no really how do we fix this?

Stop using Google. You can’t change them, you have to leave.

this is wrong, because today you won't find the thing you're looking for at all. Just 100 results where one word of your 5 word query vaguely matches.

Slight update to this comic, to call out the dangers of Google's Sponsored Results.

Examples, for those that are not aware of this risk:

• https://www.techradar.com/avoid-google-ad-malware
• https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/scams-verify/google-ads-scammers-redirect-website-url-different-search/536-4ef6c41d-087e-4db9-a281-86bcf7637c68
• https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/01/using-google-search-to-find-software-can-be-risky/
• https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/rogue-sites-causing-trouble-in-google-advert-results

Stop using Google.

And Microsoft. And Apple. And Amazon. And every single corporation that cares more about money and stealing people's privacy than serving you.

I'm honestly amazed no one's sued google over the site telling them things like "Jump off a bridge if you're depressed" or that products have been recalled that haven't

by using uBlock Origin, uBlacklist, and then something other than Google.

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&udm=14 is a temporary fix for those who still feel the need to use Google's search.

Paid search isn't the solution, as evidenced by the untrustworthiness of the CEO of Kagi search.

What I would like to see is a non-profit search.

Google wanted to organize all the world's information to make it useful. Sounds like a great idea destroyed by a profit motive getting in the middle. Try the same idea without the profit motive and you'll probably end up creating something people will defend endlessly, like Wikipedia.

What if your search engine asked you for a five dollar donation, once a year, the way Wikipedia does?

Search engines should be non-profit, honestly, they should be an extension of Public Libraries.

butlerian jihad?

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Do you mean to tell me that I keep scrolling I'll eventually get to the yellow promised land?

This started to become noticeable years ago when Google decided to start censoring searches even with SafeSearch off.

I switched to Bing at that time, which was good for a while, but eventually they have started doing the same thing.

I can now no longer find a search engine that actually works to find me all the relevant results. I've tried all that I've heard of, and none will provide complete results.

The easiest canary in the coal mine for this is NSFW stuff. If I search for a popular character of which I know there's lots of porn/hentai, with SafeSearch off, and do not get a heavy mix of SFW and NSFW results, I know that search engine is messing with those results, and is also definitely doing it with searches that are not so obvious.

That's the neat part, you don't.

The top results have been useless spam for a decade or more at this point, and the only difference is Google sit there hoovering up the money instead. The money is in the way of search. Any popular search engine will end up the same way.

It's a shite situation, but until somebody makes a non-profit search engine and filters out spammy results, we'll continue to Google, scroll down two pages for a reddit link, and carry on.

Same with visiting almost any website.

Then

1. Click on link to website.
2. Read website.

Now

1. Click on link to website.
2. Click on Cookie options.
3. Scroll down looking for 'Reject All'.
4. Discover there is no 'Reject All'.
5. Scroll back through list turning off all optional cookies.
6. Scroll back to the bottom to click on 'Confirm my choices'.
7. Hunt for the close X on the 'Subscribe to our newsletter' pop-up.
8. Click on the close X on the 'Subscribe to our newsletter' pop-up.
9. Read the website.
10. Discover the website is just more AI generated SEO garbage.
11. Go outside, walk on the grass barefoot, weep for the future of humanity.

I'm currently prioritizing DuckDuckGo over Google and others for a better quality of search results. There ain't much ads to mess your attention, and the results are quite good most of the time.

kagi.com for me has been more than worth it for the price with unlimited searches.

If you need to use Google, I'd recommend the &udm=14 trick, as demonstrated on the linked site. It goes straight to a "web only" filter for search results. There are some tricks and tips to set that to your default search option in settings, or you can get a browser extension.

Try out the searxng browser plugin. It pretty much takes you back to the first pane.

I was (trying to) use AI to help me with something on my PC a few nights ago. It was telling me to go menus and choose options that literally don't exist.

Wtf is going on with AI right now? About a year ago, I found it useful for certain things. But it seems to have totally shit itself recently, and is pretty much useless now.

It's an extremely bold assumption to make to presume that we even could? Like Ukraine wanting to not be invaded, or Rome wanting to not fall, or someone wanting to not die of cancer, or perhaps the best analogy: never exercising a day in our lives + eating however we feel like in the moment, yet wanting to not suffer the negative consequences of obesity, hardened arteries, etc.

I take the approach of the stoics: we brought this upon ourselves, allowing ourselves to be tricked by the "Don't be evil" slogan. I do not own Google - I have no stocks in the corporation, they are not running their server code on my machines, they use none of my electricity, I do not own the land they park their buildings upon, etc. - and therefore I have no call in how they choose to go about their business. They chose to enshittify, and I am not offered a say in their choices. Therefore "we" cannot "fix" this. Only they could, and only if they want.

But maybe we can build our own LLMs so that we never need to use Google to search for anything ever again, directly? For now, I use DuckDuckGo whenever I can, Google when I have to, and perhaps most important go directly to the site that I want if possible - e.g. wikipedia, wiktionary, stackoverflow, Reddit if I absolutely must, etc. We lived in a golden era of prosperity when we were allowed to "have things", but that is over - we did not take care of it properly, and it was taken over from the inside, as it was always going to be, our delusions to the contrary notwithstanding. Now, maybe we can be more realistic about our expectations moving forward.

Use Ecosia.

Any way people could just remake 'old Google' that solely focuses on search and nothing else?

I just subscribed to Kagi to try it out.

Been like this for years now, I jumped ship 4 years ago to DuckDuckGo, might even jump that ship if it gets any worse, but alternatives...

I've recently found out about https://search.marginalia.nu and want to start using it.

I tried getting xpadder yesterday and the top search results were fake websites. I'm still not convinced I found the real one

Bro. Use ublock origin. I haven't seen a sponsored link on google in like 10 years

Mojeek and Qwant are my go to if duck, duck go isn't great. It should probably be the other way around.

Probably with a FOSS alternative but with the owner class working is to death for below survival wages who has the time?

I need to take a screenshot the next time I see the "other users have searched" thing is almost a full page in length. It's happened a few times recently.

4get, SearXNG and Whoogle are pretty good proxies for most search engines. I've recently been enjoying 4get with DuckDuckGo, it works really well. No ads, no trackers, no bullshit. Just a lightweight page that allows me to search the web privately.

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@stabby_cicada you can always use duckduckgo...

Ya but Google makes a lot more money this way

I've just switch from DDG to Qwant. I didn't do research about how they make there algorithm but DDG that IS to say Being was returning me unrelated stuff and even things I ask not to see in my request. The result is not amazing quality but no more amazingly bad quality.

I want to learn more about search algorithm, what there referencement politic is and what use of AI they have. It not possible today to pick a search engin algorithm randomly and get pertinent résultat like it was two years ago.

This seems like a good time for someone to create a search engine.

I switched to DuckDuckGo for a few years, then went to Ecosia for a while, and now I'm using searx. I'm not sure how searx prioritises the results, so I'm still adjusting to it, but overall it works okay.

Searching "SpaceX starship" on Google just now in Firefox with adblock origin, not logged into Google, on mobile I get:

• Summary of the vehicle from Wikipedia with relevant pictures on the first card
• The SpaceX page for the vehicle on the second card
• Relevant videos on the third card
• SpaceX's twitter on the fourth card

Doing the same in mobile chrome, logged in, no ad block:

• Adverts for starship toys in the first card
• Relevant news stories in the second card
• Wikipedia summary
• SpaceX's starship page
• Relevant videos
• SpaceX twitter

So if you're getting other crap, use ad block. I presume the comic was made while Google was adding LLM results, which they aren't doing now. I can't say I noticed the LLM results while they were included.

If search engines really wanted to fix this--and it would require Google and Bing taking action, not smaller search engines--they could de-list any company that engaged in SEO so that nothing from that company showed up in searches at all.

Use searx: https://searx.github.io/searx/ It provides the expected results and do not track you. You can even host it yourself

Or you can take a look at the list of instances here: https://searx.space/

gemini://gemplex.space/search

don't use google. basically any engine is better. I would recommend using a searxng instance. Soi that nobody can ever enshittify it ever again

You're still using google?

Maybe if less people sucked the dick of LLMs then it wouldn't pervade every facet of our lives?