In the past several months I've been getting frustrated over how poor and obviously... "doctored" (for the lack of a better word) the search results on Google and Youtube have become. Today I...
In the past several months I've been getting frustrated over how poor and obviously... "doctored" (for the lack of a better word) the search results on Google and Youtube have become. Today I stumbled upon this video and thought it's better than posting any incoherent ramblings I might come up with.
Youtube injects unrelated videos it thinks I want to watch into the search (even though nothing about my keywords suggests those topics) and Google is full of regurgitated and (likely) AI produced nothingburgers. You know the ones, "Top 5 wireless headphones in 2023 [Article published in 2021]" and "How to Fix Issue X with Windows! [The first step will have you install our adware program :) ]"
The point about using Tiktok as a search engine was quite unexpected. I've never used it, as the shortform video content doesn't appeal to me much; I'm a heavy user of Youtube, but I'd say less than 5% of the number videos I watch and a tiny, tiny fraction of time spent on the site comes from Youtube Shorts. Though I'm not really sold on it as a search engine alternative for what I'd be looking for.
I'm gonna try to test the alternatives they showed (Neeva, Swurl, Kagi) next time(s) I need to google and see how they perform. Funny how weird/quirky all those names sound, but "google" has become a term just meaning "to search something on the internet". I wonder if Google will ever fall behind other services and the term to become another Post-It note and Scotch tape.
On the subject of YouTube Shorts, they drive me nuts. Creators use them to promote longer form content rather than create interesting short form content (which I also enjoy, just not on YouTube)....
On the subject of YouTube Shorts, they drive me nuts. Creators use them to promote longer form content rather than create interesting short form content (which I also enjoy, just not on YouTube). And there's no rhyme or reason to what they're promoting with Shorts. It could be today's video (which is pointless, imo) or a video I already saw 4 years ago that didn't get enough views. I understand that's the hustle of YouTube, and I respect that, but it contributes heavily to cluttering up my Subscriptions list. To the point where I miss the content I actually want to consume because it's just like 1 full-length video surrounded by half a dozen Shorts. And all of this would be fine if I could simply filter out Shorts, but that's not possible. Heck, letting me tweak my subscriptions to individual channels so I can subscribe to long form or shorts (or both) would be awesome. But nope, YouTube is insisting that Shorts be a thing, so a thing it will be for everyone.
I used the Kagi beta for a few months before they started charging monthly, was pretty good, only had to turn to Google for like 3% of my searches. Yep.com is pretty good as well. I run my own...
I used the Kagi beta for a few months before they started charging monthly, was pretty good, only had to turn to Google for like 3% of my searches.
Yep.com is pretty good as well.
I run my own SearXNG instance now and use it on all my devices. All searches are sent through a SOCKS5 proxy to an AWS VPS so my home IP doesn't get leaked (hopefully). It's quite a bit slower (search takes 2-3 seconds to complete) and doesn't support autocompletion in browser URL bars (amongst other bugs), but it's good to have results from multiple engines on the same page.
I have been using Neeva for a week now. Honestly it is quite good. I usually find what I need in the first few links, and I don’t see much of the seo bait websites. And for most searches, the ai...
I have been using Neeva for a week now. Honestly it is quite good. I usually find what I need in the first few links, and I don’t see much of the seo bait websites. And for most searches, the ai writes a summary of the first few links with sources. Very useful.
In two words, Crony Capitalism. Seriously, anyone who thinks that the search results are purely organic as it is claimed needs to be extremely naïve. They were organic once upon a time, the word...
In two words, Crony Capitalism.
Seriously, anyone who thinks that the search results are purely organic as it is claimed needs to be extremely naïve. They were organic once upon a time, the word Google used to have the same sacredness as Wikipeida, two luminaries on the Interwebs who sort of held it together with their focus on information and knowledge. But it's no longer true for Google. It has become a tool for advertisers to sell products and powerful people to manipulate the masses based on their political agendas. It's no longer just a search engine anymore.
Part of the problem is SEO. If you just threw the search algorithm used in the '00s at the modern web, it would only return garbage. To combat this, the modern algorithm has to try and make...
Part of the problem is SEO. If you just threw the search algorithm used in the '00s at the modern web, it would only return garbage.
To combat this, the modern algorithm has to try and make educated guesses about what you want. Google uses information they gather about you across their services, and sites that use AdSense, to try and make these guesses more relevant. Unfortunately it doesn't work nearly as well as when SEO garbage wasn't so rampant and the search algorithm could just do its thing.
Exactly, they probably underestimated the SEO people's ability to try and hoodwink the new educated guesses algorithms! And now, the word is that they've called in a "code red" regarding ChatGPT....
Exactly, they probably underestimated the SEO people's ability to try and hoodwink the new educated guesses algorithms! And now, the word is that they've called in a "code red" regarding ChatGPT. It's a sign perhaps that they've realized this inherent issue with searches and going for a ChatGPT kind of route instead?
This video discusses how Google's search engine has become increasingly inefficient and how Reddit has become its largest competitor. It explains how Google's search engine was built for an era of independent websites, but now the web is dominated by large kingdoms like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. It also explains how SEO has become a 50 billion dollar industry and how AI is now being used to write articles. The video also discusses how the younger generation is now using Tick Tock and Instagram to search for things instead of Google, and how Google is now having to pay a hefty price to remain the default search engine. It concludes by saying that this could be the golden opportunity for new companies to jump into the search engine market and start the search engine wars of the 2020s. An interesting point made in the video is that Google's largest competitor is now Reddit, a platform that allows its content to be fully accessible by the crawlers that power search engines like Google.
I don't understand the bit about using TikTok or Instagram to search for things, probably because I don't use them. Does the video explain it better? It seems like TikTok wouldn't work to find...
I don't understand the bit about using TikTok or Instagram to search for things, probably because I don't use them. Does the video explain it better? It seems like TikTok wouldn't work to find anything other than entertainment?
It's basically like people prepending " reddit" to all their google searches, except they like TikTok more than reddit (and short-form video content more than text). While certainly TikTok videos...
It's basically like people prepending " reddit" to all their google searches, except they like TikTok more than reddit (and short-form video content more than text). While certainly TikTok videos are not, uh, perhaps universally accurate, they do imply the genuine effort of a real person, which is what many people find lacking in SEO optimized blogspam.
I remember when the articles about "Gen Z is using tiktok to search instead of google" first came out and it seemed very strange to me, why would one search for something on tiktok like what the...
I remember when the articles about "Gen Z is using tiktok to search instead of google" first came out and it seemed very strange to me, why would one search for something on tiktok like what the biggest state in america is, or which snakes are poisonous?
The reality, I think, is more than tiktok is being used to search for certain experiences and not necessarily answers.
Alexandria Kinsey, 24, a communications and social media coordinator in Arlington, Va., uses TikTok for many search queries: recipes to cook, films to watch and nearby happy hours to try. She also turns to it for less typical questions, like looking up interviews with the actor Andrew Garfield and weird conspiracy theories.
Ms. Johnson, a digital marketer, added that she particularly appreciated TikTok when she and her parents were searching for places to visit and things to do. Her parents often wade through pages of Google search results, she said, while she needs to scroll through only a few short videos.
All the examples from that article point to finding places to eat or drink -- or in a recent tiktok I came across: best places to go to the bathroom in Manhattan.
Tiktok is a good search engine for certain things (finding restaurants, things to do), Google is a good search engine for other things (finding complex answers, or websites), much in the same way that you'd likely not search Google for products when you're shopping, you may turn to Amazon first and search on there. If I'm looking for product reviews, I end up searching reddit for "genuine" answers instead (ok you caught me I search on google and just put "reddit" in the query).
Different search engines for different things, Google is still the foundational catch-all search engine, but for other things people turn to more specific engines.
Okay, yes, that makes sense as part of a trend towards using more specialized searches for some kinds of things. It's fortunate for Google that Reddit's search isn't all that great. I do use it...
Okay, yes, that makes sense as part of a trend towards using more specialized searches for some kinds of things.
It's fortunate for Google that Reddit's search isn't all that great. I do use it sometimes, though, for searching a single subreddit.
It seems like just building a specialized search engine isn't enough, though? People don't use them much. You also need to collect a lot of content of some type.
Edit: YouTube seems like a good example of how Google can do this too, sometimes. YouTube's search isn't all that great, but I do find I prefer it to using Google search to look for music videos.
Something changed recently at youtube (past few months) as search results have noticeably dropped off a cliff. The thing I use it for particularly is music - mostly using artist and track/album....
YouTube's search isn't all that great,
Something changed recently at youtube (past few months) as search results have noticeably dropped off a cliff. The thing I use it for particularly is music - mostly using artist and track/album. So much totally unrelated garbage that is obviously being pushed independent of relevance.
Search results before were a bit hit or miss. but you'd generally get related stuff on the first page and near to the top but no more. It's almost random now what results appear.
I also noticed the massive decline in results quality on YouTube recently too, but I actually found a way to fix it! As far as I can tell, the reason for the seeming randomness of the majority of...
Exemplary
I also noticed the massive decline in results quality on YouTube recently too, but I actually found a way to fix it!
As far as I can tell, the reason for the seeming randomness of the majority of results these days is that when you do a search on YouTube now, only the top few results are actually based on the search terms you used. And everything below those few relevant results are now a mix of "related", "people also watched", "channels new to you"/"videos for you" recommendations, and even "previous watched" videos, most of which are typically completely unrelated to your search terms. Why they chose to pollute the search results page like that, and to such an extreme, I have no fucking idea.
However, thankfully, if you click 'Filters' at the top of the results page, and then set the 'Type' to 'Videos' all the other bullshit goes away and you will only see properly relevant search results again. It's fucking annoying to have to do that every time you do a search now, but at least that trick works to clear out all the cruft. Give it a try for yourself.
Ooh thanks, I will definitely try this. It should be possible to automate it too - I'll see if I can hack together a GM script although not today. Whatever metrics they decide are most important...
Ooh thanks, I will definitely try this.
It should be possible to automate it too - I'll see if I can hack together a GM script although not today.
Why they chose to pollute the search results page like that, and to such an extreme, I have no fucking idea.
Whatever metrics they decide are most important increase. We're not the people they are interested in keeping on their site. It feels like I'm always not that type of person. It always appears to be an inevitable corporate race to the bottom of the barrel.
NP. And oooh, please share the GM script if you manage to make one! I would greatly appreciate it. :) Yeah. I know that feel too. But in this case, I honestly wonder whether anyone actually likes...
NP. And oooh, please share the GM script if you manage to make one! I would greatly appreciate it. :)
We're not the people they are interested in keeping on their site. It feels like I'm always not that type of person.
Yeah. I know that feel too. But in this case, I honestly wonder whether anyone actually likes these changes and is more likely to stay on the site because of them. Polluting the search results like that serves nobody, and only seems more likely to just piss everyone off, regardless of their demographic.
After some experimentation I don't think it needs a script. I believe the video filter is a simple url search parameter - sp=EgIQAQ I already have a Firefox keyword search 1 for youtube so I just...
After some experimentation I don't think it needs a script. I believe the video filter is a simple url search parameter - sp=EgIQAQ
I already have a Firefox keyword search 1 for youtube so I just extended that bookmark to add &sp=EgIQAQ.
I know it can be done with Chrome too; I just don't know how. Pull requests welcome :)
Footnote 1 The easiest way to make a keyword search in Firefox is to right click in the youtube search box and choose "Add a keyword for this search...".
Firefox will create a bookmark and prompt you for the keyword. In my case I already have one (using the keyword v - for video). The bookmark it creates includes a %s placeholder - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s
Now edit the bookmark and add &sp=EgIQAQ to the end of its URL.
To use it, In the URL bar, type your keyword followed by your desired search criteria and firefox replaces the %s with whatever you typed in.
What I find interesting about the Reddit point is that people often use Google to search Reddit. They can't count on on Google to actually find meaningful results on its own, so they tell Google...
What I find interesting about the Reddit point is that people often use Google to search Reddit. They can't count on on Google to actually find meaningful results on its own, so they tell Google where to look.
In the past several months I've been getting frustrated over how poor and obviously... "doctored" (for the lack of a better word) the search results on Google and Youtube have become. Today I stumbled upon this video and thought it's better than posting any incoherent ramblings I might come up with.
Youtube injects unrelated videos it thinks I want to watch into the search (even though nothing about my keywords suggests those topics) and Google is full of regurgitated and (likely) AI produced nothingburgers. You know the ones, "Top 5 wireless headphones in 2023 [Article published in 2021]" and "How to Fix Issue X with Windows! [The first step will have you install our adware program :) ]"
The point about using Tiktok as a search engine was quite unexpected. I've never used it, as the shortform video content doesn't appeal to me much; I'm a heavy user of Youtube, but I'd say less than 5% of the number videos I watch and a tiny, tiny fraction of time spent on the site comes from Youtube Shorts. Though I'm not really sold on it as a search engine alternative for what I'd be looking for.
I'm gonna try to test the alternatives they showed (Neeva, Swurl, Kagi) next time(s) I need to google and see how they perform. Funny how weird/quirky all those names sound, but "google" has become a term just meaning "to search something on the internet". I wonder if Google will ever fall behind other services and the term to become another Post-It note and Scotch tape.
There I go, rambling anyway.
On the subject of YouTube Shorts, they drive me nuts. Creators use them to promote longer form content rather than create interesting short form content (which I also enjoy, just not on YouTube). And there's no rhyme or reason to what they're promoting with Shorts. It could be today's video (which is pointless, imo) or a video I already saw 4 years ago that didn't get enough views. I understand that's the hustle of YouTube, and I respect that, but it contributes heavily to cluttering up my Subscriptions list. To the point where I miss the content I actually want to consume because it's just like 1 full-length video surrounded by half a dozen Shorts. And all of this would be fine if I could simply filter out Shorts, but that's not possible. Heck, letting me tweak my subscriptions to individual channels so I can subscribe to long form or shorts (or both) would be awesome. But nope, YouTube is insisting that Shorts be a thing, so a thing it will be for everyone.
I used the Kagi beta for a few months before they started charging monthly, was pretty good, only had to turn to Google for like 3% of my searches.
Yep.com is pretty good as well.
I run my own SearXNG instance now and use it on all my devices. All searches are sent through a SOCKS5 proxy to an AWS VPS so my home IP doesn't get leaked (hopefully). It's quite a bit slower (search takes 2-3 seconds to complete) and doesn't support autocompletion in browser URL bars (amongst other bugs), but it's good to have results from multiple engines on the same page.
I have been using Neeva for a week now. Honestly it is quite good. I usually find what I need in the first few links, and I don’t see much of the seo bait websites. And for most searches, the ai writes a summary of the first few links with sources. Very useful.
In two words, Crony Capitalism.
Seriously, anyone who thinks that the search results are purely organic as it is claimed needs to be extremely naïve. They were organic once upon a time, the word Google used to have the same sacredness as Wikipeida, two luminaries on the Interwebs who sort of held it together with their focus on information and knowledge. But it's no longer true for Google. It has become a tool for advertisers to sell products and powerful people to manipulate the masses based on their political agendas. It's no longer just a search engine anymore.
Part of the problem is SEO. If you just threw the search algorithm used in the '00s at the modern web, it would only return garbage.
To combat this, the modern algorithm has to try and make educated guesses about what you want. Google uses information they gather about you across their services, and sites that use AdSense, to try and make these guesses more relevant. Unfortunately it doesn't work nearly as well as when SEO garbage wasn't so rampant and the search algorithm could just do its thing.
Exactly, they probably underestimated the SEO people's ability to try and hoodwink the new educated guesses algorithms! And now, the word is that they've called in a "code red" regarding ChatGPT. It's a sign perhaps that they've realized this inherent issue with searches and going for a ChatGPT kind of route instead?
Kagi summary:
I don't understand the bit about using TikTok or Instagram to search for things, probably because I don't use them. Does the video explain it better? It seems like TikTok wouldn't work to find anything other than entertainment?
It's basically like people prepending " reddit" to all their google searches, except they like TikTok more than reddit (and short-form video content more than text). While certainly TikTok videos are not, uh, perhaps universally accurate, they do imply the genuine effort of a real person, which is what many people find lacking in SEO optimized blogspam.
I remember when the articles about "Gen Z is using tiktok to search instead of google" first came out and it seemed very strange to me, why would one search for something on tiktok like what the biggest state in america is, or which snakes are poisonous?
The reality, I think, is more than tiktok is being used to search for certain experiences and not necessarily answers.
From the NYTimes article (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/technology/gen-z-tiktok-search-engine.html):
All the examples from that article point to finding places to eat or drink -- or in a recent tiktok I came across: best places to go to the bathroom in Manhattan.
Tiktok is a good search engine for certain things (finding restaurants, things to do), Google is a good search engine for other things (finding complex answers, or websites), much in the same way that you'd likely not search Google for products when you're shopping, you may turn to Amazon first and search on there. If I'm looking for product reviews, I end up searching reddit for "genuine" answers instead (ok you caught me I search on google and just put "reddit" in the query).
Different search engines for different things, Google is still the foundational catch-all search engine, but for other things people turn to more specific engines.
Okay, yes, that makes sense as part of a trend towards using more specialized searches for some kinds of things.
It's fortunate for Google that Reddit's search isn't all that great. I do use it sometimes, though, for searching a single subreddit.
It seems like just building a specialized search engine isn't enough, though? People don't use them much. You also need to collect a lot of content of some type.
Edit: YouTube seems like a good example of how Google can do this too, sometimes. YouTube's search isn't all that great, but I do find I prefer it to using Google search to look for music videos.
Something changed recently at youtube (past few months) as search results have noticeably dropped off a cliff. The thing I use it for particularly is music - mostly using artist and track/album. So much totally unrelated garbage that is obviously being pushed independent of relevance.
Search results before were a bit hit or miss. but you'd generally get related stuff on the first page and near to the top but no more. It's almost random now what results appear.
I also noticed the massive decline in results quality on YouTube recently too, but I actually found a way to fix it!
As far as I can tell, the reason for the seeming randomness of the majority of results these days is that when you do a search on YouTube now, only the top few results are actually based on the search terms you used. And everything below those few relevant results are now a mix of "related", "people also watched", "channels new to you"/"videos for you" recommendations, and even "previous watched" videos, most of which are typically completely unrelated to your search terms. Why they chose to pollute the search results page like that, and to such an extreme, I have no fucking idea.
However, thankfully, if you click 'Filters' at the top of the results page, and then set the 'Type' to 'Videos' all the other bullshit goes away and you will only see properly relevant search results again. It's fucking annoying to have to do that every time you do a search now, but at least that trick works to clear out all the cruft. Give it a try for yourself.
Ooh thanks, I will definitely try this.
It should be possible to automate it too - I'll see if I can hack together a GM script although not today.
Whatever metrics they decide are most important increase. We're not the people they are interested in keeping on their site. It feels like I'm always not that type of person. It always appears to be an inevitable corporate race to the bottom of the barrel.
NP. And oooh, please share the GM script if you manage to make one! I would greatly appreciate it. :)
Yeah. I know that feel too. But in this case, I honestly wonder whether anyone actually likes these changes and is more likely to stay on the site because of them. Polluting the search results like that serves nobody, and only seems more likely to just piss everyone off, regardless of their demographic.
After some experimentation I don't think it needs a script. I believe the video filter is a simple url search parameter -
sp=EgIQAQI already have a Firefox keyword search 1 for youtube so I just extended that bookmark to add
&sp=EgIQAQ.I know it can be done with Chrome too; I just don't know how. Pull requests welcome :)
Footnote 1 The easiest way to make a keyword search in Firefox is to right click in the youtube search box and choose "Add a keyword for this search...".
Firefox will create a bookmark and prompt you for the keyword. In my case I already have one (using the keyword v - for video). The bookmark it creates includes a
%splaceholder -https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%sNow edit the bookmark and add
&sp=EgIQAQto the end of its URL.To use it, In the URL bar, type your keyword followed by your desired search criteria and firefox replaces the
%swith whatever you typed in.So in my case typing "v turkey earthquake" is transformed into "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=turkey+earthquake&sp=EgIQAQ" and if I check the Filters - indeed the Video option is selected.
Chrome (Desktop only) also has similar option.
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95426?
Oh, cool. I didn't know about bookmark keywords in Firefox. Thanks for the instructions. That will make seaching YouTube so much less annoying now!
For those interested, Kagi's main product is a (quite good) paid search engine.
What I find interesting about the Reddit point is that people often use Google to search Reddit. They can't count on on Google to actually find meaningful results on its own, so they tell Google where to look.