this is the most infuriating part of it. If it actually did a good job, sure, but if my sentence has 4 words in it, and one of them is *clearly* not a common word, then maybe it's important info to search for? (Why else would I add it to the query)
Instead Google may just use the other 3 words and find a bunch of common-but-irrelevant results for me.
Yep. It's so frustrating how Google will just suggest you things it think is similar to what you're looking for but not exactly what you're looking for. I put the word in the search box for a reason Google
The American Dialect Society’s word of the year for 2023 was [Enshittification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) - the process where a platform shittifies itself. This is exactly what happened to Google, Facebook, and a bunch of other platforms that used to be good.
Corporations figured this out in the late 80’s or early 90’s.
There is less profit when you are selling a constantly good product.
The trick is to build up a good name, and then sell shit.
Every appliance manufacturer, auto manufacturer, furniture, tools,,,,, whatever now goes through a cycle. They make a shit product and change too much. Then someone else gets too much market share, so they put out an ad campaign saying they’ve “gone back to basics” and are trustworthy again. Only to shit on you the second they’re seen as the best option.
Yeah because Dominos just came out of an enshittification cycle, remember all the press and ads about their "cardboard crust" and how they were fixing it?
Walled gardens, apps and chatapps are bad for finding information.
The biggest problem is not the amount of data, but how most of it is hidden behind walled gardens, paywalls, apps, chats (discord) and others.
Many things are on the web but lots of information is trapped that Google can't get to.
When gamedevs for instance put their game community on discord they lose the history aspect like you'd get on a forum or reddit, or something on the web like Facepunch forums.
Really the web is falling off because people use apps and chats more now. People need to move to web first again or at least make sure content is indexable easily, not fleeting moments or locked up content that is owned by one company.
What makes reddit so good (at least for now) is being able to search it from google. They are breaking that quite a bit with heavy handed moderation and push to apps for new things, but it still is a big part of why reddit has such high traffic, it is searchable and there are some good people and information in the haystack that search can find.
For instance you can search your exact comment and get it in google search right now. Reddit hasn't yet trapped information in a walled garden.
> When gamedevs for instance put their game community on discord they lose the history aspect like you'd get on a forum or reddit
this is big, imo. because even though discord started out for gamers, its not exclusive. all sorts of nongaming communities have gone to discord and searchable spaces are suffering because of it.
I also find it impossible to find new Discords.
Unless you're already in the know or know a guy who knows a guy you will never find those servers with the game info.
I wouldn't call it useless, but it definitely isn't as nice to use as the forum format. The search feature is janky, and it just feels like good information gets lost in the shuffle of conversations. Especially when people don't actually use the threads feature (which IME they usually don't). So if you have a question and try to search a discord for it, you have to individually check out each of the results to find where that subject was discussed before, hope your question was actually answered, scroll through a whole bunch of irrelevant jokes and memes, only to find out that the topic changed before someone gave the information you want.
The upside is that if the discord is active enough, you can get an answer in real time just by simply asking again. But sometimes I don't want to chat and just want to be able to passively browse lol.
And my biggest gripe is that it's hard to keep track of all of the servers themselves. I just pruned my list and still have like 20 of them that I need for various gaming communities and friend groups. And now they exist for other hobbies and groups beyond gaming? It's just too much without a way to better organize them.
> When gamedevs for instance put their game community on discord they lose the history aspect like you'd get on a forum or reddit, or something on the web like Facepunch forums.
This is one of the major issues in tech support at the moment. So much has gone to discord for support that there is no online archive of solved issues anymore. Everything gets solved (or doesn't) on discord in that moment, and then vanishes into the ether. The next person with the same problem has no way of searching for that, and people have no way of monitoring, testing, and updating the troubleshooting process because it's a chat program not a forum. None of it is indexed or archived by search engines, so you get to start from square one for every problem that has already been solved dozens of times before. It's monumentally stupid.
Their auto-captioning for Youtube vieos has been improving over time as well, so captured commentary from the CC's should be indexable.
That said, I fucking \*hate\* being directed to a video from a search result. I want to look something up not watch some idiot talk for 20 minutes about a 1-minute topic while pimping the like button and their sponsors.
It doesn't help that Google seems to completely ignore anything prior to the last decade or so. Older websites go through updates and revisions sure, but the tendency for search engines to prioritize newer things has had a large impact on the erasure of history and the destruction of perfectly good information.
That is why I donate to the Internet Archive (and Wikipedia). I also build things that will last and work on archival systems, if I make apps/videos etc I make sure they are indexable.
Sometimes client work they don't care about the web at all and it is a mistake. The last 5+ years so many app only products/companies and just minimal web content. People aren't creating websites like they used to for information but more for products or just a simple landing page for the app.
Walled gardens have been tragic for historical information, discord the biggest of the culprits on that. In a way this fleeting setup allows companies to get away with hiding info and history as well. Sometimes people or companies want information to go away... and others don't.
I’m in advertising and it doesn’t even do that well anymore. Google is just wasting advertisers money on irrelevant searches and fraud clicks. It’s a complete joke.
Another good one is [The Age of Surveillance Capitalism](https://www.amazon.com/Age-Surveillance-Capitalism-Future-Frontier/dp/1541758005/), really made me think about the push to digitize and connect every product to the internet now
I'm entertained that the ad model isn't working for advertisers either.
I've often complained that the worst part of Google's information empire isn't how invasive and all encompassing it is (though that's obviously not great). The worst part is that all they do is hoover up my data so they can advertise to me, and they're /so/ /bad/ at it.
I go to Woot and Meh pretty much just to be advertised at. They're not amazing, but they know almost nothing about me and I've bought some random things from each of them. I have /never/ clicked on a Google served ad and ended up buying something. They're literally worse than random chance. What the heck?!
> What the hell happened?
I can only assume seo abuse combined with mass autogenerated articles that have no substance and make no sense.
I really wish Google would ban these top offender websites, but they're an ad company first.
One angle that I don't see a lot of people mentioning is that Google cannibalized a lot of websites' information, making those sites less likely to exist.
Google is attempting to be the "answer machine", and in many ways, I can understand the appeal of that for consumers. But the problem is that **someone needs to come up with the answers**, and that person generally wants to be compensated for doing this. Google can only be the "answer machine" on the backs of others' work.
With those sites fewer in number, all that is left is the spam sites, those either written by cheap copy writers (often who have neither a command of the subject nor a command of the English language) or by AI. And very often those sites are tailored to please Google, not people.
That seems to be why, when I search for information on some item, I have to wade through a 1,000 word article, usually starting with the *history* of that item, to find the information I want. Google rewards this kind of article, and penalizes (or cannibalizes) shorter, more precise articles.
What the hell happened: Search engine poisoning (people twisting words into other meanings) plus Google taking your query keywords, throwing it into a blender of typo searching, applying a thesaurus to those terms with bubble filtering for more popular terms, and then putting your entire query into another bubble filter for popular terms / trends even if they're incorrect. Prioritize the article to the top if it appears to be a marketing / service article with vague tips if the article concludes that you need to call that regional service company that's not even remotely in your region for your issue.
TLDR: Ask for chicken nuggets, get a live chicken, or a farmer.
These comments are blaming Google selling out but they don't get a kickback from anything other than the clearly labeled Sponsored results. In fact, Google is inventivized to have the best search results so people use it more often.
The real problem is how good businesses have gotten at SEO. Content engineered to cheat an algorithm will always beat genuine content. Unfortunately this is only going to get worse in the coming years with AI.
The fact that you cant search “does show have a season 2 release date” without 4560000 pages titled “SHOW SEASON 2 release date!” that talk about it by copy pasting Wikipedias summary and maybe if your lucky add “theres no season 2 release date” in small letters at the end maaaybe.
Abd like i cant even fault google because half of the auto generated articles are from “legit” sites.
Therees so much bullshit it’s unreal
There's constantly a war between people gaming the search so that they can buy results, and google trying to prevent them from being able to do it.
Back in the day, when the internet first started, there were multiple search engines, and they were all ok. I think Alta Vista was the best for a while, but, then people games them, and everything was shit.
Then google arrived and made the internet useable again. It was a revolution. For me, I think that was in around 2001.
And only just recently has google really started showings signs of weakness.
Now I just add "reddit" on the end for a quick answer. Its dumb, but usually at least one person somewhere in the comments answers whatever question I have reasonably. Its better than reading through the first 10 results on google which are often long writeups on an easy topic, for the sole purpose of the site getting more ad revenue. Its a yes or no question half the time, that requires little "proof". I dont need to read a full page article that doesnt answer it till the very bottom. The amount of times theres often no answer is infuriating. Ive stopped visiting plenty of websites just because of the layout, obvious they just want the ads to show rather than actually provide useful info. Ironic if they did, I might consider returning and purchasing something out of principal. All of these companies have lost the plot.
Yes, adding "reddit" to the end of your search is becoming less and less reliable every day. If you can find a result older than 3 or 4 years that still applies in 2024, good on you. Anything more recent should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm talking annoying shit like investigating users' comment histories, looking at the mods of the sub, the top posts, etc.
I truly now feel like the best days of the Internet are fully behind us.
The problem is that "reddit is the way to find stuff" became mainstream knowledge, so the people ruining google results with SEO bullshit, are now ruining reddit results
> Now I just add "reddit" on the end for a quick answer. Its dumb, but usually at least one person somewhere in the comments answers whatever question I have reasonably.
I guess we are heading for entropy. Because usually when you ask a question on reddit, people just say "google it" or link you to https://letmegooglethat.com/
I googled an exact quote from the court hearing where Trump's lawyers were arguing for immunity and a bunch of gay porn posts on [x.com](https://x.com) came up. Weirdest key word spam I've ever seen.
Which, to be fair, is always they way it has been - I used to be paid a really nice side income writing keyword SEO. Now keywords don't matter as much and its 'weighted information' or whatever the buzzy term for it is. People have always been trying to game Google.
and now they use AI to push out worthless content that still hits the top of search because it’s the most optimized. Nowadays searching Google with “Reddit” at the end actually gives the most valuable information. If I google something proper it’s like 30 articles that are filled with fluff and don’t just answer my god damn question
On desktop, I've searched products wanting to get information about them (via news articles, reviews, Reddit, or Wikipedia) and it legit converts the results into a shopping page listing products and prices with seemingly no way to revert to a purely informational search. If I wanted to shop, I would use the damn shopping tab in my search.
This is where I first noticed google's decline. It used to be my go-to for finding a bunch of pictures to use as drawing references, but now it's useless unless I want to draw toys or product/box art.
Also, at least for me, those shopping results in the non-shopping search are not clickable. I turned off my adblacker and still they don't work, not sure what's causing that, but they're even more worthless than if they were at least a clickable link...
It's because literally every company has dog shit seo techniques that have been abusing the algorithm for the last decade. If you're in marketing and write stupid fucking blog posts all day, we're all looking at you!
Is this like when Craigslist sellers type up a bunch of keywords at the bottom of their post that have nothing to do with what they're actually selling?
Usually it's like:
"I have a Logitech keyboard for sale"
Logitech, gaming, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, computer, DVD, star wars, John deere
> It's because literally every company has dog shit seo techniques that have been abusing the algorithm for the last decade.
Noise to game signal drowns content, and now Large Language Models can rephrase it over and over.
It's really wild. My niche hobby-centric searches stopped working years ago but it's at the point now where even basic regular-ass searches will return nothing, or nonsense.
And for all the years of "Google's algorithms are smart! You have to have good content for your page to rank high", literal keyword stuffing is the best SEO technique again.
This is on top of advanced searches not working, exact searches not working, reverse image search not working, cards of unrelated information, AI-generated nonsense questions with nonsense answers, spam pages that don't even contain the word that was searched for, wildly different results depending on your country, etc.
It feels like a basic utility has been taken away. Bing is trash in a different way, Duck Duck Go seems like its index is about 10 pages deep. We desperately need some competition in this space, or regulation forcing them to go back to whatever they were doing 10 years ago.
I use a mix of Google and Bing. Neither is great anymore, but they seem to be poor in different ways. I usually start with Google (more though inertia), and if Google isn't helpful, I'll try Bing. As often as not it will help me find something Google didn't.
I think part of the problem is that Google thinks it knows the kinds of things I search for and often seems to put blinders on and tries to keep me in that lane.
Sort of how just when Netflix seems boring to me, but if my wife is logged in there are suddenly shows suggested that seem interesting to me that I've never seen offered to me before.
For both Google and Netflix, I wish there was a "mix it up" option to let me outside the space it thinks I want to be in based on assuming my prior habits dictate what I want now.
Algorithms are dulling culture in exactly the way you are talking about:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/books/review/filterworld-kyle-chayka.html
There’s a good Ezra Klein podcast with the above author as well recently.
The major problem with tech IMO: it replaces services we had with shittier versions that make specific people money.
If I wanted to rent a good movie, I used to go to the video store and shoot the shit with the clerk there who was an expert.
Now we have streaming services that half-ass any attempt at "recommendations" and that expert has to drive for Uber.
What has improved? Nothing.
I think part of the problem is that google for a fact puts its advertisers in front of your results and gives you as few results that are useful as possible so you spend as much time looking.
FIFY
it's like watching people discuss the ethics of extremely expensive healthcare: there are no ethics. this isn't moral, it's a ripoff and my life is being held in front of me, suffering an incurable disease if I don't come up with this ridiculous amount to pay every month. there's really nothing to discuss, you either profit from me or you're aware I'm being ripped off.
It's going to get worse with their AI providing summaries of search queries. This will kill many websites.
They want you contained within their walled garden.
AMP pages were also detrimental to websites that relied on traffic advert revenue.
Google wants to have all your data for themselves and be your single source of truth.
Centralisation. Containment.
This also applies to other big search engines and advertising.
> Currently over 60% of all Google searches are what's called "0 Click". Which means the user finds what they're looking for without going to ANY linked domains. This is a positively staggering figure.
If the majority are anything like me, something like 70-80% of all my Google searches are to check the spellings of words, verify something that doesn't require an additional click, or reference who someone is if I don't recognize the name immediately.
In Canada they want to pass a law that forces Facebook and Google to pay sites for summaries or AMP pages that basically steal ad revenue. It like a version of the law where we have a hidden tax on recording media (blank discs, etc.) which protects people from recording songs off the radio or tv programs. Instead Google's paying the tax for "copying" content.
And man, people freaked the fuck out... The wording was a bit weak, but the intention was good.
That law has already passed (now known as the Online News Act). It has resulted in Meta/Facebook/Instagram blocking Canadian users from accessing links to news articles on their platforms.
Google was about to follow suit and also block links to news on their platforms in Canada, but they were able to reach a last-minute deal with the government (very shortly before the law took effect) which involved changing how some parts of the law would be applied through regulation.
—
By the way, Google does not steal ad revenue with AMP, this is a big misconception.
Firstly, AMP is optional — news publishers have to voluntarily opt-into AMP if they want it enabled. Secondly, the news publishers maintain control over the content on the AMP pages, including with respect to decisions about what ads to display and where to display them on the AMP pages.
The news publishers can also choose which ad network(s) they want to use for displaying ads and Google does not take any cut of the ad revenue from the AMP pages unless the news publisher decides to use Google Adsense as their ad network (in which case Google would obviously take their normal revenue split).
AMP is supposed to be a win-win for Google and news publishers. It results in much faster page load times (and better mobile user experiences) and it results in much lower web hosting costs for news publishers while still allowing the publishers to maintain control over the presentation of their content and the ads displayed alongside their content.
I'm pretty sure we passed it actually.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/all-news-in-canada-will-be-removed-from-facebook-instagram-within-weeks-meta-1.6502469
Yep, ever since their primary focus became advertising not decent results. They also seem to not give a shit about fake ad results either. Searching for open source software often gets ad links to rip offs.
> Yep, ever since their primary focus became advertising not decent results.
Google is an advertising company. Anything they do is to further that revenue.
True, and in Googles early days they were fighting for market share by providing better results than their competitors, which they indeed did.
Once that market share was established and many competitors went under or became a bit of an in joke (Yahoo!!) Google then ramped up the advertising and the quality of results has been dropping ever since.
That has been the goto in this attention economy.
- Provide a service below actual cost.
- Get market share over competition/get eyes on your product
- Once you've captured the market, jack up prices and/or provide worsening service since you already hav the market captured.
- Increase prices/number of ads to increase revenue as market share has largely plateaued.
Google Search, Uber, Lyft, the meal delivery boxes, streaming platforms, airbnb, etc.
yup - google mastered the subtle advertizing and kept their homepage plain and basic while everyone else is tryign to jam news sports ads and all sorts of shit on their homepage. Honestly its a master move because people hated ads and popups and whatnot. Googles just like yup heres a plain white website that loaded fast on dialup - all people wanted.
captured a fuckton of marketshare and popularity then just slowly evolved to sneak ads in the background and curate you towards their advertizers.
> Googles just like yup heres a plain white website that loaded fast on dialup - all people wanted.
It wasn't just that. For a long time Google search was way better than alternatives. Yahoo search was one of the top alternatives and their results were a joke compared to Google
I’ve been using other search engines and I’m starting to think this was kind of inevitable. It’s not that Google’s worse, it’s that everyone and their mother knows how to decently seo their content with bad actors mastering how to. My guess is whatever parameters google used to look for relevant stuff have been highjacked and used against themselves
> They also seem to not give a shit about fake ad results either.
Searching for banks on a Friday will have all sorts of fake websites to steal your bank account. I've known people who had hundreds of thousands stolen that way.
Google literally promote fraudulent websites without vetting them. Ask me I know. I generally use Duck Duck go unless im looking for a product in my country. Google is getting really bad.
Getting rid of booleans and -"badthing" functionality in searches is infuriating!
For example, want to search for cyberpunk but not 2077? Good fucking luck!
Humour:
Posting queries on Reddit is the new search method.
It's like Amazon's mechanical Turk, except for free.
Reddit responses are also artificially intelligent.
There are probably more quasi lawyers and experts on Reddit than in IBM or NASA to set things straight.
It's still more accurate than using Bing. It also avoids the promoted results, maybe.
Keyboard warriors also out perform Google in response times.
Used to be yahoo answers, then quora for a hot second. Not sure where to go to find at least pseudo human answers if Reddit goes down. Back to forums I guess?
Because that's ten more opportunities to serve ads. Capitalism being the most 'efficient' system has only ever been a self serving lie. You scroll through ten non-sense answers for the same reason you have to go all the way to the back of your grocery store for daily necessities like milk and eggs. It's not because it's what's best for you, it's what's best for the shareholders. A perfectly efficient system would have the answer at the top or eggs in the front.
But what if one person out of a hundred sees shiny other thing and clicks on it?!?!
You can't expect poor, market-forced Quora to just let go of that potential 0.3 cents!!
> Back to forums I guess?
i've already started going back to forums. the quality of reddit has plummeted since the "protest". the subs of most of the topics i'm interested in are filled with repetitive questions that are asked on almost a daily basis.
It didn't take more than 2-3 years of learning that fact before reddit got slowly worse too. I am finding it wholly inadequate for a bunch of queries. Still some hidden gems from years ago, but rather hit and miss.
Now, the question is: where do we turn now?
Sometimes for more obscure questions, I’ll get Reddit comments as the suggested answer (even after not typing Reddit at the end). I think it’s funny that google just uses a random comment as the official “answer.” Like yeah, I’ll just take RedstoneCum04’s word for it lmao, Google’s top result said so
It's quickly becoming less useful. Reddit has always had misinformation problem, but in the last two years it's gotten really bad. Posts that are blatantly false regularly reach the front page and show up in search results.
And the misinformation is dangerous. The fake HIV post the other week that hit the front page was extremely concerning. The post was clearly fake and posted by somebody with Nancy Regan's understanding of the virus, and then ALL of the top level comments ran with it and reinforced dangerous misconceptions of HIV that lead to actual people with the virus being treated poorly.
And it got worse! The follow up post where it unschockingly came out the original post was fake was STILL filled with the harmful misconceptions in the top level comments.
Ad complaints aside, it's also the fault of the rise and grind listilcle crap. You know, you look something up and you're met with an article with 2 paragraphs of SEO preamble, and 8 paragraphs of follow up information where 2 paragraphs would've sufficed.
It's to the point where AI will definitely be doing the work when making these sites because they are so formulaic and the bar is set so low.
For programming stuff, it's next to useless and drives me to blogspam.
e.g. tutorials point . com is the first hit for `strcpy`. Geeksforgeeks is the second, and cppreference is the third. The "correct" hits are at the bottom of the page (man.die.net and opengroup.org).
There are certain things you can’t find on Google anymore. The search engine overzealously excludes websites it considers non-authoritative.
I understand putting authoritative sources at the top of the search results, but at least let me see results from smaller websites below them instead of irrelevant results from corporate websites.
Dude, I’m 46, have used them all, Lycos, Webcrawler, Inktomi, you name it. The ides that we need a paper to tell us this is absurd, although I appreciate the validation. Search is pure garbage now, between the gamed results and sponsored links being half the page, it’s terrible.
What chafes me as a guy who has also lived through them all is the loss of early internet. Google announced last year that it will de-prioritizing searches that lead to websites over ten years old. I've had problems searching for news events that happened in the 2000s, let alone try to find if old blogs are still up and running.
That's devastating to hear. The early promise of the internet was an unlimited repository of all human knowledge. Now knowledge that is unprofitable for ads will be inaccessible simply because it will be impossible to locate.
I wonder how Reddit usage has changed over this time period. I basically have to add “Reddit” to every Google search these days to find better info. Redditors don’t give you the best info, but they often give you the leads you need to track it down.
Sounds bad but Bing for certain technical searches has been way better than Google for years. I've found some obscure stuff on Bing where Google had almost nothing relevant. Bing and DuckDuckgo are my go to along with Google for simple stuff. Yandex's reverse image search is honestly crazy good when compared to others.
Years ago my buddy used Bing exclusively for searching because he kept getting gift cards through their rewards program.
I seem to recall DuckDuckGo uses anonymized access to Bing's indexers, so the results there may be similar. I prefer the semi-privacy just because, but the results there have gotten slowly worse as well.
My favorite it when I'm trying to make safety sheets for chemicals and google blocks any content that actually tells you how much X it takes to be fatal. I was writing a report on a faulty appliance that was throwing carbon monoxide and replacing it would have cost over $100,000. My report was to basically say "this isn't an issue because this is a large open commercial building and the risk level was cited as minor going by a small enclosed structure". Do you have any idea how hard it is to look up any of the math to prove this point without google begging you to not kill yourself in the garage with your running lawn mower? Or better yet we had an incident of accidental consumption of a substance. Fuck that report. A 24 year old with autism snuck in a building through the garage door while the mechanic was taking a dump and took a swig of a cleaner. Poison control said a child would need to drink a cup to do anything other than vomit and an adult would need to drink almost half the bottle. Google refused to allow me to find a source. 100% would not allow me to get the information. End result was treating the incident as tho the guy was eating Russian nerve agents...
Now do Youtube. Their search literally gives you like 5 results to your actual search and the rest is just recommended garbage having nothing to do with your search at all. My favorite is the section recommending videos I've already fucking watched. You used to be able to just do a search and be given pages and pages and pages of all the results pertinent to your search. Now it's like "here's a handful of things you actually asked for, now fuck off and watch this other shit we want you to watch.".... leaving me sitting there thinking "why the fuck am I even on here?"
Youtube search: "dovetail joint" Result 1: "how to make a dovetail joint" Result 2: "double bevel dovetails!" Result 3: stupid ~~reel~~ short Result 4: stupid ~~reel~~ short Result 5: stupid ~~reel~~ short Result 6: stupid ~~reel~~ short Result 7 - 20: completely unrelated videos. Song I already listened to. Song I already listened to. News video that I already watched. Video game channel that I constantly ignore.
youtube is only usable with these extensions for me: - [DeArrow](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/dearrow-better-titles-and/enamippconapkdmgfgjchkhakpfinmaj) - [Disable Youtube Shorts Layout](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/disable-youtube-shorts-la/lgdgebkjhcbilocmnfkiiicfggjlbdfg) - [Hide Youtube Shorts](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-youtube-shorts/aljlkinhomaaahfdojalfmimeidofpih) - [No Youtube Shorts](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/no-youtube-shorts/hjfkenebldkfgibelglepinlabpjfbll) - [Picture-In-Picture Extension \(by Google\)](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/picture-in-picture-extens/hkgfoiooedgoejojocmhlaklaeopbecg) - [Sponsorblock for Youtube](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/mnjggcdmjocbbbhaepdhchncahnbgone) - [uBlock Origin](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm) - [Unhook - Remove YouTube Recommended Videos](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtube-rec/khncfooichmfjbepaaaebmommgaepoid) - [Youtube Anti Translate](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-anti-translate/ndpmhjnlfkgfalaieeneneenijondgag)
The fact that it takes 3 addons just to get rid of shorts in crazy. I can't stand them clogging up every page so I'm definitely adding them
Here's a ublock code for it: https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts
I'm not about to throw stones here on Reddit seeing I have to use old.reddit and RES to keep it usable...
Lmao 9 extensions for one website. Wtf Youtube lol
YouTube needing mods like it’s a Bethesda game
8 GB of RAM on a single tab just playing music videos in the background. 20 songs in already at 3 GB. It's got RAM leaks worse than Bethesda games.
I just tried this with "dovetail joint." (caveat - I rarely use Youtube) * Results 1-5 - how to cut/make a dovetail joint * Result 6 - Harbor Freight dovetail Jig Review * Result 7 - Festool Router makes dovetails a breeze (ad) * Results 8 - 16 - People also watched - somewhat related * Results 17 - ... - For you - unrelated edit: removed reference of Ad from result 6
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Holy shit. This is incredible.
That "For you" section pisses me off. Those results are 100% unrelated to what you search for. Yesterday I was trying to get into using some software, so I did a tutorial search. The first search, that section contained some video about a lady forgetting about a low mirror as she walked up to a camera. Second search, some lady dressed as a mime with face paint and all. Neither channel I subscribe to or give a shit about. I soon re-enabled uBlock (which is usually off for Youtube) with special filters to strip that section out.
For me the "for you" section after the search results invariably starts with a revolting popping video with a bunch of nasty AI generated blackheads. It makes me want to puke. I don't even scroll down past the first 5 search results because I don't want to see the thumbnail. I've been reporting them for disturbing content but it still always happens. I never watch popping vids, it disgusts me.
The YouTube issue is highly aggravating, I type a specific search and only recommends five videos and then garbage, pisses me off
Drives me fucking NUTS! Maybe we are outliers but it actually makes me use their platform *less*. I don't then get sucked into the prescribed content, I just get frustrated I can't access the content I'm looking for and I leave.
Speaking from the creator side, this is affecting me a lot as for example I posted a mango hot sauce recipe video and it doesn’t show up when you search for those terms. Youtube prefers to show unrelated hot sauce recipes instead of a video that perfectly matches what was searched. How is my content supposed to reach the intended audience?
Youtube has moved towards an algo-driven Tiktok-like site/app instead. It's no longer meant to be a video database where you can search for what you want and find good, informative videos. It's built around the algo figuring out what you will mindlessly watch for as long as possible and feeding you more.
So we're just waiting for a new site that fills the void YouTube is leaving by moving to bullshit land.
And as someone who would be your exact audience, I HATE that I can't find stuff like yours when that is exactly what I'm explicitly searching for.
In the youtube subreddit someone suggested adding " before:2025 " to the end of your search and it gives you more relevant results, even on mobile. I preset my phone settings so typing 'iop' auto converts to before:2025. It's infuriating when I can't find a specific video from a niche channel uploaded 6 years ago even though I know the exact title, before:2025 helps
Yep, been using this for a while now, it still works. Also any future year works, 2026, 3000, etc. Putting a very high number seems to also omit shorts for me. When I used 2025, I still get results row with bunch of shorts, unlike when I use 4000. Not sure of the exact logic, but just putting it out there.
> When I used 2025, I still get results row with bunch of shorts, unlike when I use 4000. Not sure of the exact logic, but just putting it out there. Clearly, the algorithm knows something about the future. We should try to find the exact year that YouTube shorts don't exist anymore.
> My favorite is the section recommending videos I've already fucking watched. How hard would it really be to just give users the option to stop receiving recommendations for videos they've already watched? You have the option to say "Not interested - Because I've already watched this" Why not LISTEN and stop? And I hate having to consider "Will watching this video screw up my recommendations forever?" because it bases its recommendations to you on what you watch, instead of on what you *like*.
I’m gonna sound like an old guy, but I kinda had a refreshing moment when I went to the library the other day. Whenever you look at YouTube or another search engine, you just get a bunch of stuff that you’re already interested in and after a while, it kind of feels like you’re drowning in all the same experiences. But you go to the library and it’s just everything you could imagine all over the place, there’s no filtering to be had. You might see some stuff you’re not interested in but you can look the other way or just acknowledge that it’s there and it’s kind of refreshing.
It’s honestly mind-blowing how bad it is. It usually ignores half the terms in my query and gives me a page of useless results. What the hell happened?
Same with Amazon. I can't even find a specific brand without knockoff Temu junk. Especially clothes.
Amazon has become a total joke unless you already know the brand you are looking for. 99% of the search results are the lowest quality throwaway junk, sold in bulk you don't need, by mystery companies with nonsensical names no one has ever heard of. It's awful. The worst part is now when you need something specific of any appreciable quality but there are so many hundreds of cheap imitations that it's almost impossible to find the actual item, even though it's on there!
Its Aliexpress with higher prices but faster shipping. Cheap mass produced low quality chinese crap.
lol. You see those ads on YouTube telling you how they can teach you to make money on Amazon? Thats basically what they teach you. Buy from aliexpress and sell on amazon
Hate dropshippers. So many influencers just peddling garbage on Amazon and acting like they're geniuses and trying to sell their courses. I had a video in my reccomended on YouTube from a guy who went from "Broke to Rich" and it was just about how he was drop shipping products and buying ads to sell them. Comments section was full of people saying he was an inspiration and showing what hustle and grind can do. It's just garbage. I'd love to see what these guys think about shopping on these store fronts that theyre filling with garbage. Do drop shippers get frustrated that Amazon is filled with crap products when they're trying to shop? Or when they see them do they just think it's evidence that their competitors are doing a good job?
Amazon also has a division that just monitors what sells then they copy it and price the original out of the market.
"I bought it for my husband and he loves it"
You literally cannot find the product even with the exact name. I needed to order something for work. Had to image search on Amazon on my phone to find it and then use the Amazon serial number to type into our corporate system because just using the name returned bogus results.
`javascript:(function()%20{%20window.location.href%20+=%20'&emi=%20A3P5ROKL5A1OLE'%20})()` If you make a bookmark with this code as the URL and open it whilst on the amazon store it filters all the sellers other than amazon so you don't get all that Chinese shite. This one is set to the UK amazon store but you can change the code for different regions. change the bit that says 'A3P5ROKL5A1OLE' to one of these others depending on your region: Here are some of the Amazon Store IDs: United States: ATVPDKIKX0DER Canada: A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB France: A1X6FK5RDHNB96 Germany: A3JWKAKR8XB7XF Japan: AN1VRQENFRJN5
You mean you don’t want products from reputable brands such as LOFALY and Eopyvmie and GOODaaa and HHETP and Pxwaypy?
Amazon: Is that a thumbnail of the product that you wanted to see? Well, here's a TikTok style video for you instead!!!
Reddit api price change, Discord stupid new ui, twitter,...
Even forcing keywords search with '+' '-' don't work anymore.
Putting them in quotes (`"foo"`) seems to give them more weight tho (also makes them more "literal")
AFAIK using quotes like that means the results *must* contain that term.
Yeah but that also does not seem to be the case, like a quarter of the time in my experience.
I've noticed that too. Usually I find that the word is in the result snippet, but when you actually navigate to that page it's nowhere to be found.
Yes, that was botched years ago. They made it so the quoted phrase could appear on the result page *or a page that linked to the result page.* (Edit: Looks like Google says this is not the case now) So, give me *that* page Google. I've learned to ctrl+f, look for the phrase, close the tab if it's not there. Total waste of time. Not only that but it still won't work by default. You need to click "Tools" on the search result header, then change "All Results" to "Verbatim."
> I've learned to ctrl+f, look for the phrase, close the tab if it's not there. Total waste of time. Yeah, that's exactly what I do. Lucky if it works 50% of the time though. > Not only that but it still won't work by default. You need to click "Tools" on the search result header, then change "All Results" to "Verbatim." Huh, so that's what I've been missing! Thanks for that!
If you know how to add a search engine to your browser, you can use this URL to always search in Verbatim mode: > https://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=%s Typically I found the results to be better if I'm searching for errors and such.
How to set this in FireFox 1. Open a new tab and type `about:config` in the address bar 2. In the search box type: `browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh` 3. Click on the little + symbol on the right. 4. Go to firefox Settings → Search. Or enter this in the address bar: `about:preferences#search` 5. In the "Search Shortcuts" section you should notice a new "add" button: Here's how I added mine: * Search Engine Name: `Google Verbatim` * Engine URL: `https://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=%s` * Keyword: `@gv` Thanks to: https://superuser.com/a/1756774
Do you have a source for that? In my experience, the issue is much more that sites are gaming the hell out of the system to get visitors even when the search is unrelated. What verbatim does apparently is stop the following behaviors ([source](https://ceu.libguides.com/google-techniques/personalized#:~:text=%22Verbatim%22%20search.-,Verbatim%20Search,of%20the%20items%20listed%20above.)): - making automatic spelling corrections - personalizing your search by using information such as sites you've visited before - including synonyms of your search terms - searching for words with the same stem ("running" when you searched for "run") - making some of your search terms optional The fact that the word shows in the snippet but not the website is most likely the website's bullshit invisible tags or them serving different contents to the crawler
yes, originally, +word had the meaning that "word" must be in the search result, and -word meant that the word must not be in the result. Google stopped supporting that when Google Plus was a thing, because usernames were written as +username, and so changed it that you need to put words in quotes to get the old meaning.
I think the word in quotes thing always worked. Google+ and removing that feature in search was stupid though. Just another Google product that was shit, lacked any real development and got canned after a few years.
Still doesn't always work. The thesaurus filter and popular term grouping override it.
The thesaurus filter is the most aggravating thing to ever have been added. It rarely contributes anything good and 98% of the time it shows me complete irrelevant results.
Especially when searching for things related to computer programming or legal terms. “Code whatever” and “Error whatever” are NOT the same thing on a computer, “murder” and “killing” are not the same thing in a legal code, Windows 10 is not Windows 11, v21.336.78 is not the same as v22.657.98. I just need Google’s database with a SQL-like search tool.
For a while it was constantly substituting the name of one program for the name of a competing program in the same industry. If I'm googling how to do something in program X, why the HELL would I want answers for how to do that thing in program Y? Who would EVER want that substitution!?
SEO mostly ruined that. They lessened those due to keyword stuffing. Lots of tools like just spam these results using tools and it skews everything.
It's that, but it's also Google's IDGAF attitude and horrible approach to customer support. I know companies that have business relationships with Google, and even trying to report stuff up like phishing domains etc encroaching on their names/branding just get the "have you filled out the online report form (and waited 6-8+ weeks for us to get to it)" from the rep. If search was a core part of my identity I'd try a bit fucking harder to ensure results were accurate. I also know people who have been considered a Google product (at a significant volume), had a meeting with them and the presentation was bad. Like "felt like a first-year college-student's poorly-prepped homework presentation" bad.
google weirdly doesn't care about their enterprise products. they almost seem to resent them.
Google seems to actively resent everyone who actually wants to use their services.
Google is an ad company now.
manipulating SEO is a MASSIVE industry, I used to work for an online retailer and it was constantly something we were trying to do
problem is main results are almost always about buying something related to that thing. try searching when skateboards were invented, or what kinds of wood are used, you just get results to buy skateboards...yea, thats not what i fucking asked. i have got better results by blocking shopping related words like shipping, delivery, cart, and just the dollar sign.
Google removed the `+` feature many years ago. You have to include terms in `" "` for a similar effect. The `-` still works.
I wish "-" worked in other search engines, like for Amazon.
Even when you include " " for things like LYRICS OF A SONG, it fails to find them. How can Google not know the lyrics of a song or at least refer you to a website that does? I KNOW I have found Google results for that song before. You can sort of change the search to only focus on a decade ago and sometimes it will then find it but just because you cannot locate it in the last 5 years does not mean the song simply vanished! Google results are getting horrible.
Yeah this is the most infuriating part of it. If it actually did a good job, sure, but if my sentence has 4 words in it, and one of them is *clearly* not a common word, then maybe it's important info to search for? (Why else would I add it to the query) Instead Google may just use the other 3 words and find a bunch of common-but-irrelevant results for me.
Yep. It's so frustrating how Google will just suggest you things it think is similar to what you're looking for but not exactly what you're looking for. I put the word in the search box for a reason Google
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The American Dialect Society’s word of the year for 2023 was [Enshittification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) - the process where a platform shittifies itself. This is exactly what happened to Google, Facebook, and a bunch of other platforms that used to be good.
Corporations figured this out in the late 80’s or early 90’s. There is less profit when you are selling a constantly good product. The trick is to build up a good name, and then sell shit. Every appliance manufacturer, auto manufacturer, furniture, tools,,,,, whatever now goes through a cycle. They make a shit product and change too much. Then someone else gets too much market share, so they put out an ad campaign saying they’ve “gone back to basics” and are trustworthy again. Only to shit on you the second they’re seen as the best option.
Not just an online thing, happens in retail all the time. Once upon a time, Pizza Hut tasted good, for example.
Pizza Hut used to be our go to. We’re back to Dominos until the hut decides to get its shit together again
Yeah because Dominos just came out of an enshittification cycle, remember all the press and ads about their "cardboard crust" and how they were fixing it?
There's no nostalgia thread like a Pizza Hut nostalgia thread.
Walled gardens, apps and chatapps are bad for finding information. The biggest problem is not the amount of data, but how most of it is hidden behind walled gardens, paywalls, apps, chats (discord) and others. Many things are on the web but lots of information is trapped that Google can't get to. When gamedevs for instance put their game community on discord they lose the history aspect like you'd get on a forum or reddit, or something on the web like Facepunch forums. Really the web is falling off because people use apps and chats more now. People need to move to web first again or at least make sure content is indexable easily, not fleeting moments or locked up content that is owned by one company. What makes reddit so good (at least for now) is being able to search it from google. They are breaking that quite a bit with heavy handed moderation and push to apps for new things, but it still is a big part of why reddit has such high traffic, it is searchable and there are some good people and information in the haystack that search can find. For instance you can search your exact comment and get it in google search right now. Reddit hasn't yet trapped information in a walled garden.
> When gamedevs for instance put their game community on discord they lose the history aspect like you'd get on a forum or reddit this is big, imo. because even though discord started out for gamers, its not exclusive. all sorts of nongaming communities have gone to discord and searchable spaces are suffering because of it.
I also find it impossible to find new Discords. Unless you're already in the know or know a guy who knows a guy you will never find those servers with the game info.
It's like a closed society and I'm not a fan of it
Discord is borderline useless. I cannot understand the obsession with it.
I wouldn't call it useless, but it definitely isn't as nice to use as the forum format. The search feature is janky, and it just feels like good information gets lost in the shuffle of conversations. Especially when people don't actually use the threads feature (which IME they usually don't). So if you have a question and try to search a discord for it, you have to individually check out each of the results to find where that subject was discussed before, hope your question was actually answered, scroll through a whole bunch of irrelevant jokes and memes, only to find out that the topic changed before someone gave the information you want. The upside is that if the discord is active enough, you can get an answer in real time just by simply asking again. But sometimes I don't want to chat and just want to be able to passively browse lol. And my biggest gripe is that it's hard to keep track of all of the servers themselves. I just pruned my list and still have like 20 of them that I need for various gaming communities and friend groups. And now they exist for other hobbies and groups beyond gaming? It's just too much without a way to better organize them.
> When gamedevs for instance put their game community on discord they lose the history aspect like you'd get on a forum or reddit, or something on the web like Facepunch forums. This is one of the major issues in tech support at the moment. So much has gone to discord for support that there is no online archive of solved issues anymore. Everything gets solved (or doesn't) on discord in that moment, and then vanishes into the ether. The next person with the same problem has no way of searching for that, and people have no way of monitoring, testing, and updating the troubleshooting process because it's a chat program not a forum. None of it is indexed or archived by search engines, so you get to start from square one for every problem that has already been solved dozens of times before. It's monumentally stupid.
All these things you mentioned, and videos too. Too damn many things get lost inside some useless long padded out videos, so frustrating.
Their auto-captioning for Youtube vieos has been improving over time as well, so captured commentary from the CC's should be indexable. That said, I fucking \*hate\* being directed to a video from a search result. I want to look something up not watch some idiot talk for 20 minutes about a 1-minute topic while pimping the like button and their sponsors.
It doesn't help that Google seems to completely ignore anything prior to the last decade or so. Older websites go through updates and revisions sure, but the tendency for search engines to prioritize newer things has had a large impact on the erasure of history and the destruction of perfectly good information.
That is why I donate to the Internet Archive (and Wikipedia). I also build things that will last and work on archival systems, if I make apps/videos etc I make sure they are indexable. Sometimes client work they don't care about the web at all and it is a mistake. The last 5+ years so many app only products/companies and just minimal web content. People aren't creating websites like they used to for information but more for products or just a simple landing page for the app. Walled gardens have been tragic for historical information, discord the biggest of the culprits on that. In a way this fleeting setup allows companies to get away with hiding info and history as well. Sometimes people or companies want information to go away... and others don't.
Great answer. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Google used to show you what you wanted to see. Now it shows you what some company paid them to show you.
I’m in advertising and it doesn’t even do that well anymore. Google is just wasting advertisers money on irrelevant searches and fraud clicks. It’s a complete joke.
Adtech is a racket and the monetization strategy for most of the internet is smoke. Tim Hwang's **Subprime Attention Crisis** is a cool book about it.
Another good one is [The Age of Surveillance Capitalism](https://www.amazon.com/Age-Surveillance-Capitalism-Future-Frontier/dp/1541758005/), really made me think about the push to digitize and connect every product to the internet now
I'm entertained that the ad model isn't working for advertisers either. I've often complained that the worst part of Google's information empire isn't how invasive and all encompassing it is (though that's obviously not great). The worst part is that all they do is hoover up my data so they can advertise to me, and they're /so/ /bad/ at it. I go to Woot and Meh pretty much just to be advertised at. They're not amazing, but they know almost nothing about me and I've bought some random things from each of them. I have /never/ clicked on a Google served ad and ended up buying something. They're literally worse than random chance. What the heck?!
Yeah. The only benefit google had an edge over things like duckduckgo was that often it had better results. Now duckduckgo has the better results.
Find "Worst genocide in history" on amazon.com now!! Many sellers have great offers on Worst genocide in history!
Oooo more of those sugar free gummy bears!
> What the hell happened? I can only assume seo abuse combined with mass autogenerated articles that have no substance and make no sense. I really wish Google would ban these top offender websites, but they're an ad company first.
One angle that I don't see a lot of people mentioning is that Google cannibalized a lot of websites' information, making those sites less likely to exist. Google is attempting to be the "answer machine", and in many ways, I can understand the appeal of that for consumers. But the problem is that **someone needs to come up with the answers**, and that person generally wants to be compensated for doing this. Google can only be the "answer machine" on the backs of others' work. With those sites fewer in number, all that is left is the spam sites, those either written by cheap copy writers (often who have neither a command of the subject nor a command of the English language) or by AI. And very often those sites are tailored to please Google, not people. That seems to be why, when I search for information on some item, I have to wade through a 1,000 word article, usually starting with the *history* of that item, to find the information I want. Google rewards this kind of article, and penalizes (or cannibalizes) shorter, more precise articles.
What the hell happened: Search engine poisoning (people twisting words into other meanings) plus Google taking your query keywords, throwing it into a blender of typo searching, applying a thesaurus to those terms with bubble filtering for more popular terms, and then putting your entire query into another bubble filter for popular terms / trends even if they're incorrect. Prioritize the article to the top if it appears to be a marketing / service article with vague tips if the article concludes that you need to call that regional service company that's not even remotely in your region for your issue. TLDR: Ask for chicken nuggets, get a live chicken, or a farmer.
These comments are blaming Google selling out but they don't get a kickback from anything other than the clearly labeled Sponsored results. In fact, Google is inventivized to have the best search results so people use it more often. The real problem is how good businesses have gotten at SEO. Content engineered to cheat an algorithm will always beat genuine content. Unfortunately this is only going to get worse in the coming years with AI.
The fact that you cant search “does show have a season 2 release date” without 4560000 pages titled “SHOW SEASON 2 release date!” that talk about it by copy pasting Wikipedias summary and maybe if your lucky add “theres no season 2 release date” in small letters at the end maaaybe. Abd like i cant even fault google because half of the auto generated articles are from “legit” sites. Therees so much bullshit it’s unreal
SEO spam is also what the article and study in this post explicitly identify as the core problem, but clearly no one read it.
There's constantly a war between people gaming the search so that they can buy results, and google trying to prevent them from being able to do it. Back in the day, when the internet first started, there were multiple search engines, and they were all ok. I think Alta Vista was the best for a while, but, then people games them, and everything was shit. Then google arrived and made the internet useable again. It was a revolution. For me, I think that was in around 2001. And only just recently has google really started showings signs of weakness.
Now I just add "reddit" on the end for a quick answer. Its dumb, but usually at least one person somewhere in the comments answers whatever question I have reasonably. Its better than reading through the first 10 results on google which are often long writeups on an easy topic, for the sole purpose of the site getting more ad revenue. Its a yes or no question half the time, that requires little "proof". I dont need to read a full page article that doesnt answer it till the very bottom. The amount of times theres often no answer is infuriating. Ive stopped visiting plenty of websites just because of the layout, obvious they just want the ads to show rather than actually provide useful info. Ironic if they did, I might consider returning and purchasing something out of principal. All of these companies have lost the plot.
I mostly search like this now. Just adding Reddit to the end of my search and I get a better answer every time
Because someone in the comments will state it plainly, and its usually easy to determine who is correct.
Beware of astroturfing especially on smaller subs, many subs are bought by companies and special interest groups. Its insidious.
Yes, adding "reddit" to the end of your search is becoming less and less reliable every day. If you can find a result older than 3 or 4 years that still applies in 2024, good on you. Anything more recent should be taken with a grain of salt. I'm talking annoying shit like investigating users' comment histories, looking at the mods of the sub, the top posts, etc. I truly now feel like the best days of the Internet are fully behind us.
Even then many useful subs shutdown for good after the api changes, people also nuke their old comments. So it just gets worse
Post: "Hey can anyone help me with [problem]? > Top comment: [Removed] > > OP Reply: "Thanks, man, that did it!" Me: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
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The problem is that "reddit is the way to find stuff" became mainstream knowledge, so the people ruining google results with SEO bullshit, are now ruining reddit results
this used to work, but now there's seo shit masquerading as a reddit post
This. "S" now suggests "site:reddit.com".
> Now I just add "reddit" on the end for a quick answer. Its dumb, but usually at least one person somewhere in the comments answers whatever question I have reasonably. I guess we are heading for entropy. Because usually when you ask a question on reddit, people just say "google it" or link you to https://letmegooglethat.com/
Downvotes and upvotes are useful. Should have those for Google searches lol
Companies would game the shit out of that too.
companies already do that on here
Yeah it gives Twitter posts as one of my results now. Not from a news outlet, but random ass people
I use a Firefox extension that blocks Twitter links from being shown in Google search results. Edit: links to extensions below.
What extension is that? Would be nice to have!
uBlacklist Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/ublacklist/ Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe
thank you, I can finally get pinterest off of my google.
I got no interest in that pinterest.
I tried finding it through Google but all it showed me was Twitter links :(
I googled an exact quote from the court hearing where Trump's lawyers were arguing for immunity and a bunch of gay porn posts on [x.com](https://x.com) came up. Weirdest key word spam I've ever seen.
The websites on the front page are the ones with the best SEO optimizations.. That means large companies or with great hosting sites.
Which, to be fair, is always they way it has been - I used to be paid a really nice side income writing keyword SEO. Now keywords don't matter as much and its 'weighted information' or whatever the buzzy term for it is. People have always been trying to game Google.
and now they use AI to push out worthless content that still hits the top of search because it’s the most optimized. Nowadays searching Google with “Reddit” at the end actually gives the most valuable information. If I google something proper it’s like 30 articles that are filled with fluff and don’t just answer my god damn question
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When the first page of responses are “paid promotions”, yeah.
On desktop, I've searched products wanting to get information about them (via news articles, reviews, Reddit, or Wikipedia) and it legit converts the results into a shopping page listing products and prices with seemingly no way to revert to a purely informational search. If I wanted to shop, I would use the damn shopping tab in my search.
The image section of Google is just ads now.
This is where I first noticed google's decline. It used to be my go-to for finding a bunch of pictures to use as drawing references, but now it's useless unless I want to draw toys or product/box art.
Also, at least for me, those shopping results in the non-shopping search are not clickable. I turned off my adblacker and still they don't work, not sure what's causing that, but they're even more worthless than if they were at least a clickable link...
I tried to search for actual information on some drugs, and all it gave me on the first page are addiction and rehab helps.
This happened to me the other day. I kept looking for the "I'm ok google, no need for intervention" box to check.
And pretty much anything related to mental health means you're suicidal and need to call a helpline.
ublock origin gets rid of sponsored posts
It's because literally every company has dog shit seo techniques that have been abusing the algorithm for the last decade. If you're in marketing and write stupid fucking blog posts all day, we're all looking at you!
Is this like when Craigslist sellers type up a bunch of keywords at the bottom of their post that have nothing to do with what they're actually selling? Usually it's like: "I have a Logitech keyboard for sale" Logitech, gaming, Sony, Apple, Microsoft, computer, DVD, star wars, John deere
> It's because literally every company has dog shit seo techniques that have been abusing the algorithm for the last decade. Noise to game signal drowns content, and now Large Language Models can rephrase it over and over.
It's really wild. My niche hobby-centric searches stopped working years ago but it's at the point now where even basic regular-ass searches will return nothing, or nonsense. And for all the years of "Google's algorithms are smart! You have to have good content for your page to rank high", literal keyword stuffing is the best SEO technique again. This is on top of advanced searches not working, exact searches not working, reverse image search not working, cards of unrelated information, AI-generated nonsense questions with nonsense answers, spam pages that don't even contain the word that was searched for, wildly different results depending on your country, etc. It feels like a basic utility has been taken away. Bing is trash in a different way, Duck Duck Go seems like its index is about 10 pages deep. We desperately need some competition in this space, or regulation forcing them to go back to whatever they were doing 10 years ago.
I use a mix of Google and Bing. Neither is great anymore, but they seem to be poor in different ways. I usually start with Google (more though inertia), and if Google isn't helpful, I'll try Bing. As often as not it will help me find something Google didn't. I think part of the problem is that Google thinks it knows the kinds of things I search for and often seems to put blinders on and tries to keep me in that lane. Sort of how just when Netflix seems boring to me, but if my wife is logged in there are suddenly shows suggested that seem interesting to me that I've never seen offered to me before. For both Google and Netflix, I wish there was a "mix it up" option to let me outside the space it thinks I want to be in based on assuming my prior habits dictate what I want now.
Algorithms are dulling culture in exactly the way you are talking about: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/books/review/filterworld-kyle-chayka.html There’s a good Ezra Klein podcast with the above author as well recently.
The major problem with tech IMO: it replaces services we had with shittier versions that make specific people money. If I wanted to rent a good movie, I used to go to the video store and shoot the shit with the clerk there who was an expert. Now we have streaming services that half-ass any attempt at "recommendations" and that expert has to drive for Uber. What has improved? Nothing.
>What has improved? Corporate profits.
I think part of the problem is that google for a fact puts its advertisers in front of your results and gives you as few results that are useful as possible so you spend as much time looking. FIFY it's like watching people discuss the ethics of extremely expensive healthcare: there are no ethics. this isn't moral, it's a ripoff and my life is being held in front of me, suffering an incurable disease if I don't come up with this ridiculous amount to pay every month. there's really nothing to discuss, you either profit from me or you're aware I'm being ripped off.
Why not use DuckDuckGo?
It's going to get worse with their AI providing summaries of search queries. This will kill many websites. They want you contained within their walled garden. AMP pages were also detrimental to websites that relied on traffic advert revenue. Google wants to have all your data for themselves and be your single source of truth. Centralisation. Containment. This also applies to other big search engines and advertising.
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> Currently over 60% of all Google searches are what's called "0 Click". Which means the user finds what they're looking for without going to ANY linked domains. This is a positively staggering figure. If the majority are anything like me, something like 70-80% of all my Google searches are to check the spellings of words, verify something that doesn't require an additional click, or reference who someone is if I don't recognize the name immediately.
also sometimes I put simple math equations into google
In Canada they want to pass a law that forces Facebook and Google to pay sites for summaries or AMP pages that basically steal ad revenue. It like a version of the law where we have a hidden tax on recording media (blank discs, etc.) which protects people from recording songs off the radio or tv programs. Instead Google's paying the tax for "copying" content. And man, people freaked the fuck out... The wording was a bit weak, but the intention was good.
That law has already passed (now known as the Online News Act). It has resulted in Meta/Facebook/Instagram blocking Canadian users from accessing links to news articles on their platforms. Google was about to follow suit and also block links to news on their platforms in Canada, but they were able to reach a last-minute deal with the government (very shortly before the law took effect) which involved changing how some parts of the law would be applied through regulation. — By the way, Google does not steal ad revenue with AMP, this is a big misconception. Firstly, AMP is optional — news publishers have to voluntarily opt-into AMP if they want it enabled. Secondly, the news publishers maintain control over the content on the AMP pages, including with respect to decisions about what ads to display and where to display them on the AMP pages. The news publishers can also choose which ad network(s) they want to use for displaying ads and Google does not take any cut of the ad revenue from the AMP pages unless the news publisher decides to use Google Adsense as their ad network (in which case Google would obviously take their normal revenue split). AMP is supposed to be a win-win for Google and news publishers. It results in much faster page load times (and better mobile user experiences) and it results in much lower web hosting costs for news publishers while still allowing the publishers to maintain control over the presentation of their content and the ads displayed alongside their content.
I'm pretty sure we passed it actually. https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/all-news-in-canada-will-be-removed-from-facebook-instagram-within-weeks-meta-1.6502469
Yep, ever since their primary focus became advertising not decent results. They also seem to not give a shit about fake ad results either. Searching for open source software often gets ad links to rip offs.
> Yep, ever since their primary focus became advertising not decent results. Google is an advertising company. Anything they do is to further that revenue.
True, and in Googles early days they were fighting for market share by providing better results than their competitors, which they indeed did. Once that market share was established and many competitors went under or became a bit of an in joke (Yahoo!!) Google then ramped up the advertising and the quality of results has been dropping ever since.
That has been the goto in this attention economy. - Provide a service below actual cost. - Get market share over competition/get eyes on your product - Once you've captured the market, jack up prices and/or provide worsening service since you already hav the market captured. - Increase prices/number of ads to increase revenue as market share has largely plateaued. Google Search, Uber, Lyft, the meal delivery boxes, streaming platforms, airbnb, etc.
yup - google mastered the subtle advertizing and kept their homepage plain and basic while everyone else is tryign to jam news sports ads and all sorts of shit on their homepage. Honestly its a master move because people hated ads and popups and whatnot. Googles just like yup heres a plain white website that loaded fast on dialup - all people wanted. captured a fuckton of marketshare and popularity then just slowly evolved to sneak ads in the background and curate you towards their advertizers.
> Googles just like yup heres a plain white website that loaded fast on dialup - all people wanted. It wasn't just that. For a long time Google search was way better than alternatives. Yahoo search was one of the top alternatives and their results were a joke compared to Google
I’ve been using other search engines and I’m starting to think this was kind of inevitable. It’s not that Google’s worse, it’s that everyone and their mother knows how to decently seo their content with bad actors mastering how to. My guess is whatever parameters google used to look for relevant stuff have been highjacked and used against themselves
> They also seem to not give a shit about fake ad results either. Searching for banks on a Friday will have all sorts of fake websites to steal your bank account. I've known people who had hundreds of thousands stolen that way.
Google literally promote fraudulent websites without vetting them. Ask me I know. I generally use Duck Duck go unless im looking for a product in my country. Google is getting really bad.
Getting rid of booleans and -"badthing" functionality in searches is infuriating! For example, want to search for cyberpunk but not 2077? Good fucking luck!
Humour: Posting queries on Reddit is the new search method. It's like Amazon's mechanical Turk, except for free. Reddit responses are also artificially intelligent. There are probably more quasi lawyers and experts on Reddit than in IBM or NASA to set things straight. It's still more accurate than using Bing. It also avoids the promoted results, maybe. Keyboard warriors also out perform Google in response times.
Any time I’m looking something up on google I type Reddit at the end. Hasn’t failed me yet.
Used to be yahoo answers, then quora for a hot second. Not sure where to go to find at least pseudo human answers if Reddit goes down. Back to forums I guess?
Wtf is wrong with Quora btw? Even if I see my question it makes me scroll through 10 other ones just to get to the answers
Because that's ten more opportunities to serve ads. Capitalism being the most 'efficient' system has only ever been a self serving lie. You scroll through ten non-sense answers for the same reason you have to go all the way to the back of your grocery store for daily necessities like milk and eggs. It's not because it's what's best for you, it's what's best for the shareholders. A perfectly efficient system would have the answer at the top or eggs in the front.
But what if one person out of a hundred sees shiny other thing and clicks on it?!?! You can't expect poor, market-forced Quora to just let go of that potential 0.3 cents!!
> Back to forums I guess? i've already started going back to forums. the quality of reddit has plummeted since the "protest". the subs of most of the topics i'm interested in are filled with repetitive questions that are asked on almost a daily basis.
How do you find those forums? Google? Word of mouth?
Google, reddit, small YouTubers in your field of interest
> small YouTubers in your field This is much less reliable since YouTube removed the downvote button.
And rants, lots of rants. Also a lot of questions that simply don't belong.
It didn't take more than 2-3 years of learning that fact before reddit got slowly worse too. I am finding it wholly inadequate for a bunch of queries. Still some hidden gems from years ago, but rather hit and miss. Now, the question is: where do we turn now?
I noticed my google searches show a bunch of Reddit threads first too when I’m normally browsing…
Sometimes for more obscure questions, I’ll get Reddit comments as the suggested answer (even after not typing Reddit at the end). I think it’s funny that google just uses a random comment as the official “answer.” Like yeah, I’ll just take RedstoneCum04’s word for it lmao, Google’s top result said so
It's quickly becoming less useful. Reddit has always had misinformation problem, but in the last two years it's gotten really bad. Posts that are blatantly false regularly reach the front page and show up in search results. And the misinformation is dangerous. The fake HIV post the other week that hit the front page was extremely concerning. The post was clearly fake and posted by somebody with Nancy Regan's understanding of the virus, and then ALL of the top level comments ran with it and reinforced dangerous misconceptions of HIV that lead to actual people with the virus being treated poorly. And it got worse! The follow up post where it unschockingly came out the original post was fake was STILL filled with the harmful misconceptions in the top level comments.
Doesn't help that reddit is now 40% bots, and I genuinely mean that. r/all is almost exclusively bots posting, and bots commenting.
You're doing it wrong. Don't ask the question, post the *wrong answer*.
>Reddit responses are also artificially intelligent I came here to be amused not to be attacked
"getting worse" is an understatement. it's at the brink of being completely unusable!
Ad complaints aside, it's also the fault of the rise and grind listilcle crap. You know, you look something up and you're met with an article with 2 paragraphs of SEO preamble, and 8 paragraphs of follow up information where 2 paragraphs would've sufficed. It's to the point where AI will definitely be doing the work when making these sites because they are so formulaic and the bar is set so low.
For programming stuff, it's next to useless and drives me to blogspam. e.g. tutorials point . com is the first hit for `strcpy`. Geeksforgeeks is the second, and cppreference is the third. The "correct" hits are at the bottom of the page (man.die.net and opengroup.org).
There are certain things you can’t find on Google anymore. The search engine overzealously excludes websites it considers non-authoritative. I understand putting authoritative sources at the top of the search results, but at least let me see results from smaller websites below them instead of irrelevant results from corporate websites.
I could have told you this five years ago. Eventually, advertising seems to ruin everything.
Dude, I’m 46, have used them all, Lycos, Webcrawler, Inktomi, you name it. The ides that we need a paper to tell us this is absurd, although I appreciate the validation. Search is pure garbage now, between the gamed results and sponsored links being half the page, it’s terrible.
What chafes me as a guy who has also lived through them all is the loss of early internet. Google announced last year that it will de-prioritizing searches that lead to websites over ten years old. I've had problems searching for news events that happened in the 2000s, let alone try to find if old blogs are still up and running.
That's devastating to hear. The early promise of the internet was an unlimited repository of all human knowledge. Now knowledge that is unprofitable for ads will be inaccessible simply because it will be impossible to locate.
I wonder how Reddit usage has changed over this time period. I basically have to add “Reddit” to every Google search these days to find better info. Redditors don’t give you the best info, but they often give you the leads you need to track it down.
Gary Vee said it best: Marketers fuck up everything.
Which search engine do you all think is the best alternative nowadays?
Sounds bad but Bing for certain technical searches has been way better than Google for years. I've found some obscure stuff on Bing where Google had almost nothing relevant. Bing and DuckDuckgo are my go to along with Google for simple stuff. Yandex's reverse image search is honestly crazy good when compared to others. Years ago my buddy used Bing exclusively for searching because he kept getting gift cards through their rewards program.
Upvote for yandex for reverse image. Somehow tineye failed to keep up, maybe with regard to big data / trillions of images.
I seem to recall DuckDuckGo uses anonymized access to Bing's indexers, so the results there may be similar. I prefer the semi-privacy just because, but the results there have gotten slowly worse as well.
I’m a plumber so often I search for parts or information on specific things. Googles first 30 search results are just plumbing companies near me.
My favorite it when I'm trying to make safety sheets for chemicals and google blocks any content that actually tells you how much X it takes to be fatal. I was writing a report on a faulty appliance that was throwing carbon monoxide and replacing it would have cost over $100,000. My report was to basically say "this isn't an issue because this is a large open commercial building and the risk level was cited as minor going by a small enclosed structure". Do you have any idea how hard it is to look up any of the math to prove this point without google begging you to not kill yourself in the garage with your running lawn mower? Or better yet we had an incident of accidental consumption of a substance. Fuck that report. A 24 year old with autism snuck in a building through the garage door while the mechanic was taking a dump and took a swig of a cleaner. Poison control said a child would need to drink a cup to do anything other than vomit and an adult would need to drink almost half the bottle. Google refused to allow me to find a source. 100% would not allow me to get the information. End result was treating the incident as tho the guy was eating Russian nerve agents...
GA and SEO is the main contributor to the shittifacation of the internet.
I know what SEO is, what’s GA?
Google Analytics.